"The only mistake you made was when you handed him back his gun. You ought to 'a' handed it back to a corpse," the rancher said.
"We knew that feller he killed," the younger man explained, with a world of significance in his voice.
"He used to live up here in this country before he went to Abilene; he'd come back to blow his money in Ascalon, I guess," the rancher said. "He was one of them harmless bluffin' boys you could take by the ear and lead around like he had a ring in his nose."
"That's what I told them," Morgan commented, in thoughtful, distracted way.
"You sized him up right. He wouldn't 'a' pulled his gun, quick as he was to slap his hand on it and run a sandy. I guess it was just as well it happened to him then as some other time. Somebody was bound to kill him when he got away among strangers."
The rancher, who introduced himself as Stilwell, asked for the details of the killing, which Morgan gave, together with the trivial thing that led up to it. The big rancher sighed, shaking his head sadly.
"You ought to took his gun away from him and bent it around his fool head," he said.
"It would have been better for him, and for me, I guess," Morgan agreed.
"Yes, that marshal was purty sore on you for takin' his gun away from him right out in public, it looks like," the rancher suggested, a bid in his manner for the details of his misfortune which Morgan felt were his by right of hospitality.
"I ran into some of his friends later on. He'd turned the town over to them, a bunch of cowpunchers just up from the Nueces."