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Updated: June 23, 2025
"There's no sense in a man runnin' his arm down a lion's throat to see if he's hungry," Conboy said, making a feint now of moving the cigar boxes around in the case. "This town isn't so big that they'd miss a man if they went out to hunt him. Where are they?" "I left them at Peden's, the big dance hall up the street. Ain't you got a gun?"
Rhetta was working late in the Headlight office, preparing for the weekly issue of the paper. This disquieting news had come in at her door like the wave of a flood. She had no thought of work from that moment, only to stand at the door listening for the dreaded sound of shooting from the direction of Peden's hall.
"Those were better days than this, Whitefoot," said Stair, "when she stood on the bookboard of Peden's Pulpit and we watched her through the broom, before you took the road to fetch sister Jean." At the words Whitefoot leaped up delightedly and gave his short silent bark. He thought he was to be trusted with another message.
Was he the bringer of peace in the name of the law that had been so long degraded and defied, or only another gambler in the lives of men? They waited, whispering, in silence as of a deserted city, to see and hear. There was only one priest of alcohol attending the long altar where men sacrificed their manhood in Peden's deserted hall that morning.
Morgan recognized him as the one who had opened the trouble in Peden's hall. Morgan had considerable to say, and he said it without whimper or tremor, his only appeal being to their fairness and sense of justice between man and man.
He counted the sheep on the green field over the loch, numbering the lambs twice because they frisked irresponsibly about, being full of frivolity and having no opinions upon Luther to sober them. Gradually a haze spun itself over the landscape, and Ralph Peden's head slowly fell back till it rested somewhat sharply upon a spikelet of prickly whin.
The news of Peden's defiance swept over the town like a taint on the wind. Not only that Peden had opened his doors to the long-thirsting crowd gathered by the advertised news of a big show for that night, but that he had posted two imported gun-fighters inside his hall with instructions to shoot the city marshal if he attempted to interfere.
"You know," said Allan Welsh, again untrue to himself, "that it is not for Ralph Peden's good that he should love you." The formal part of him was dictating the words. "I know you think so, and I am here to ask you why," said Winsome fearlessly. "And if I persuade you, will you forbid him?" said Allan Welsh, convinced of his own futility. Winsome's heart caught the accent of insincerity.
Without regard to the bouncer's orders or Peden's threatening pose, he began to lay about him with his fists, making a breach in the ranks of his captors that would have opened the way to the door in a moment, the outbreak was so unexpected and violent, if it had not been for a quieting tap the bouncer gave him with one of the lethal instruments which he carried for such exigencies.
A live lady was worth a great deal more to his establishment than one with a stray bullet in her skin, waiting burial at his expense in the busy undertaker's morgue. The cowboys yielded immediately to Peden's appeal in behalf of the ladies, although they very likely would have resented a more obscure citizen's interference with their plans.
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