"He may be insane," Morgan suggested.
"I don't know, but I don't think so. I can't abase my mind low enough to fathom that man."
"It's a wonder somebody hasn't killed him," Morgan speculated.
"He never arrests anybody, there hasn't been a prisoner in the calaboose since he took charge of this town. Notoriety has turned his head, notoriety seems to put a halo around him that makes a troop of sycophants look up to him as a saint. Look here—look at this!"
The judge held out a newspaper, shaking it viciously, his face clouded with displeasure.
"Here's a piece two columns long about that scoundrel in the Kansas City Times—the notoriety of the town is obscured by the bloody reputation of its marshal."
"It must be gratifying to a man of his ambitions," Morgan commented, glancing curiously over the story, his mind on the first victim of Craddock's gun in that town.
"It's a disgrace that some of us feel, whatever it may be to him. I expected him to confine his gun to gamblers and crooks and these vermin that hang around the women of the dance houses, but he's right-hand man with them, they're all on his staff."
Morgan looked up in amazement, hardly able to believe what he heard.
"It's enough to wind any decent man," Judge Thayer nodded. "You remember his first case—that fool cowboy he killed at the hotel?"