CHAPTER XXVII
ABSOLUTION
Morgan stood looking down on the man whom he had overcome in the climax of that desperate hour, wondering if he were dead. He did not stoop to investigate; from where he stood no sign of life disturbed Craddock's limp body. Morgan was thinking now that they would say of him in Ascalon that luck had been with him to the last.
Not prowess, at any rate; he did not claim to that. Perhaps luck was as good a name as any for it, but it was something that upheld his hand and stimulated his wit in crises such as he had passed in Ascalon that eventful fortnight.
A band of men came around the corner past Peden's hall, now only a vanishing skeleton of beams, bringing with them the two raiders who had attempted to escape by that avenue to the open prairie. The two were still mounted, the crowd that surrounded them was silent and ominous. Morgan waited until they came up, when, with a sign toward Craddock, which relinquished all interest in and responsibility for him to the posse comitatus, he turned away to hasten to Fred Stilwell's side.
Tom Conboy had reached the fallen youth—he was little more than a boy—and was kneeling beside him, lifting his head.
"God! they killed a woman over there—and a man!" Conboy said.
"Is he dead?" Morgan inquired, his voice hoarse and strange.
"He's shot through the lung, he's breathin' through his back," Conboy replied, shaking his head sadly. "But I've seen men live shot up worse than Fred is," he added. "It takes a big lot of lead to kill a man sometimes."