A movement went over the watching people of the town, assembled along its business front, as wind ripples suddenly a field of grain. Nobody had breath for a word; dry lips were pressed tightly in the varying emotions of hope, fear, expectancy, desire. Morgan was seen to be busy for a moment with something about his saddle; it was thought he was drawing his rifle out of its case.
Nearly opposite where Morgan waited, the first coach of the train stopped. Instantly, like children freed from school, the eager passengers poured off for their adventurous breath of this most wicked town's intoxicating air. Morgan's whole attention was now fixed on the movement around the train. He shifted his horse to face that way, risking what might develop behind him, one hand engaged with the bridle rein, the other seemingly dropped carelessly on his thigh.
And in that squaring of expectation, that pause of breathless waiting, Seth Craddock descended from the smoking-car, his alpaca coat carried in the crook of his left elbow, his right hand lingering a moment on the guard of the car step. The hasty ones who had waited on the car platform were down ahead of him, standing a little way from the steps; others who wanted to get off came pressing behind him, in their ignorance that they were handling a bit of Ascalon's most infernal furnishing, pushing him out into the timid crowd of their fellows.
A moment Craddock stood, taller than the tallest there, sweeping his quick glance about for signs of the expected hostility, the trinkets of silver on the band of his costly new sombrero shining in the sun. Then he came striding among the gaping passengers, like a man stalking among tall weeds, something unmistakably expressive of disdain in his carriage.
There he paused again, and put on his coat, plainly mystified and troubled by the absence of townspeople from the depot, and the sight of them lined up across the square as if they waited a circus parade. All that he saw between himself and that fringe of puzzling, silent people was a cowboy sitting astraddle of his bay horse at the end of the station platform.
And as Craddock started away from the crowd of curious passengers who were whispering and speculating behind him, pointing him out to each other, wondering what notable he might be; as Craddock started down the platform away from there, the voice of the conductor warning all to clamber aboard, the waiting cowboy tightened the reins a little, causing his horse to prick up its ears and start with a thrill of expectancy which the rider could feel ripple over its smooth hide under the pressure of his knees.
Craddock came on down the platform, turning his head on his long neck in the way of a man entirely mystified and suspicious, alone, unsupported by even as much as the shadow of a strange gun-slinger or local friend.
What was passing through the fellow's head Morgan could pretty well guess. There was a little break of humor in it, for all the tight-drawn nerves, for all the chance, for all the desperation of the gathering moment. The grim old killer couldn't make out whether it was through admiration of him the people had gathered to welcome him home, or in expectation of something connected with the arrival of the train. Two rods or so from where Morgan waited him, Craddock stopped to look back at the train, now gathering slow headway, and around the deserted platform, down which the station agent came dragging a mail sack.
It was when he turned again from this suspicious questioning into things which gave him back no reply, that Craddock recognized the hitherto unsuspected cowboy. In a start he stiffened to action, flinging hand to his pistol. But a heartbeat quicker, like a flash of sunbeam from a mirror, the coiled rope flew out from Morgan's high-flung arm.
As the swift-running noose settled over Craddock's body, the horse leaped at the pressure of its rider's knees. Craddock fired as the flying rope snatched him from his feet, the noose binding his arms impotently to his sides; in his rage he fired again and again as he dragged in ludicrous tangle of long, thrashing legs from the platform into the dust.