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MITCHELL came in from his six-o'clock swing of the town and went directly to Webber's House for supper, sitting alone at the accustomed table in the corner, his back to the wall. Sherry Gault later entered with Ford Green and in a little while Ed and Josephine Balder joined them. The windows were open to let in the first small breeze and the sun dropped and a girl circled the room to light the kerosene bracket lamps and then the glass and silverware in the room were shining and through this bright glow he saw Sherry Gault's face turn to ivory and old rose. The Gaults had a set of rooms in the hotel for use whenever they came to town; and she had changed into a dress of black and gold. Her shoulders were erect, rounding into deep breasts, and her lips struck a strong line of color across the oval of her face, and against her all other women were pale and unfilled.

This was the second time during the day he had seen Ford Green with Ed Balder, so that he now knew the first meeting had been no accident. Behind the bony freckled mask of Ford Green deep ambitions lay, pinching the corners of his lips and making his talk softly calculating. He was a close-mouthed man who moved cautiously and painstakingly from afar to gain his purposes. Those purposes, whatever they were, made him draw toward Ed Balder. Balder, who ran his big general store on Willow, was a power in this town because he spoke for the merchants. Balder was the other half of the law in River Bend.

Mitchell lighted his third cigar of the day and moved idly through the dining-room. Ed Balder looked up and said, "Hello, Dan." Josephine Balder ignored him, and Ford Green nodded without speaking. These various reactions he noted with eyes accustomed to the reading of people's motives for what they might mean to his own life and safety. Sherry Gault's glance lifted and her attention reached him and remained a long moment, reluctantly interested. The light of the room made its pattern of shadows along her cheeks and the hazel surfaces of her eyes glowed. He passed on to the street and crossed to Brinton's stable.

Dick Lestrade, who was twelve years old, stood in the arch of Brinton's and tried to look as though pure accident brought him here. Mitchell stopped. He put his glance along the street, not directly at Dick, and he spoke as a man would speak to another man. "Been a hot day."

"Sure," said Dick Lestrade, from the bottom of his throat. "Mighty warm." He wore long trousers and a thin cotton shirt and his hair was black-damp, whereby Mitchell knew he had been swimming under the Spanish River bridge. He had the burned blackness of boyhood running free and he had boyhood's lank shape. Each day, somewhere along this street, Dick Lestrade made it a point to stand where he might see Mitchell or Bravo Trimble or Haley Evarts, who drove the War Bonnet stage.

"Kind of like to jump in the river on a day like this," said Mitchell.

"I been," said young Dick. "I hit bottom today. Twelve feet under."

"Why, now," observed Mitchell, "that's pretty deep diving."

Dick Lestrade's voice sank deeper in his chest. The men of this town, particularly the men he silently admired, were all brief with their words and so he was brief. "Not hard, when you get the hang of it."

"Sure," said Mitchell and moved into the stable. He saddled the buckskin and came out. He said, still man-to-man, "Another night. Guess I better get about my business."

Dick Lestrade's youthful imagination at last broke through, so that he was no longer a man. He said in a small, quick voice: "Think there'll be trouble tonight?"

"Looks like just another night, Dick," observed Mitchell, and rode to the head of Race.

Night's soft and warm and earth-stained blackness lay across the land. Except for Webber's House, the stores and shops on Willow Street had closed and all those buildings made a black bulwark, but on Race a thousand lights broke in fractured splinters and fan-shaped gushes from the windows and doors of saloon and dance hall, from Naab's shooting-gallery and Spreckel's Cowboy Store and Solomon's Emporium, from every aperture wherein man spread his wares for the gratification of the Texas cowhand made lusty and hungry and wild by the long ride up the trail. These lights formed a yellow glow in the heart of River Bend and music spilled out and barkers stood at the doorways of The Pride, sing-songing: "This is your house, friend! Best whisky on the trail—the squarest games! Give it a try—give it a try!"

Horsemen swept up Race and wheeled at the hitch racks. They came singly or in solid groups and their shrill crying sailed out along the housetops, dying back somewhere in Antelope's quiet. At this hour River Bend surrendered its respectability and its solid citizens withdrew before the violent night trade upon which, though it fed them, they discreetly closed their eyes.

He moved down the street's center. A new group of cowhands swung around the corner of The Drover's and charged on. These men stood in their stirrups and howled at the dark sky and dust boiled around them and their scorched faces looked upon him, streaked with vital arrogance. Rushing forward, they meant to make him give ground but he held the buckskin to the center of the street. One cowhand yelled his warning. Then dead before him that solid wave split and milled and a rider grazed him in passing, and somebody said, "How much of this street you got to have?"

They saw the star pinned on his vest. Other riders, traveling through River Bend, had carried the news of the town and of its marshal down the trail and now these men ringed around him and watched him with a speculative interest, deviltry making its thin points in their eyes.

Mitchell said, "Put away your guns with the first barkeep you meet. Otherwise the town's yours." He rode on. A woman slipped from an alley into Race and moved with the tide of men, her back to Mitchell. She touched a man's elbow and laughed at him and then her face turned and she saw Mitchell and she wheeled, running back toward the alley. Mitchell thrust the buckskin into the alley, blocking her way. He looked down.

"You know the rule, Florida. No walking on Race. Go on back to your house and stay inside. Last warning."

"What'll you do?" she said in a hard, defiant voice.

"Next time you'll leave town."

He gave ground to let her vanish and swung down Race again. All the doors of The Pride stood open, the crowd growing dense inside. He heard the roulette man call, "Odd and black. Get your bets down." The music in The Dream tumbled into the street and a woman's high, unnatural laugh rasped above the music and the boots of the dancing cowhands shook The Dream with a solid stamping. Over on the edge of town one shot hallooed through the night and the buckskin, long experienced, picked up its ears and moved faster. Turning the corner of The Drover's Hotel, he saw the round disk of a campfire on the vacant ground next to Bismarck Alley. He went toward it.

There was a big wagon and four horses unhitched and standing on picket. Beneath the wagon four children lay asleep in an improvised bed; a man and woman stood by the fire. The man came about at Mitchell's approach, thick and short and reserved.

"Passing through?" asked Mitchell.

"Stayin' here," said the man, "if we can find the land. We're from Minnesota. That," he said, and waved a hand at the steady boil-up of noise on Race Street, "that happen every night?"

"All summer long. You're camped in the wrong place. These trail hands will be riding past here around midnight, drunk and full of trouble. You should be over on the quiet side of town."

"I've got a gun."

Mitchell said at once, "Don't attempt to use it. I'll be coming around the corner of that hotel every hour, or I'll be up that street. Call me if you need help."

"My name's Wallin," said the homesteader. "Which part of this country's best for farmin'?"

"See Bill Mellen in the morning. What's the heavy load in the wagon?"

Wallin took time to kick the fire together with the point of a boot. "Seed wheat. Winter wheat. Think it will grow in this country?"

"Maybe," said Mitchell. "Good luck." He swung back to Bismarck Alley. Impelled by an afterthought, he turned in the saddle. "Don't settle too close to a cattle outfit."

"Free land—Government land, ain't it?" asked Wallin.

"Yes, if you can make it stick," answered Mitchell and went on.

He threaded Bismarck Alley, passing the narrow fronts of the town's cheap saloons at the lower end of the alley. Farther along houses stood with drawn shades showing green stains of light. He passed a vacant lot and skirted Big Annie's, which was a lodging-place for the girls of The Dream dance hall, and came by Brinton's into Willow. Crossing Willow, he turned into Antelope and moved by the big houses set back in their dry lawns. This was the town, the high and the low of it as seen from the deck of a buckskin horse. Riding through it day after day, he saw it completely and came to know its people, their intrigues and their hungers and the odd patterns moving through their heads to stir their hearts. He had his bird's eye view of River Bend, knowing more of the town than a man ought to know and locking it away in a secret place. This job made a man lonely.

It was eight o'clock when he turned by the depot and paced down Railroad Avenue along the black areas of corral and warehouse and the row of small dwellings north of the town's heart. The big passenger engine, waiting its morning run, stood on the siding with its steam faintly simmering and its line of cars dark-shadowed. A man threshed through the boards and loose wire in the Wells-Fargo compound, cursing slowly, and then turned still. Mitchell listened to that a moment and went on. After a year's practice, a peace officer got to know which sounds were dangerous to him and which were not. It was a sense that grew stronger and stronger until, as Ad Morfitt had said, it broke through a marshal's nerves and began to haunt him.

He passed the mouth of Lost Horse Street, from which two months before a man had taken a futile shot at him. He made a wider circle of town and came again to the head of Race. The big bell in the tower boomed out curfew in a round, sullen tone; and hard on its last smoldering echo a shot broke through The Pride. Mitchell said to the buckskin, "Go after it," and moved down the street toward the saloon. Men ran out of other saloons and crossed to The Pride. A second shot broke. Both of those echoes were lighter than the report of a .44 and by that sound he knew it would be one of Charley Fair's gamblers in trouble.

The three big rooms on the front second-floor corner of Webber's House were the year-around quarters of the Gaults when in town; and here Sherry and Ford Green went after dinner. She had not seen Ford for the best part of a month and yet there wasn't much to be said. Neither of these people did a great deal of talking. Ford Green had a dry caution with words and Sherry Gault inevitably expressed everything she felt in the quickest, briefest way. Having known each other for a good many years, their engagement had simply grown into a fact, without great courtship or drama. One day Ford Green had said, "You knew me pretty well, Sherry. Will I do?" And she had said, "All right, Ford."

One thing he had in great measure, an infinite patience. Lacking it, she admired it in him. Physically, she was a restless girl. While he sat idle in a chair, content with the run of things in his mind, she ranged the room, touching objects about it, coming back to stand before him, moving on to the window. She was at the window when the two shots broke from The Pride. What arrested her attention was the unhurried manner of Dan Mitchell as he moved down Race toward the saloon and the broadside shape he made against the light.

"Somebody ought to tell him," she said, "that he makes too plain a target on that horse."

The sound of the shooting had not brought Ford Green from his chair but he knew she would be speaking of Mitchell. "Man on horseback," he said, "that's his own idea."

She watched Mitchell round in at The Pride and step from the horse. Other men rushed at the saloon and street dust grew thick, so that Mitchell's shape was half hidden. He moved at the crowded doorway and suddenly his arms flung men aside, rough and quick, and he vanished inside. She put both hands on the window's sill, struck by his directness in action, her mind fully on him.

"No man," she said, "can rule a town like this very long without making enemies. He knows that. It is like going into a cage of lions. One day he'll be killed, as Curly Ed Gray was before him. Does he know that, Ford?"

"He rules the town," said Ford Green, dry and softly positive. "But he doesn't run it."

"What's the difference? Except for him there wouldn't be a safe hour in River Bend."

"There's a difference," said Ford Green. Now he was interested and bent forward in the chair, using his hands to shape his thoughts. "This town splits in the middle. The gamblers and saloonmen and honky-tonk people on one side, Charley Fair speaking for them. The merchants along Willow Street on the other side, with Ed Balder doing their talking. Those two men run the town. Charley Fair wants no more law than he's got to take. Ed Balder wants law and order, but not the strict kind that will scare the trail cowhands and their money away. There's the law Friend Mitchell is to enforce. He walks a tight rope—not too much, not too little. If he let the toughs have their way the town would die of its own excesses. If he clamped down the lid on the toughs all the trail trade would go somewhere else and the town would be just a little bunch of empty buildings ready for the wind to blow away."

"But it is Mitchell who makes your nice theories work. Do you see Fair or Balder or even yourself out there handling that crowd?"

She was a blunt girl even to those whom she liked or loved. Ford Green gave her a strange glance and his freckled, dry cheeks took on a small color. She had touched him somewhere on a vital point of pride. Recognizing that, she wondered about it.

"But," he said in quiet contradiction, "he understands what he's to do. Just four people around here do understand—Balder and Fair and Mitchell and me. Balder and Fair watch him every minute. If Mitchell were to swing too far either way he'd be knocked out, either by Balder or by Fair. You see?" This was the kind of complicated analysis he loved most of all, satisfying the thoughtful part of his nature. "Then there's the homesteaders, with Bill Mellen. But they're just a few. They don't count."

She came back to an earlier guess. "You hate Mitchell. You really do."

"He stands in my way."

"Why, Ford?"

He looked at her with a strangely diffident expression. He seemed to debate with himself. Self-revelation came hard with him after the lifelong habit of secretiveness. When he spoke it was in the driest, softest way. "I want to represent this state in the Senate."

"Why, if that is really what you want, go ahead and fight for it. Men have to fight for something. They can't stand still."

"This is a small town clear out on the empty side of the state," Ford Green said. "All the political power lies in the eastern half. But I know people. I know how to catch their eyes. I'm prosecuting attorney in the toughest town, the most sinful town west of the Missouri. I smash the crooks and the gamblers, I drive out the toughs and I clean up the town and I ride east with that reputation. That's how it's done. People love a crusader riding out of the west. It is sure medicine in this state. It always works."

She spoke with a note of wonder. "But you said that if this town were cleaned up it would blow away."

"But that's how I'll get my job. What difference does one dirty, dusty little crossroads make to a man if he's fighting his way up? Towns come and go. A man has got only one life and a lot of things to do. Maybe he leaves some breakage behind him. What of it?"

She studied him with a centered attention, as though she were seeing him in a new light. "You're really a cold devil, Ford. How did I ever come to like you?"

"Is it nothing better than liking, Sherry?"

She said quickly, "Let's not be sentimental." Afterward she wondered why she had so swiftly moved away from sentiment and for a little while she let herself think of the feeling she had for Ford Green. Nothing much had ever been said about love. He had not bothered to sweep her off her feet. He had been only Ford Green, characteristically dry and cautious in his proposal. "It is odd," she murmured, more to herself than to him.

"What's odd?"

"I have always had some very fixed ideas about a man and a woman in love. I wonder—" But again she evaded her thoughts. One very realistic corner of her mind held its doubt for a moment, and its barbed and insistent demand that she come back and face the question directly, as she liked to face all things. It was very strange that she deliberately closed out that part of her head.

"To close this town tight I'll have to maneuver around Mitchell," Green said. "Time will come for that."

She didn't wholly like his casual way of saying it. "He's a big target, Ford. He's easy to shoot at. Fight him as hard as you please, if that is what you want. But do it as he does it. Don't shoot from a dark alley." She gave him a searching glance. "But that isn't the whole reason for your hating him."

He showed a small flush of color again. "You've got sharp eyes."

"What's the real reason?"

His answer came out with reluctance. "I never could like a man who throws away his strength and laughs at the world and doesn't give a damn for anything. A man who's got things in him I'd give my right arm to have—and throws them away. I'm honest about it, Sherry. I have to work hard for what I want. He wants nothing and everything comes easy for him." Then he added one impulsive phrase: "I don't like the way he looks at you."

"Ah," said Sherry and turned to the window. Her lips changed, she drew a long breath. "I can take care of myself, Ford." She held her glance on the doorways of The Pride.

Men blocked The Pride's nearest doorway. The buckskin, following the sound of trouble like a trained hunting dog, swung abreast the door and stopped. Mitchell got down, walking against the back edge of the crowd. He said, "Give way," but his talk wasn't heard. Everybody faced the doorway, looking into The Pride's packed hall. In there a long silence lay until one man's voice gritted through it, full of outrage. "A tinhorn sport!"

Mitchell moved to the back edge of the crowd. He thrust both hands before him, parting the nearest men. He moved between them and felt their resistance. Suddenly he stiffened his legs and bucked into this mass and tore it loose with a ramming impact of his elbows. Men swung around at him and somebody said, "What the hell—" and tried to reach at him through the jam. Mitchell got to the doorway. There was a cowhand blocking it; he caught the man by the coat collar and flung him back and passed into The Pride.

The Pride's brackets and chandeliers built up a strong silver flare against the great back-bar mirror. The crowd, caught flat-footed by trouble, stood in separate groups, at the bar, at the tables, along the walls; and all men faced the center of the room where the gambler Hazelhurst stood beside a capsized poker table with his small pistol half lifted.

Mitchell cut a way through the crowd with his shoulders, hearing the stamp of his own boots in the deadlocked quiet. A trail cowhand lay face down and dead on the floor, one hand clinging to a gun and the other gripping two playing-cards, so revealing the full story of what had happened. The huge Texan, Cap Ryker, stood over the dead man, his face turned scarlet. Charley Fair had moved behind Hazelhurst to cover the gambler's rear. Hazelhurst, cool and deadly calm, stared at the crowd with a pride that would never break. At the moment his pale face hated them all and despised them all.

Seeing Mitchell, Ryker began to yell at him. "That's an Anchor man dead there—that's one of my men! I told you I'd bust up this damned town if anything happened, and by God, I will!"

Charley Fair's smooth voice followed. "Don't get excited, friend. Your boy made a rough remark about the dealer and went for the gun first."

"The deal was crooked!" shouted Cap Ryker.

Charley Fair said patiently, "Careful about that. Never was a crooked game played in this house."

"That man," yelled Cap Ryker and swung his arm toward George Hazelhurst, "won't see another sunrise in this world!"

"Cool off," urged Charley Fair. "You're squawkin' like a short sport." His glance moved over to Mitchell and remained there, waiting for Mitchell to speak, to act. The saloonman, Mitchell knew, was accustomed to tight squeezes and could handle himself in any situation, but this moment was bad and would grow worse.

Cap Ryker said, "We'll take care of Anchor and we'll do what Billy Blades tried to do. Gambler, you're dead as hell right now, and you'll be deader!"

Men swayed under the compulsion of Cap Ryker's voice; they came up beside him and behind him. This was another heart of night on Race Street and this was another one of those savage silences beneath which wildness burned like fire. The faces of these men grew long and thin light touched off pale, strange flares in their eyes. In the stillness Mitchell heard the rustling rasp of death and he felt the pulse of trouble, all this so old and familiar to him that he could close his eyes and know at what precise instant fury would break.

There was always one man whose single word or single motion unloosened the wild strength of a mob. In this instance it would be Cap Ryker. Cap Ryker turned half around, looking at all the Texas trail hands waiting, and he filled his chest and opened his mouth and said, "All right—" and said no more. Mitchell's voice struck in:

"That's enough from you."

Ryker slashed his great hand downward. "Marshal, I'm going to show you—"

"Stand fast," said Mitchell, "or you'll be the next man in boot hill."

A crowd was a harp on whose strings a man played a tune, but it depended on which man played the tune, he or Cap Ryker. He saw a greater floridness spread across the Texan's massive cheeks, he watched the big body freeze. The crowd was waiting, but this break was not enough. The crowd was still dangerous. So he said to Hazelhurst, "Walk out with me. Walk out ahead of me. I'll lock you up."

Charley Fair opened his mouth to speak, and closed it. George Hazelhurst gave Mitchell an affronted stare; he had wrapped himself in a shroud of bitter-proud fatalism and it took a moment for the words to get through. Presently he turned and stepped ahead of Mitchell. At that moment Mitchell's glance, sweeping the crowd, saw in the background the little redheaded Anchor man he had earlier warned out of town.

Between the center of the room and the door was the solid mass of the crowd. Its pressure stopped George Hazelhurst dead. He looked around at Mitchell and said in a tone which ran ringing through the stillness, "I won't wrestle with those dogs, Mitchell. I'll stand here. There's four loads left in this gun."

It was like pitch thrown on flame; he saw brightness flash higher in all those waiting eyes before him and he knew he had to arrest that fire before it broke through. Knowing it, he swung around, speaking to the red-headed Anchor cowhand in the back end of the room. "I warned you to stay out of town, son. When I get this chore done I'm comin' back after you." Turning, he gave George Hazelhurst a boost forward with his hand.

He had shifted the crowd's thinking from this present moment to what would happen in the future; and through this little hole of indecision he shoved George Hazelhurst. The nearest man stepped aside, making a crack in the crowd. Mitchell put both broad hands on Hazelhurst's back, ramming the gambler onward. Hazelhurst struck these slow-yielding Texans and looked back at Mitchell with distaste, and then grew angry and plunged at the door, using his elbows.

Charley Fair's round, easing talk made a play for attention. "Where's the music—where's the music? Hit the bar, boys. It's on the house."

Men moved from the doorway, letting Hazelhurst and Mitchell go by. Music poured into the silence. Out on the walk, Mitchell caught Hazelhurst's arm and guided him across Briar Street toward the jail office.

Hazelhurst grumbled, "Never mind—never mind. We're out of trouble."

"No," said Mitchell, "you're not. I'll lock you up until the town's empty."

Hazelhurst moved into the jail office and stopped while Mitchell unlocked the jail door. He scowled at Mitchell's pointing finger. Thin and pale as he was, a fastidious self-respect burned in him. "The man called me a crook," he rumbled. Mitchell pushed him into the jail cell and locked it.

"Dan," complained Hazelhurst, "I don't like this." Then a grudging admiration came out of him. "You're smart as hell. You handled that bunch. Don't let 'em pull you into The Pride again tonight. Stay out on the street."

Mitchell stared at him. "You heard me talk to the redhead, didn't you?"

"Just a play to change their attention, wasn't it?"

"It was a promise," said Mitchell. The night had made him rough, it had stretched his nerves. There was always a time when trouble broke, that the caution in this man went completely away so that he became as reckless and as rash as the wild ones marching up the Texas trail. He said, "You damned card players make a hell of a show about your pride. I've got mine, too, George."

"Ah," murmured Hazelhurst, "I'm sorry." But he added, "It is different, Dan. A man like me has nothing but pride. It is just a front, like a white shirt. Take that away and I'm just George Hazelhurst, no damned good." He held the silence a moment, later to add morosely, "It would be the best kind of an end for a fellow like me—one touch of dignity in a useless life. But not for you, Dan. You've got too much. Don't let your pride kill you, which it will certainly do."

Mitchell turned into the street again, moving back to The Pride. A new group of horsemen came around the corner of The Drovers' and charged up Race, their dust thickening the yellow lamplight, and other men came out of the adjoining saloons and stood along the walls of Race to watch the scene whose warning had somehow gotten through town with the swiftness of an electrical charge.