Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectant heart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on in desperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watching Morgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change the verdict to his loss.
"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regeneration of Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while? Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be a year or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of this flashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man would want the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfied with the new conditions; he wouldn't want any whiners at the funeral."
"New people would come, new business would grow, as soon as the news got abroad that a different condition prevailed in this town," Judge Thayer said. "I can satisfy you in an hour that the business men want what they're demanding, and will be satisfied to take the risk of the result."
"I came out here to farm," Morgan said, unwilling to put down his plans for a questionable and dangerous service to a doubtful community.
"There'll not be much sod broken between now and late fall, from the present look of things," the judge said. "We've had the longest dry spell I've ever seen in this country—going on four weeks now without a drop of rain. It comes that way once every five or seven years, but that also happens back in Ohio and other places men consider especially favored," he hastened to conclude.
"I didn't intend to break sod," Morgan reflected, "a man couldn't sow wheat in raw sod. That's why I wanted to look at that claim down by the river."
"It will keep. Or you could buy it, and hire your crop put in while you're marshal here in town."
"And I could edit the paper. Between us we could save the county seat."
Rhetta spoke quite seriously, so seriously, indeed, that her father laughed.
"I had forgotten all about saving the county seat—I was considering only the soul of Ascalon," he said.