It was the old man who had jumped out of his reverie on the morning of Morgan's first return to Ascalon, and menaced him with the crook of his hickory stick. The veteran was going now without the comfort of his stick, making pretty good time, eager in the rousing of fires long stilled in his cooling heart. He began trotting on when he recognized Morgan, shouting for him to hurry.
"Lend me your gun, Uncle John—I left mine in the hotel," Morgan said.
"Hell, what'll I do then?" said Uncle John, unwilling to give it up.
Morgan was insistent. He commandeered the weapon in the name of the law. That being the case, Uncle John handed it up to him, with a word of affection for it, and a little swearing over his bad luck.
It was a double-barreled buffalo rifle, a cap-and-ball gun of very old pattern, belonging back in the days of Parkman and the California Trail, and the two charges which it bore were all that Morgan could hope to expend, for Uncle John carried neither pouch nor horn. But Morgan was thankful for even that much, and rode on.
A little way ahead a man, hatless, wild-haired, came running out from his dooryard, having witnessed Morgan's levying on Uncle John's gun and read his reason for it. This citizen rushed into the road and offered a large revolver, which Morgan leaned and snatched from his hand as he galloped by. But it hadn't a cartridge in its chambers, and its caliber was not of Morgan's ammunition. Still, he rode on with it in his hand, hoping that it might serve its turn.
Morgan galloped on toward the square, where a great volume of smoke hid the courthouse and all of the town that lay before the wind. He hoped to meet somebody there with a gun worth while, although he had no immediate plan for pitching into the fight and using it. That must be fixed for him by circumstances when he confronted them.
Women and children stood in the dooryards watching the fire that was cutting through the thin-walled buildings on that side of the square—the hotel side—as if they were strawboard boxes. They were silent in the great climax of fear; they stood as people stand, straining and waiting, watching the approach of a tornado, no safety in flight, no refuge at hand. There was but one man in sight, and he was running like a jack rabbit across the staked ground behind Judge Thayer's office, heading for the prairie. It was Earl Gray, the druggist. He was covering sixteen feet at a jump. When he saw Morgan galloping into the town, Gray stopped, darted off at an angle as if he were going on some brave and legitimate excursion, and disappeared.
The Elkhorn hotel was well under way of destruction, its roof already fallen, its thin walls bending inward, perforated in a score of places by flames. The head of the street was unguarded; Morgan rode on and halted at the edge of the square.
Smoke blotted out everything in the square, except for a little shifting by the rising wind which revealed the courthouse, the pigeons in wild flight around the tower. There was not a man in sight, neither raider nor defender. Across on the other side of the square, as if they defended that part from being set on fire, the citizens were doing some shooting with rifles, even shotguns, as Morgan could define by the sound. The raiders were there, for they were answering with shot and yell.