but i do know that there were twenty-eight cons listening to norton 's little dust-up with rich gonyar that evening as the last of the light faded from a dull late winter sky , all of us hard-timers and long-line riders who had seen the administrators come and go , the hard-asses and the candy-asses alike , and we all knew that warden samuel norton had just passed what the engineers like to call 'the breaking strain ' .