Trail's End

It was the marvel and regret of people who made their adventures vicariously, and lived the thrill of them by reading the newspapers, that Ascalon had come to a so sudden and un...

Not more than two hours after the tragedy at the Elkhorn hotel, of which he was the indirect cause, Calvin Morgan appeared at Judge Thayer's little office. The judge had finishe...

Whatever the stranger's intention toward the rough riders of the Chisholm Trail who had terrorized good and bad alike in Ascalon for a week, whether to roast them alive as they...

Seth Craddock was a defiant, although a fallen man. He refused to resign the office of marshal of the third-class city of Ascalon when Morgan released his feet at Judge Thayer's...

Morgan had time for a bitter train of reflection as he rode, never looking behind him to see who came after. Whether Stilwell would yield to his wife's appeal and remain at home...

Morgan rode back to town in thoughtful, serious mood after conducting the six desperadoes across the small trickle of the Arkansas River. He was not satisfied with the morning's...

Joe Lynch, the bone man, stopped at the well in the public square to pour water on his wagon tires. A man was pestered clean out of his senses by his tires coming off, his fello...

Morgan knew that the cogs of the slow machinery by which he had been hoisted from the saddle to the professorial chair had slipped. As he lay there on his back in the shallow ri...

The proscribed of the earth were sleeping late in Ascalon that morning, as they slept late every morning, bright or cloudy, head-heavy with the late watch and debaucheries of th...

Ascalon's temper was not improved by the close passing of the rain, which had refreshed but a small strip of that almost limitless land. The sun came out as hot as before, the w...

Judge Thayer had completed the round of Ascalon's business section with the town's new peace officer, introducing him in due form. They stood now in front of the hotel, the plan...

The few courageous and hopeful ones who remained loyal to Morgan were somewhat assured, the doubtful ones agitated a bit more in their indecision, when he appeared on horseback...

Peden's emporium of viciousness was a notable establishment in its day. By far the largest in Ascalon, it housed nearly every branch of entertainment at which men hazard their f...

There was one tree in the city of Ascalon, the catalpa in front of Judge Thayer's office. This blazing noonday it threw a shadow as big as an umbrella, or big enough that the ju...

Ascalon was laid out according to the Spanish tradition for arranging towns that dominated the builders of the West and Southwest in the days when Santa Fé extended its trade in...

Sensitive as a barometer to every variation, every shading, in public sentiment and sympathy, Morgan patroled the town nightly until the streets were deserted. Night by night he...

Dora escorted Morgan to a table apart from the few heavy feeders who were already engaged, indicating to the other two girls who served with her in the dining-room that this was...

"Down here in the river bottom, where the water rises close to the top of the ground, you can raise a little corn and stuff, but take it back on the prairie a little way and you...

"I thought you'd like to have it as soon as possible," the operator said, in apology for his early intrusion, standing by Morgan's bed, Tom Conboy attending just outside the doo...

Bones of dead buffalo, bones of dead horses, bones of dead men. The tribute exacted by the Kansas prairie: bones. A waste of bones, a sepulcher that did not hide its bones, but...

As Morgan's faculties cleared out of their turgid whirl, and the stars began to leave off their frivolous capers and stand still, he heard voices about him in the dark, and they...

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 n...

Three horses were standing in Stilwell's yard, bridle reins on the ground, as three horses had stood on the morning that Morgan first found his tortured way to that hospitable d...

The stars came out over a strange, silent, astonished, confounded, stupefied Ascalon that night. The wolf-howling of its revelry was stilled, the clamor of its obscene diversion...

There was a little ripple, more of mirth than excitement or concern, in Ascalon next morning when it became known that Seth Craddock had kicked a hole in the burned corner of th...

Earl Gray came down the street hatless, the big news on his tongue. Rhetta Thayer, in the door of the _Headlight_ office, where she had stood in the pain of one crucified while...

Evening saw the fires of Ascalon subdued and confined. With the falling of the wind the danger of the disaster spreading to embrace the entire town decreased almost to safety, a...

Rhetta had fled from Ascalon that morning, following the terrible night of Morgan's sanguinary baptism. Racked by an agony of mingled remorse for her part in this tragedy and th...