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 now, son, I'm gittin' too old and fat to sling a gun around like I used to thirty years ago."

Hall resumed his seat on the bed, that dragging apprehension sagging his spirits down, although he had no regret for his interference which, he knew for a solemn truth, had saved Major Bill Cottrell's life. He was not sorry that Bud Sandiver was dead, but he was considerably disturbed to have it going around that the credit belonged to him.

"Sandiver seems to have been pretty well known here," he said. "Was he a notably tough person, or what?"

"There was a pair of 'em, Gus and Bud," Jim explained. "Gus wasn't along this evenin', but I guess you'll—I guess this town's due to hear from him before long. Back in Dodge when I was there a few years ago, them Sandiver boys had the reputation of bein' horse-thieves. I don't know whuther they reformed when they hitched up with Simrall or not, but I don't guess it's likely.

"Gus and Bud was Simrall's special team. Their job's been ridin' around among the settlers and cowboys, throwin' a scare into them to keep 'em away from votin' when this county seat question comes up. They've been goin' around makin' all kinds of threats what they'll do to anybody pollin' a vote agin Simrall, and I guess it's been hurtin' our chances considerable. Them boys had a bad name around Dodge. It was said they held up a train, and robbed settlers on the road. They killed three or four men between 'em, they tell me."

"Oh, well, if that's the kind of a man he was," said Hall, greatly relieved to learn that his contributory efforts toward Bud Sandiver's end had not been applied against

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 one who had a single virtue or redeeming grace to rise and plead for him.

"Nothing to lay heavy on a man's conscience," said Jim, shrewder of insight than Hall had thought him. "They're goin' to have an inquest over him in the morning, Judge Hawthorn was tellin' me. He asked me to tell you to consider yourself under subpcena, and not leave town. I told him you was here to settle; no danger of you leavin'."

"Certainly not," said Hall, coming a little farther from under the cloud that had gathered over him in chilling depression. Of course, Burnett and the others knew very well the crack he had given Sandiver with Major Cottrell's gun hadn't killed him. They had seen the fellow get up—they had helped him up—and tied his hands with his own handkerchief. There was nothing in Justice's relation of rumors and beliefs to throw a man into a cold sweat. It would all come clear at the inquest, when credit for the coup de grace would be placed where it belonged.

"What is Burnett's business?" Hall inquired, feeling very much eased by this process of reasoning.

"Charley Burnett he's a stockman, the biggest stockman in this part of the country. He's grazin' five different herds of cattle between here and the Colorado line, worth a couple of million, they say."

"Is it possible? He doesn't look like a cattleman, he hasn't got any of the familiar marks."

"No, Charley, he's a gentleman cattleman, I guess you might say. He's got his office over the bank, with his shorth-and-typewritin' girl and bookkeeper the same as any business man. Charley didn't grow up on

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 the range, like most cowmen you meet. He made his start as a telegraph operator for the railroad, they tell me. He had a gamblin' spirit in him that made him take long chances and risks where an old-time range man wouldn't 'a' risked a dollar, and he won out, every throw. Don't understand me to say Charley's a gambler in any other way. He ain't. He never touches a card. All the plays he makes are in cattle. He plays them cattle of his agin them Kansas City bankers like a man plays chess. I don't know, but I kind of look for Charley to hit the sky one of these days."

"He must be a remarkable sort of man," Hall mused, thinking he had not been so very far off in his estimate of Burnett, after all. He had taken him for a gambler, but not a gambler in such ponderous assets as herds of cattle.

"Charley's a funny feller in some ways," Jim said. He laughed, or rather made certain short and rapid expulsions of breath through his hair-nested nose, smothered, but unmistakable, sound of mirth.

"He seems to have at least one queer habit, if it is a habit," Hall admitted. "I mean of carrying a handful of broken glass around in his pocket, and pouring it from hand to hand while he talks."

"Glass!" Jim discounted the word, almost in derision. "Glass! Them's diamonds."

"No-o-o! Diamonds? Why, what on earth—"

"Diamonds, genu-wine, eighteen carat diamonds," Jim declared, conclusively. "Charley's been carryin' a tablespoonful of diamond rocks around in his pocket for two or three years—ever since he hit it big with cattle. He's got a chamois-skin pocket in every pair of his pants.

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 Carries them diamonds around like most men carry a plug of t'backer."

"They must be imitation diamonds. No man of sense would risk that much around loose in his pocket."

"Every one of 'em's a diamond," Jim defended, with a triumphant pride. "Charley'll hand 'em over to anybody that wants to test 'em out. There was a Jew drummer here not long ago told me Charley must have ten thousand dollars' worth of diamonds in his pocket, at the very lowest estimate. That Jew feller's eyes bugged out till you could 'a' scraped 'em off of his face with a trowel when he saw Charley pourin' them diamonds in that off-handed way of his when he's talkin' to somebody."

"It's enough to startle anybody that knows what they are. I never even thought of diamonds—I thought the man must be off a little, amusing himself playing with a handful of glass."

"No, I guess Charley's about as sound in the head as any of us out here west of Dodge," said Jim. He got up, making a show of being suddenly recalled to a sense of his responsibility to the house. "Well, I guess I've nearly talked an arm off you," he excused himself.

"Not at all. You've given me a lot of valuable information. I'm much obliged."

"If it's any help to you, you're welcome."

"This Gus fellow: he's a pretty tough case, is he?"

"He's as onery as castor oil. He'll lay for you, sure as taxes. If I was you I wouldn't put my foot out of doors without a gun on me—I wouldn't go a eench outside of my office without it."

"I didn't come here to fight," Hall replied, loftily. "I'm not a fighting man."

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 "Well, I wouldn't let it git out on me if I was you," Jim advised, with an inflection meant to show that he was not above a bit of humor if a man wanted to try it on. "But I'll tell you, Doc, for a feller that don't know nothing about fightin', you've made a purty good start in this man's town. You take my tip and git a gun, less you've got one in your valise. A man that's got a reputation like you've made can't live up to it out here west of Dodge without a gun buckled around his belly."

"I guess I'll manage, somehow," said Hall, not exactly pleased with Jim's manner. There was something in it not altogether sincere, something that seemed a wordy expression of the grins which Hall had seen reflected from phiz to phiz on the hotel porch a little while before.

"Well, the boys're hangin' around waitin' to hear how Major Bill is," Jim said in further excuse for his going, where no excuse was wanted. "I guess I'd better go on down and let 'em know. Um-m-m,"—with speculative drawl—"I'd like to know how old Bud Sandiver feels! Knocked cold with a gun throwed at him, heh-heh-heh! That sure was a joke on Bud!"

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it came to the inquest into Bud Sandiver's death next morning. Andrew Hall found himself, mildly speaking, the victim of a surprise. It was a soundly astonished physician, indeed, who sat in the coroner's office in the court house basement, next door to the jail, and heard witness after witness, old and young, mount the chair and swear that they did not know who was the public benefactor whose hand had ridded the county of the notorious ruffian.

According to the unvaried story, Bud Sandiver had collapsed and died on the way to jail a few moments after his arrest in the public square. Nobody had touched a weapon, nobody had laid a violent hand on the man. He merely had sagged down and died. Yes, he had been hurt. Yes, he was bleeding. His forehead was gashed, the bridge of his nose was smashed. Something had hit him, that was a cinch. But who it was, or what it was, no witness could, of his own knowledge and belief, as the coroner invariably put it, swear.

Everybody was well pleased to be testifying in the case. It was a fine thing, undoubtedly, to be rid of so worthless a fellow as Bud Sandiver. There were good-humored expressions mingled with the testimony, plenty of winks in aside, and grins enough to make Damascus

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 bright for a month. Through it all Andrew Hall sat, uncalled upon to add what he could tell of the tragedy, his first feeling of astonishment melting down like a lump of beeswax on a hot stove to a troubled and uneasy state of spirit that had hardly enough force behind it to resent this plain, concocted conspiracy to make him the goat.

Hall's indignation began to mount after a while as he listened to man after man, Charley Burnett among them, to his unspeakable astonishment, swear that Bud Sandiver had just lopped down that way as if somebody had cut his legs off with a scythe, and expired within ten feet of the jail door. Hall took the stand eagerly, when called by the coroner at last, after he had settled down into the fixed opinion that he understood the town's purpose in framing up the case this way.

The justice of the peace presided at the inquiry, by virtue of his office, in the absence of the coroner, the eminent Doctor Ross. The justice's name was Hawthorn. He was a benignant sort of large soft man, gray-whiskered, bald. He held an unlit cigar in a long holder between his teeth all through the hearing. Under his leading, Hall recited the facts in the case as they appertained to himself. When he recounted how he had taken the pistol from Major Cottrell's hand and thrown it at Bud Sandiver's head, the presiding officer nodded, such a satisfied nod, so intense in its expression of lucidity, that it was almost a bow. That nod plainly said: "Now you have enlightened me; now the hidden mysteries of this case are laid bare."

The people who crowded the room received this testimony in a little more intensified spirit of interest. Their faces brightened, they seemed easier and happier than

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 before, although the occasion had been anything but solemn or sad. Their nods and grins seemed to say to each other: "This man's testimony makes it plain. It's as simple as daylight now."

There was such a feeling of satisfaction over Hall's testimony that it amounted to a mild jubilation. One would have thought that Damascus hated a mystery above all things detestable. The coroner indicated that the witness had supplied all that was wanting, that nothing more of him would be required. He waved his hand in gesture of dismissal, elbowing over his notes to give the case into the jury's hands.

Hall remained in the witness chair.

"I'd like to say further, your honor," he began.

"Certainly. If you've got any more to say that will add to the clearing up of this point, go ahead."

"Why, yes," said Hall, crisply, coming at once to the point, "I must say I'm astonished at the general, the unvaried, trend of the testimony presented here, sir. I want to disclaim, emphatically and finally, any and all responsibility for the death of this man Sandiver. It's a fact that I threw the gun at him; it's undeniable that IT hit him and knocked him off of his horse. But there are men here in this room, most of them witnesses who have testified, who came running up just about then and lifted Sandiver to his feet. There is the man, who says his name is Ed Kraus, liveryman, who took Sandiver's handkerchief and tied his hands with it. And there's another one, Dine Fergus, I understood him to give his name, who walked along beside Sandiver holding him by the arm as they started away."

"Certainly, Dr. Hall," said the coroner, regarding him

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Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/517

Calystegia.] 4. C. marginata, R. Br. Prodr. 484.—Rhizome creeping; stems slender, twining, quite glabrous, 2–5 ft. long. Leaves on petioles 1–2 in. long; blade 1–3 in., sagittate, acute or acuminate, membranous; the basal lobes long, acute, diverging, often toothed or lobed. Peduncles usually shorter than the petioles, margined; bracts rounded-ovate, longer than the calyx. Sepals subequal, broadly ovate, obtuse. Corolla small, ½ in. diam., white. Ovary imperfectly 2-celled. Capsule globose; seeds usually 4.—''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel.'' i. 184, t. 48. Convolvulus marginatus. ''Spreng. Syst. i. 603; Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 198; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' iv. 430.

Herbs or undershrubs, erect or prostrate or climbing. Leaves entire or toothed or lobed. Peduncles axillary, 1- or many-flowered; bracts usually narrow or small. Sepals subequal or the inner narrower. Corolla campanulate; limb plaited, 5-angled or obscurely o-lobed. Stamens included; filaments filiform, dilated at the base; anthers oblong. Ovary 2-celled, 4-ovuled; style filiform; stigmas 2, distinct, oblong or linear. Capsule globose, 2-celled, 4-valved or splitting irregularly. Seeds glabrous.

1. C. erubescens, ''Sims in Bot. Mag.'' t. 1067.—Perennial; usually more or less silky-pubescent, rarely almost glabrous. Root-stock stout, creeping; stems few or many, slender, prostrate and trailing, variable in length, 2–12 in. long or more. Leaves petiolate, very variable in size and shape; the lower ones with a blade ¼–¾ in. long, oblong-cordate or hastate, obtuse, quite entire or sinuate; in large specimens gradually passing into much narrower acute or acummate upper ones, with diverging entire or irregularly toothed basal auricles; in small specimens the narrow cauline leaves are often wanting. Peduncles as long as the leaves or nearly so, 1-flowered, with 2 subulate bracts some distance oelow the calyx. Sepals broadly oblong, obtuse, silky. Corolla variable in size, ⅓–¾ in. diam., white. Capsule ¼–⅓ in. diam., globose, 2-celled. Seeds 4, rough, brownish-black.—''Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 185; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 198; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' iv. 429.

Hawke's Bay—Patangata, H. Tryon! Wellington— Palliser Bay, Colenso, Buchanan. Marlborough—Waihopai River, Munro; Kaikoura Mountains, Buchanan! Canterbury—Port Cooper, Lyall;


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 with curious surprise. "This is all part of the record; the clerk has it down in black and white."

"But I want to say that Charley Burnett told me, on the hotel porch not five minutes after they carried Major Cottrell to the hotel, that Sandiver had made a break to get away, and somebody had killed him. I don't want the doubtful honor—"

"I didn't tell you any such a damn thing!" Burnett denied, crowding forward, red to the ears with ill-held anger.

"Repress your language, Mr. Burnett," the coroner blandly advised.

"No man can charge a thing like that up to me and walk off with it!" Burnett declared.

"There's no attempt nor intention of laying a charge," Hall replied, undisturbed by the cattleman's bluster. "I'm just stating a fact that I ought to be able to prove by witnesses."

"You ought to be able to prove anything you say about me, stranger, and be damn sure you can prove it before you begin to talk," Burnett said.

"But from the trend of public determination, as I'll have to call it for lack of any other word, to shift the blame for this man's death from the hands responsible for it, I hardly think it would be any use to call Kraus and Fergus, and the witness who gave his name as Larrimore, back to the stand to substantiate what I've said. They were there on the hotel porch, not six feet from Mr. Burnett, when he told me Sandiver had made a break to get away."

"But I didn't tell you anybody killed him," Burnett said, with sneering triumph that won him a laugh.

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 The coroner rapped to command silence.

"This is all unnecessary, gentlemen," he admonished with placatory suavity. "Dr. Hall, this inquiry is nothing more than a matter of form to satisfy the requirements of the law in the case. Nobody is going to be prosecuted for killing Bud Sandiver. On the other hand, he will be considered a public benefactor and given the thanks of this community. Who that man was is immaterial. We have established what we started out to establish for the record of this case: that Bud Sandiver came to his death in the act of riot and defiance of the constituted authorities. It was justifiable homicide, and the jury will so find. Gentlemen, this closes the case."

"In justice to Mr. Burnett, I'd like to amend my statement of a little while ago," Hall proposed, turning to the coroner before vacating the witness chair. "When I come to think of it, Mr. Burnett is right. He didn't say anybody had killed Sandiver when he made the break to get away."

"I thought you'd crawfish!" Burnett said, with a strutting manner of contempt.

"Not at all," Hall assured him calmly. "You didn't say in so many words that somebody had killed Sandiver, but you implied it. Your implication was so evident it gave me the same impression as a direct statement in words. I got the impression that somebody had killed Sandiver when he made the break to run. I believe that was the impression you meant to convey."

"You'd better stand around in the sun with your hat off a while and let your head harden if you're goin' to stay in this country," Burnett suggested. "It takes im-

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 pressions too easy. It might take a dangerous one some of these days if you ain't careful."

"Gentlemen, the case is closed," the coroner hastened to interpose.

Without leaving the room the jury returned the verdict of justifiable homicide, as the coroner had directed. Bud Sandiver, said the jury, had come to his death in the act of riot against the constituted authorities of the state of Kansas and the city of Damascus, but at whose hands the verdict did not state. It was implied, certainly, that Sandiver had fallen at the hands of the constituted authorities mentioned. Public opinion gave the credit to Dr. Hall, the new railroad doctor who had come there to supplant Old Doc Ross.

Damascus was feeling pretty well over what it seemed to consider a comical piece of business all around. Whatever tragedy there had been in Major Cottrell's peril and wounding, whatever heroism in the intervention of this stranger, was overshadowed by the humorous phase of the incident. Everybody agreed it was a rare joke on Bud Sandiver to come to such an end, although as they laughed and passed winks it was evident some greater joke was being kept sequestered among themselves. Hall felt this. He was not slow in coming to the conviction that the town's big laugh was not at the expense of Bud Sandiver, but of himself.

Damascus was afraid of the Simrall shooting men; afraid in particular of Gus Sandiver, who would come on his day to demand a reckoning for his brother's life. How easily Damascus had side-stepped this responsibility by giving the perilous credit to a stranger who was

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 not even one of the town! The story would go to Simrall speedily; the wrath that should have been divided, at least, between Damascus and himself would fall alone upon his head. Truly a plastic head, as Burnett had said, to drive him so thoughtlessly into a quarrel among men as base as all present information indicated both sides to embrace.

Somebody had killed Sandiver. He had not died from that blow on the head with the pistol. Dine Fergus, son of the town milliner, who carried an ice cream, candy and tobacco business on the other side of the room, and a lunch counter across the back, and Ed Kraus, liveryman, were the noble spirits behind that conspiracy. The fatal blow—no shot had been fired—lay between them, Hall believed.

There was something treacherous in Kraus' long, dark face, in his indolent carriage, his rocking, bear-like walk. He was a tall man, sloping in the shoulders, the crudeness of unrefined strength in his long, tapering neck. There was a spark of savagery in him that a word might provoke to give a blow.

Dine Fergus presented a far different type. He was short, alert, active on foot, trimly made. His small round face was ruddy, specked by large freckles which rather added to its shallow, boyish prettiness. His black hair sprang straight from his low forehead, trained in the uproaching fashion so popular with the small-town youth of that day. He was not more than twenty-two, ready with his words, flippant, half impertinent, a typical product of the atmosphere of daring and challenge to authority which had nurtured him from infancy. He was his mother's only child. In her eyes he was a mold contain

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 ing all the ordinary virtues, with several seraphic qualities spread over them, like icing on a cake.

While giving his testimony a flicker of a smile had played around Dine's mouth, making a merry little dimple in his ruddy cheek. It was such a notable piece of humor they were framing on the strange doctor, Dine had difficulty holding in a laugh that would have given it all away.

That appeared to be the attitude of Damascus now. Many approached Dr. Hall when the inquest was concluded, all of them grinning in appreciation of this comical notoriety he had attained. There was something behind the grins, invariably, which the grinner shrewdly believed the simple stranger who took a gun by the wrong end could not see. Such is the common attitude of mankind who has been initiated into more or less mysterious things. One sees the same glimmer of humorous superiority in the eyes of secret brethren when they try grips on strangers who do not respond. What the grinner knows is little worth the trouble of concealing, and does him no good in the world.

Dr. Hall left the court house with a feeling more of resentment than concern. He was not so much troubled over his personal danger as he was concerned about his professional dignity. He had just come from a long service in the railroad hospital at Topeka, taking this outside position for the picturesque appeal it carried and the experience that it proffered. He knew railroad men, from jerry to president. It would be an uphill business to win their respect, their confidence and esteem, appearing before them in this false guise of a ridiculous fellow who had killed a man with the wrong end of a gun.

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 Still, there was nothing he could do to alter the situation. It would not make the town any more pleasant for him if he were to take a gun in hand and lay out the humorous citizens who had conspired to fix the responsibility for this worthless outlaw's life on him, after they had made away with him in their truly comical manner themselves. That would not help it at all. He might have taken a crack at Burnett, the fellow's crookedmouthed smirk had been provocative almost past endurance, probably to have Kraus and all the valiant pack pile on him and batter him out of shape.

Thus considering his present case in relation to his future success, Dr. Hall directed his steps toward the railroad station to make inquiry of the agent concerning the whereabouts of Pete Farley, general superintendent of that part of the railroad. Farley had engaged to meet him in Damascus that day, and give him official installation as company physician.

Dr. Hall proceeded about this business moodily, head bent as he pondered the troubles which appeared to grow blacker and more portentous as he drew off to give them perspective. Beyond the livery stable he was overtaken by a man, who fell easily into stride with him after passing the greetings of the day in friendly and respectful way.

This overtaking stranger was a tall gaunt man of sixty-five or more, dry and well-preserved. There was a flaccid appearance about his waistcoat, which hung as if it touched him nowhere, a white garment originally, now yellowed through age and poor laundering. A watch-chain of large, heavy links dangled the badge of a popular secret brotherhood almost as big as a hardware sign.

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 This man's smoothly shaved face was brown and lean, leathery, ascetic, stern. He carried himself with a preoccupied stride, although it was plain enough that he had his eyes about him, and very sharply about him, at that. This stately, seemingly abstracted, carriage made Hall think of a gander pacing along by the roadside with his head held high.

"I am Judge Waters," the stranger introduced himself.

"Hall is my name; a newcomer, the railroad doctor."

"Yes, I know," said Judge Waters. He stopped, offering his hand. "I want to thank you for your courageous action in behalf of my old friend, Major Cottrell. They'd have got him if it hadn't been for you."

"Maybe not," said Hall modestly, embarrassed by this frank acknowledgment.

"I was slow getting into action," Judge Waters explained. "I'd put my gun away, hadn't loaded it for a year or more. I made the mistake of trying to believe we could get along without guns out here west of Dodge, but I guess that time hasn't arrived. By the time I got down to the square the damage had been done, and those scoundrels were lopin' out of town. I appreciate your service to Major Cottrell, to all of us. He was my partner in this townsite; we laid it out."

"I'm not sensible of having done anything but make a sort of spectacle of myself," Hall replied. "There's a public disposition to give me entirely too much credit. I don't appreciate it."

"I noticed that disposition at the inquest, Doctor."

"I didn't kill that man Sandiver. The blow I gave him with Major Cottrell's gun, so funny to these comedians here, only stunned him for a few seconds. He was as

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 clear in the head as I am right now when they started to walk him to jail."

"I guess some of the young sports were practicin' on Bud," Judge Waters said.

"Did they frame their testimony at the inquest just to have the laugh on a green stranger, or because they really want to get out from under the responsibility?"

"The gang that rushed in and picked Bud up after the danger was over isn't notable for any high courage," Judge Waters explained. "They're not a fighting crowd, take them as they run. Ed Kraus drives over to Simrall with a drummer now and then; he's around the country a good deal of the time these days locating settlers or carryin' the surveyor here and there. He couldn't afford to have his name involved in the affair, you see. Larrimore—he's a skulker, he's a wolf."

"That Fergus boy?"

"He's a petty gambler, a ten-cents ante boy. He's not worth the room he covers when he's standing still."

"Are they fair samples of this town's citizens?"

"No, not at all, sir. We've got respectable people here, two or three dozen of them that could be counted on to defend the town, I expect—at least I hope so. They've never been called to the test before, except by voting for it."

"There's no very great incentive to fight for it, that I can see," Hall said, with more frankness than diplomacy.

"We've got our homes, our investments and our prospects," Judge Waters replied. "You have a stranger's misconception of the importance of Damascus. It will dominate this corner of the state within two years. There are ten undeveloped counties tributary to us, all filling up

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 fast. We are their natural supply point; the future of this town is written large."

"As you say, I've got the stranger's view of it, nothing more than can be seen and felt from the surface. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd like to see you have a second Kansas City here."

"We'll outstrip Kansas City in fifteen years," Judge Waters declared, striding along a little faster as his enthusiasm grew, the city of his vision no doubt plain to his inner eye. "We've got a certain amount of riff-raff here now, it's always that way with frontier towns. People that are thrown off and driven out by the orderly places naturally drift to the new ones and stay till things begin to stabilize and settle down. We've got a lot of that kind in Damascus, tin-horn adventurers, I guess you might call them. Real estate sharpers, crooked storekeepers, men that run shady little games of one kind and another, all of them with some kind of a crooked side to them. They're only temporary; they'll drift along to the next town that starts up."

They had come to the railroad station, where they paused beside the plank platform flanking the two-story red building, running parallel to the track.

"I'm looking for superintendent Farley," Hall explained.

"If he was in town his car would be on the house track back of the depot," Judge Waters said, looking around for that evidence of the superintendent's presence. "No, he's not in town."

"Frankly, Judge Waters, I'm troubled over this scrape I've got into," Dr. Hall confessed. "I didn't want to mix in the affairs of this town and county. Do you suppose they're going to report it around that I killed Sandiver?"

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 "I'm afraid that's the move. I suppose the boys figured they'd have a little fun with a stranger, maybe thinking you wouldn't be here long enough to be in any danger. But, of course, you will be in danger the minute that story gets over to Simrall."

"You mean Sandiver's brother will come gunning for me?"

"He's likely to, he's nearly certain to."

"One thing has struck me as strange through all this affair, and that's the absence of the sheriff. Where is he? What's he doing that he can't protect this town?"

"He was out servin' subpoenas yesterday, and hasn't come back yet. I guess that's why the Simrall outfit made their dash. They wouldn't want to embarrass their friend."

"Oh, the sheriff leans that way?"

"So hard he'd fall and break his neck if somebody was to jerk the prop from under him. It's going to be done, too, and that before long."

"I can't expect much protection from the side of the law, then, if I stay in this man's town," Hall said.

"I hope you're not thinking of quitting us?"

"No, I hadn't thought of it. But I didn't come here to take on arow. I'm a physician, not a fighting man."

"If you stay here," Judge Waters said weightily, "I expect you'll have to throw a shot or two sooner or later. Can you sling a gun pretty well?"

"I don't suppose I ever fired a pistol a dozen times in my life."

"That's unfortunate," Judge Waters said, frowning, pushing back his hat. "Well"—hopefully—"you've got plenty of room down by the river to practice, and I sup-

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 pose you'll have plenty of time. Shoot with a limber arm, that's the style of the best gunmen out here. You can pick it up fast with an hour's practice a day."

"And how about this man Ross?" Hall inquired, thinking it just as well to go through the list of his troubles while about it. "I've been told there's more trouble waiting for me when he sobers up and takes to his legs. Is he as dangerous as he's represented?"

"If anybody was to offer me Old Doc Ross' hide," said Judge Waters, "I wouldn't consider it worth stakin' out—in the sun to dry. I'd forgotten you've come here to take his place as company doctor. Yes, he used to botch around at it as a side line to his general practice in town, but he was so erratic, Pete Farley told me, he was more harm than good. No, there's nothing to fear from Ross when he's sober. When he's drunk he's as mean as a briar. I expect likely you'll have a visit from him."

"It looks like I've stirred up a mess of trouble in this town," Hall said gloomily.

"That's something mighty hard to leave behind a man," Judge Waters said. "But you're not thinking of quitting?"

"Not the slightest notion of it," Hall returned.

He was standing with legs apart in that way of his that suggested bracing to face a hard wind, or a hard blow, or a hard tussle of any kind. He raised himself to his toes with the easy, confident strength of a man assured of himself and his destiny; settled back to his heels, looked Judge Waters in the eye, and smiled.

Judge Waters offered his hand again, his own close-fitting lips parting from his teeth in the thread-width crack that passed with him for a grin.

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's car was dropped off at Damascus by an east-bound passenger train that arrived toward the middle of the afternoon. Within a few minutes after the general superintendent's arrival the new company doctor had been installed in his office without ceremony.

This office was a dingy red freight car that had been lifted from its trucks and deposited on a bank of cinders near the main-line track, where it formerly had served as passenger depot and agent's office in the early days of Damascus. Later it had been occupied by the engineering crew which had surveyed the new roadbed now being graded west of town.

The side-doors of the car had been boarded up, a standard-size house door put in each end, four little windows cut high up in the sides near the eaves. A partition divided the car in two unequal portions, the larger of which was to be the doctor's office, the smaller his sleeping quarters, for it was one of the essentials of that position that the doctor be available at all hours of the day and night.

Pioneering in railroading is attended by many accidents, usually grave from the very nature of the weight and density of the materials and tools employed. There is nothing puny, or fashioned for grasping by delicate

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 hands, in the mighty business of laying and surfacing track. At any hour the doctor might be called to piece together some unlucky fellow who had been caught under a falling rail, or splint and bandage breaks and wounds of the most distressing severity. They might come for him with a handcar, to take him five miles, or with the work-train engine, to take him fifty.

If prominence was to be desired in a doctor's beginning in a strange place, the freight-car office left nothing unsatisfied in that respect. It stood at the end of Custer Street, protruding more than half its length beyond the building line of that thoroughfare, a barrier that swerved and deflected the stream of incoming and outgoing business. The car had been ceiled with bright new lumber, making it snug against the winter winds.

Pete Farley, the superintendent, was a big, gentle-spoken man with an Irish fairness in his broad face, an Irish strength in his long neck, brown splotches and red hairs on the backs of his walloping big hands. He made no ceremony of installing the new company doctor in his office. He turned over the surgical chair, the box of miscellaneous new instruments and supplies sent on from Topeka, the granite-ware water pails and basins, with a mention of Little Jack Ryan, who would keep the office scrubbed and provided with two white lanterns hung on each side of the door at night. For anything else he needed, Farley said, put on a wire to Topeka. Farley put on a wire for anything and everything. Operators along the line said he ordered a chew of tobacco that way. There was no time for letters in his busy life.

Farley warned the new doctor against the graders who lived in tents by the river at the edge of town. They

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 were employes of the grading contractor, and did not come under the doctor's ministration as railroad physician. Whatever Dr. Hall might do for them he would do at his own risk of being paid.

Graders were the Gypsies of the railroad world, here this month, far away the next, taking advantage of everybody that trusted them, although this outfit might be here all summer, and longer. The men were out on the dump farther west; these tents were the more or less permanent homes of the women and children, with the men who looked after the used-up horses and mules while they recuperated on the grass. Tough outfit. Entirely God-forsaken and without morals, Farley said.

While he was in admonitory mood, Farley spoke of Old Doc Ross. There might be some trouble from that quarter, although he did not believe Ross to be as rough as his reputation. Just now the old sinner was on a bat which might continue for many days. Ross went off that way frequently, generally when needed most, a fact responsible for his removal from company employment. He'd go as straight as a thirty-foot rail for weeks at a time, then break out on a souse. Farley had no advice to offer on the manner of handling Old Doc Ross, believing every man sufficient to his business, according to the hard exactions of railroad life.

Might find it pretty dull in Damascus, Farley thought. It would be for him if he had to stay there himself. He was lucky; he had a family back in Dodge, and a private car that he could go bumping around in from place to place, out on the road most of the time between Dodge and Trinidad. If Hall should want him for anything, put on a wire.

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 So saying, Farley went about his business, which, at that hour, had something to do with getting his battered old car hitched to the end of a passenger train and whisked away on some pressing matter farther west.

Across from Dr, Hall's freight-car office, the main line, a sidetrack for the work-train and a cinder-covered space of trodden ground lying between, a long string of boarding-cars stood on a siding. There were a dozen or more of these cars, with ladder steps leading up to their broad side-doors, glimpses of bunks to be seen in some of them, cooking activities going forward in one.

Dr. Hall stood on the cinder bank at his own door after Farley's departure, looking across at the boarding train. It was then about four o'clock in the afternoon, and quiet as if the last man had gone away from Damascus and given up the struggle of making a town where there seemed to be so little need of one. The wind was moving in the tender leaves of the cottonwood trees along the river, their newly unfolded gloss glittering like bits of enamell as they fluttered and turned toward the sun, with the soothing whisper of gently falling rain.

Smoke was rising in vigorous column from a stocky stovepipe through the top of the car which Hall took to be the kitchen. This car was the last but one in the string, the other being a tank car with the train's water supply, and almost directly opposite the doctor's own. There was a flitting of skirts across the open door as those who labored within hurried like building birds about their duties. Now and then a face was turned, an eye flashed in his direction, as the white-aproned figures dashed back and forth across the open door, which had a close-fitting wire screen, Hall crossed the track, thinking that, as

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 they were to be neighbors, they would as well be friends from the start.

There were steps leading down from the kitchen door, battered by many a flight of those quick-scurrying feet which seemed going and coming on some endless task across the open door. A woman appeared suddenly on the threshold as Dr. Hall approached, smiling and nodding, wiping her hands on her apron, welcome radiating from her heat-inflamed face.

She was a spare little woman, an eager brightness in her eyes and smile. She gave the instant impression that her fitting office was welcoming strangers at the door. Her muscular short arms were bare to the elbow, her lowcut waist gave freedom and a look of comfort to her handsome neck and well carried head. Not an ordinary woman, in her genial self-possession, to meet in the door of a boarding-train kitchen, thought Dr. Hall.

"I was about to run over and make your acquaintance," she said. "Mr. Farley told us you'd be down to your office to-day—you're the new company doctor, ain't you?"

"Yes, I'm Dr. Hall."

"Glad you come over," said she, in her bustling, quick-arriving way. She came down the steps with a little rush, offering her hand. "I'm Mrs. Charles; glad you come over. Girls, come out and meet the new doctor."

The girls were not far away. Indeed, Dr. Hall was even then grinning at the sight of a neat foot and the flounce of a checked gingham skirt which their owner may or may not have fancied to be out of the line of vision of any male visitor outside the door. There was a little giggling within, a little delay as for adjustment of something or other that had become disarranged, such

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 as hair or apron-strings. Then the girls dutifully appeared, not with the same ingenuous self-possession as their mother, yet with assurance enough to carry them along.

"Meet my daughter Mary, Dr. Hall," said Mrs. Charles, in the very best mode of railroad presentation. "Meet my daughter Annie, Dr. Hall."

Dr. Hall declared himself charmed, which was not strictly in accord with the railroad formula. Annie and Mary looked as if it plagued them a little to hear him say so, twisting and blushing and putting their hands behind them like backward little things who never had met a man.

But Mary and Annie were neither backward nor small. They knew just about when and how to put a fresh railroader in his proper place in relation to themselves, even to the extent of a bat on the ear. It had been done. They were rosy, big-mouthed, comely girls, after the style of those who eat much, work hard and do not hold their attractiveness long.

Mary's hair was dark-red, her skin clear of a blemish, white and fine-grained as if she had been nurtured in shady gardens behind inaccessible walls, instead of the corned-beef and cabbage steam of a boarding-train. There was a provoking, mocking humor in her wide mouth; her eyes were brown. Annie was a fluffy-haired blonde, a bit snub-nosed and sniffing of features, but she had a rolling blue eye that stole glances cornerwise at the new doctor, and a ready giggle that came over her suddenly, making her throw her hand to her mouth as if to catch her teeth.

Dr. Hall was not expressing a conventional common-

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 place when he declared himself charmed with Annie and Mary. The wholesome vigor, the sprightly manners, of the boarding-train ladies gave him an agreeable surprise. He had expected to find slap-heeled slovenliness in keeping with the dull-red, rough-handled appearance of the cars.

"I hope you'll like it here," said Annie, sighing to signify that she did not like it, and was pining for fairer places that she had known.

"She'd like to go back to Dodge," Mrs. Charles said, as if a big sigh such as that, rising from the bosom of youth, must be explained. She spoke aside, with sympathy for her child's yearning.

"Huh! Dodge!" Mary sniffed. "Dodge's as dead as a doornail."

"It beats bein' hung up out here on the road," Annie argued with spirit. "Nobody out here in this hole to's ociate with."

"Dodge is a division point," Mrs. Charles explained again. "Lots of trainmen lay over there. The girls used to have some good times at the dances down at Dodge."

"Do you dance, Dr. Hall?" Annie inquired hopefully.

"A little," Hall confessed.

"I'll bet you a little!" said Mary, her words full of complimentary meaning.

"Don't get too good opinion of me—I'd hate to disappoint you. Have you been in Damascus long?" This a general question, directed to the three.

"We've been here about four months—"

"About forty years!" said Annie, determined to show that she was above the limitations of that place.

"Well, I guess you'd better chase back and finish

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 settin' the table," Mrs. Charles suggested, rather than ordered, her manner gentle, her face bright with smiles.

Mary and Annie mounted the steps, considerable giggling and pushing going on between them without any apparent cause. Mrs. Charles looked after them fondly, full of pride.

"They're good girls, good obedient girls," she said.

"I'm sure," said Dr. Hall. "And pretty," he added, "as pretty a pair of young ladies as I've seen in many a day."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," Mrs. Charles said, her pride swelling, pleased beyond bounds. "A mother always likes to hear a good word about her girls. Well, I've tried to bring them up right, Doctor, but they never had much of a chance."

"Have you been in this business some time?"

"I've been boardin' railroad men all my married life," Mrs. Charles replied, proud, rather than downcast, in the admission. "My old man was extra-gang boss when we was first married, out in Colorado. There wasn't no towns in that country like there is now, nowhere for men to board. The roadmaster got me to take charge of a boardin'-train, and I've been at it ever since. I lost my husband seven years ago. He was foreman of a steel-gang when he died—or was killed, I should say. A rail fell on him, nearly cut him in two. The company's been good to me, though; always kep' me in a boardin'-train when a good many others had to go beggin'. I've got along, brought up my girls—raised 'em on wheels, you might say—and done real well. Wouldn't you like to look over the train?"

Dr. Hall was keen for it, a traveling hotel of that mag-

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 nitude being a thing unique in his experience. Mrs. Charles led the way up the kitchen steps, glowing with pleasure in having somebody to whom the commonplace of her daily life was wonderful. She pushed open the folding screen doors, fanning the waiting flies away with her apron.

"I'm feedin' between sixty and seventy men every day," she explained. "It takes a lot of grub to fill up that many railroaders."

"Why, it looks like a factory," said Dr. Hall, his amazement unfeigned.

An immense range occupied one end of the car, its commodious top filled with large copper boilers in which the evening meal was steaming with the mingled odor of potatoes, onions, cabbage and beef. A large dark woman was taking pies out of the oven, adding them to an astonishing array of their mates which stood on a long, narrow table close at hand.

"Angy and me do the cookin', all but the bread," Mrs. Charles explained. "Perry, her old man, he does the bakin' in a mud oven outside. He's a Mexican, his name's Perez, but everybody calls him Perry. We use close to a hundred loaves a day."

"That's a lot of bread for seventy men."

"The men say good bread's half the battle, 'specially the Irish. But they eat everything else accordin'. I buy more beef every day from the butcher in this town than all the rest of the people put together."

Mrs. Charles' cooking utensils hung around the walls near the stove, her thick cups and plates, classified like exhibits in a museum, filling many shelves in the other

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 end of the car. Everything was orderly and convenient for speedy service.

"The girls wash the dishes and do what waitin' table we do, and that ain't much outside of spillin' 'em a cup of coffee when they want it. We set things on and let 'em pass the dishes. The men have to tidy up their own bunks and cars—I never let my girls set foot in the bunk-cars up ahead."

The dining-room, a furniture car of extraordinary length, was connected to the kitchen by a covered passage, or vestibule, which was removed, Mrs. Charles explained, when the train was shifted from place to place. Here Mary and Annie were at work at a long plank table, upon which the plates and cutlery were spread without a cloth.

The girls were standing big stacks of bread at convenient spearing distance apart, stationing at regular intervals between them bowls of bright-red jelly, which they dipped from wooden firkins bearing ornate—and deceptive—pictures of luscious fruit. They worked with the precision, coördination and speed of practiced artisans setting a stage.

"We can set in seventy men at this table," Mrs. Charles explained. "If we have any more we have to set second table, but that don't happen unless we have a bridge-gang, or a surveyin'-gang, or something like that, temporary. We don't show much style, we've got work enough without that, but there's not a railroad man, high or low, on this division that wouldn't wait till second table any time rather than go to the hotel. I've got the name of givin' 'em good chuck, believe it or not from the looks of things."

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 "It looks good to me," Dr. Hall declared. "I think I'd like to sit in with them myself."

"They ain't got 'specially good table manners, I'm afraid," Mrs. Charles said doubtfully.

Annie lifted her head from bending over a bucket of jelly and laughed shrilly, stretching her mouth wide. Mary looked at her with comical surprise, a grin twitching the corners of her lips, then burst out in wild hilarity. They subsided with as startling suddenness as they had begun, bending over the jelly pails again, faces as red as the synthetic dessert which they were ladling out for the jerries' supper, with knowing glances passing between them, suppressed laughter breaking out of their merry mouths in sputters.

"Oh, you girls!" Mrs. Charles chided them, a little vexed by their unseemly behavior.

Dr. Hall could not forbear a broad grin along with the merry girls, wondering at the same time what pictures of uncouth feeding their mother's words had raised in their appreciative vision. Mrs. Charles led on, passing from the dining-car into the one ahead, connected by a similar vestibule.

"This is my commissary car," she explained, waving her hand toward a stock of such simple necessities as the jerries demanded from time to time, from overalls, jumpers and shoes, to peanuts, chewing gum and tobacco. A counter cut the stock off from the rest of the car, where there were chairs, and a number of books on a shelf.

It was a sort of gathering place for the jerries on winter nights, Mrs. Charles said. Here they smoked and read, such of them as were able and cared to put in the time

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 that way. The books belonged to Mary, who rented them at ten cents a week.

"I don't allow no cards here," she said. "They do enough card-playin' and fightin' up ahead. You'll have a lot of patchin' and darnin' to do on 'em after pay-day. I don't sell 'em booze, either, like most of the commissary cars do; I never did. I've seen many a man cut out for better things kep' down to jerryin' on account of booze. We've got one or two of them on this gang; you'll find them everywhere."

"Do you expect to be here long? Mr. Farley didn't hint to me how long he expected the work to last around here."

"Bill Chambers, our work-train boss, was tellin' me last night he thought he'd throw in a spur about twenty miles west of here and move us out this fall. I don't know. I'd rather stay here for the winter, but you know we have to keep the boardin'-train as close to the work as we can. They're layin' new steel, straightenin' the line, and surfacin' all this part of the road. It's a big job."

"I don't think I'd care to move out any nearer the edge," Dr. Hall said. "This is bleak enough for me. But I don't see where my patients are to come from when you folks pull out of here—if I ever get any at all."

Mrs. Charles looked at the young doctor curiously, as if she had not yet made up her mind about him, and had to stand him off that way to size him up a little longer. He was standing before Mary's little shelf of books, running his eyes absently over the titles, his big black hat in his hand, his long legs spread in ungainly pose. He needed a hair-cut, Mrs. Charles thought, and he needed

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 his neck shaved. A mane like that would go against him with the railroaders, who were great for the neck-shave. And a head of hair like his—it was thick as nature could sow it, black, smooth and long—a head of hair like his was something to bring him down to scorn in the critical railroad eye.

"If you'd get your neck shaved," she suggested, not at all delicately, nor with any feeling whatever of invading a private preserve, "that might—"

She broke off suddenly into a laugh, loud, unmistakably derisive, with a big stretch of mouth and display of teeth. The doctor had clapped his hand to the back of his neck with her suggestion, as if a bee had stung him. He looked so startled, so innocently shocked, as if he had been caught in some grave trespass on the conventions of railroad life, that Mrs. Charles would have blown her teeth out trying to hold back that laugh.

"And your hair cut," she said, stopping her laughter with that abruptness which seemed to be a family gift, just like shutting the oven door. She only smiled when the doctor ran his hand from his fuzzy mane to his long hair, forking it with his spread fingers like a farmer turning a windrow of hay.

"Gosh! I guess you're right," he said.

"They're talkin' of makin' this town a division point," Mrs. Charles informed him, as if her blunt suggestion for his personal adornment had been made to put him in line of preparation for the reward the future held. "If they do, it wouldn't be a bad place for a young doctor to settle down."

"I don't know. Everybody I talk with here gives the country a hard name. They say there's no chance for a

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 man out here at anything but railroading—it's too far west of Dodge. Just as if Dodge was the place where you jump off the edge of the earth."

"It is—nearly, I guess," Mrs. Charles replied. "But I wouldn't let 'em bluff me by any such talk as that if I was you. I wouldn't even let—mercy save us! Here comes Old Doc Ross!"

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shrank away from the door, white and unnerved as if she had trodden on a snake. Dr. Hall stepped in front of her with protective intention, expecting to see the notorious Dr. Ross, of whom everybody appeared to have such deep-seated fear, looming up before him as big as a white horse.

There was a spare small man, in remarkably disproportionate coat, standing about half way between the boxcar, of which Dr. Hall had taken possession that afternoon, and the railroad station, looking around as if undecided whether to turn off to one hand or the other, or keep going on straight ahead.

This man was arrayed in boots with bronzed-leather tops, such as cowboys of that period made the vogue on the range, with spurs to his heels, as if he had just dismounted from his horse. His black frock coat struck almost to the tops of the boots, showing a span of yellow trousers between. The fellow was topped off by a broad-brimmed hat with high round crown, which had been white or cream-colored once, but now was drab and dingy, as if the wearer had ridden many trips to market on top of cattle trains.

"Do you mean that little old horse-marine standing there?" Dr. Hall inquired, turning a surprised face towards Mrs. Charles.

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 "My Ga-hd!" said she, in that catchy, intaking way that railroad ladies of her station always have pronounced the name of deity when in tremor of great fear. "He's lookin' for you!"

"I guess he'll not have much trouble finding me," Dr. Hall replied.

He surveyed curiously the long-coated figure standing near the end of the station platform. Old Doc Ross looked like a man who had just got up from a heavy sleep, rising from the very spot where he stood. He moved hishead this way and that, slowly, like a man in a cloud of doubt, standing entirely still, the wind flapping the skirts of his coat around his legs. He was a man past the south gate of life, his dark beard streaked with gray.

"He'll kill you!" Mrs. Charles panted, palpitating in her terror like a trapped rabbit. "He killed men down in Dodge—I know he killed men down in Dodge—he swears he'll kill any doctor that tries to settle here!"

"Never mind," Hall soothed her, his hand on her shoulder, the spark of a smile in his calm, wise eyes. "I don't believe he's half as dangerous as he sounds. Til go and see what he wants."

"No, no! Don't you go!" she begged, making a quick clutch at his arm to hold him back.

"Sure I'm going," he replied, releasing her hand, holding it a moment as if to charge her with a little of his own steady confidence. "What would the railroad men think of me, hiding out from a little old rooster like that!"

"Wait a minute," she requested hurriedly, making a dash behind the little counter. "Here—take this gun—you've not got any on you—take this gun! When you hit

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 the ground, you shoot! Don't wait for him to start it—you shoot!"

Hall took the pistol, looking at it curiously, as if she had offered some rare thing for his examination.

"No," he said, handing it back, "I think I'd be better off without it. Thank you, just the same."

He swung out of the car door, his long legs being sufficient without the ladder, and struck straight across to his office as if unconscious of both the presence and identity of Old Doc Ross. At the sound of Hall's feet on the cinders, Ross turned, fixing him with malignant, inflamed eyes. There was only the length of Hall's shadow between them, and it was not much longer at that hour of the day than the substance.

Ross did not challenge him; Hall went on to his door. There he stopped, looking at the end of the car as if figuring on the best place to cut a stovepipe hole, or tack up a bill of some kind, or even hang a doctor's sign. There was a movement of heels in the cinders behind him. Hall turned.

"Are you the splay-footed reptile from the slime of hades that calls himself a doctor?" Old Doc Ross inquired, his voice rough and uncertain as if he spoke out of the fog of a heavy sleep.

"I not only call myself a doctor, but I am a doctor," Hall replied calmly. "But my ticket didn't read from the place you mention, if that's what you want to know."

"Don't try to get smart with me, you half-boiled squab, or by the gods I'll cut the heart out of you, by the gods!"

Ross parted the skirts of his long coat to show the handle of a sheathed knife on one hand, the butt of a gun on the other.

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 "You don't know me, you never heard of Old Doc Ross. I'm brimstone, I'm croton oil, I'm and oil of mustard! I'm red pepper, by the gods!"

"Kind of a hot prescription, ain't you?" said Hall, smiling in a tolerant way, as he might have smiled at the efforts of somebody honestly bent on amusing him, whose efforts were outlandish and uncouth.

Ross was not very steady on his legs. This fact, taken together with the little gang of spectators hanging off a hundred feet or so up the street, was sufficient proof for Hall that this seedy, vile old fellow had been roused out of his alcoholic stupor to put on an afternoon's entertainment for the town. The crowd of expectant onlookers was growing; the portly figure of Jim Justice was prominent on the front line.

Hall flared up against this public eagerness to see him humbled. Not satisfied with having unloaded a sneaking, cowardly murder on him only a few hours before, they had put him up now for a public spectacle. They had gone to work immediately with their ice water and coffee to rouse this hairy little old tarantula from his drunken sleep, knowing very well how to do it in the shortest way by the experimentations of the past. Jim Justice, who had seemed friendly enough last night, was now the moving spirit of this diversion, it appeared.

Hall looked up from this momentary cogitation, to see Ross coming nearer, holding his coat spread to show the weapons in his belt. The blustering old scoundrel could not have been more than two or three inches above five feet, Hall estimated. It was impossible for him to associate any thought of danger with this man, strutting

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 before him like some battered old rooster with wings outspread.

Ross' hat was pulled down to the bridge of his nose, his red eyes glaring in vaporous hostility out of the shadow. His face was streaked where the restoring ice water had cut channels through the grime; his little snub nose was red as a haw among the tangle of his beard.

"I'm red pepper, I'm lye!" he declared, with a certain kind of burned-out, depraved pride. "When I light on a wolf's hide water won't wash me off—I burn him to the guts, I eat through him gristle and bone! What're you doin' in my town, tryin' to sneak in and eat my practice out from under me, you hell-branded hyena? You've got mud on your belly, you sneak so close to the ground! What're you doin' here in my town, I say!"

"Maybe I didn't know it was your town," Hall replied, feeling very cheap for passing words with the offensive old buzzard on any kind of terms.

"You know it now, you sore-eyed wolf!"

"I've not got any designs on your practice in this town, Doctor Ross. I'm the railroad physician, my territory doesn't extend past this boxcar."

"I'm the railroad doctor, I've never resigned my appointment," Ross declared. "You can't sneak in here and carry off your false pretenses on this town."

Hall felt the annoyance of his situation keenly. The gang up the street was increasing every moment; Mrs. Charles and her daughters were watching from their kitchen door; the station agent was looking and listening with his head out of his bay window, passing comment on the show with his wife, stationed at a window of their living-quarters upstairs. Hall wanted to spoil their en-

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 tertainment. If he could get Ross inside, and talk it over with him quietly, he believed the old barbarian might be placated.

"This is no place for gentlemen to discuss their differences," Hall said, trying to appear frank and equal, although it was like lowering himself to the level of a hog. "Come inside, Dr. Ross; we'll talk it over in private."

"No, I'll not go in! I'll not breathe the same air with a spotted polecat like you! You'll stand right here before me and take your orders, by the gods!"

The gang came edging down the street, hesitatingly, with tentative feet put out like men trying doubtful ice, consumed by eagerness to hear both sides of it, yet held in restraint by the caution of experience. Fireworks might begin any moment, a bullet might come spinning in the wild course that bullets commonly take in a public fray, and crack the bone of some voter's leg.

Jim Justice, well to the front, was near enough now to see that Dr. Hall was not bulging anywhere with a hidden gun. He had not believed from the first that this man would descend to the common level by sticking a gun in his pocket in preparation for his inevitable reckoning with Old Doc Ross. Take a man with nickel-plated, judicial eyes like his and he'd trust to his bare-handed sufficiency through any kind of a scrape. The delight would be all the keener to see him stretch his long legs and gallop down the track toward Dodge, Old Doc Ross popping hot pills after him in his well-known, handy style.

Jim led on confidently after confirming his belief that Dr. Hall didn't have a gun stuck around on him somewhere. The others came after him like cattle trailing

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 back some alarming scent, heads up, ready to stampede. They were ready to break for cover at the first shot from anybody's gun but Old Doc Ross's.

"I'm mean!" Old Doc Ross declared, his voice hoarse and strained like a camp-meeting preacher's. "I was raised on catamount livers, I drink ox gall by the pint! No man can come into my town and set up opposition to me. I've got a graveyard full of 'em that tried it."

Dr. Hall took a step toward him, Ross drawing back with a nimble leap.

"Don't approach me, or by the gods!" Ross threw his hand to his gun, looking every bit as mean as his self-proclaimed reputation.

"I wasn't going to touch you, Dr. Ross; I only wanted to talk to you, not for the entertainment of that bunch of loafers. I don't want to jerk your damn town from under you—I wouldn't have it as a gift. I'm the railroad doctor, and I'm here to stay as long as the company wants me. You keep on your side of the town and I'll stay on mine—unless I have business on yours. I'm not after your patients. I wouldn't touch 'em if you offered them to me on a hot shovel."

"There's just one way you can stay in this town," Ross declared loudly, in blustering contrast with Hall's low-modulated words, "and that's to buy my practice. I put it to every starved-out wildcat of your breed that strays into this town smellin' for something to grab away from me; I put it up on the block before 'em, fair and square. My practice in this town's worth fifteen hundred dollars. You can hand me over the cash money for it, or you can hit the grit. Them's your orders. Put 'em in your craw and grind 'em."

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 "I wouldn't give you fifteen cents for everything you own, past, present and future prospects," Dr. Hall replied, loud enough to be heard by the deafest one in the crowd. "If you don't like my company in this town, the road's open for you to leave. It's a cinch I'm not going."

"By the gods!" Ross fumed, so wrathful over this bold defiance he seemed to stand there and chew his words. "By the eternal gods! if you're hangin' around this town in the morning, I'll let daylight through you!"

"Now I guess that's about all for you, old duck," Hall said.

"It ain't half, you lean-bellied whizzer! I'm red pepper, I'm concentrated lye! Whenever I touch a wolf's hide I take the hair off, I burn him to the holler, I scorch him to the melts! If you're sneakin' around here at nine o'clock to-morrow morning, by the eternal gods! I'll make a smoke behind you they can see from here to Dodge."

"You poor old soak!" Hall said, more in compassion than scorn, "You couldn't bluff a crow. When you're sober and sensible—if you ever get that way—come around and talk to me."

Hall had no feeling for this self-made rival but half-pitying contempt. That there was any danger in so much bluster, such loud declamation for the benefit of those who had groomed him for his act, was not even in his thought. He turned his back to Old Doc Ross, went into his boxcar office and closed the door after him, to let the old villain see how seriously his bombast was appraised.

Old Doc Ross was not in any mind to have it that way. He began to prance around in the cinders after trying the door and finding it locked. He raged along the side of

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 the car to the other end, tried that door with no better success; came storming back to the more public end, where he stood commanding the interloper to come out and take his orders.

Dr. Hall sat in his untried surgical chair, greatly annoyed, not a little disturbed by a growing belief that Ross might be more dangerous in that clouded borderland between drunkenness and sobriety, than he appeared. He had nothing but a surgical knife to defend himself with in case the old scoundrel should break in, as he was threatening now in loud voice to do.

Hall was considering his situation with a cold feeling of apprehension, recalling Mrs. Charles' unfeigned concern. He regretted coming in. That was a bad move; it would look like dodging to the gang in the street, and it had worked on Old Doc Ross like a retreat before a hesitant dog. He was looking through the open door in the partition toward the exit in the farther end, thinking of going out that way, when Old Doc Ross began drilling bullets through the front door.

The surgical chair stood in the middle of the floor, in direct line of the bullets which were splintering through the thin planks of the door. Hall jumped over to the wall, where he stood trying to make himself flat, thinking that was a poor place for a man to be shut in, with a red-eyed old soak pegging away at his coop before an appreciative crowd.

"Come out and take your orders!" Ross yelled. Then a splintering crash, the roar of the gun, a little pause. "Come out and take your orders!" The bullets smacked the partition, going on through as if there was nothing in the way.

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 It was a trying situation for the new railroad doctor, pressing his shoulder-blades against the wall, hoping a bullet might not be deflected in passing through the door, twist over and bite him in that inglorious predicament. He had not been afraid when they were shooting at him in the square, but this was different. It was so different there was no comparison at all.

There was a break in the assault. Hall listened, sweating in suspense, hoping the old scoundrel would go away. But he was only loading his gun. When he opened up again it was without any shouting, two quick shots which sent the doorknob rattling to the floor. And there was Old Doc Ross, holding the door open with one hand, the other shoving his pistol in, leaning with a cautious, inquiring look, as if he did not know what to expect.

"Come out and take your orders!" he growled, hoarser than ever from his yelling. "I ain't goin' to kill you right now."

The gang had come down to the railroad, no doubt disappointed in its turning out a one-sided show. They had seen Old Doc Ross perform before. The proper curtain to this show would have been the long-legged young doctor fading out in the distance down the track. They edged up a little when they saw Dr. Hall come out, Old Doc Ross backing away from the door.

"You're to do the listenin' and me the talkin'," said Ross. "Stand there."

Before he got his mouth shut on the last word, Old Doc Ross was sidewinding under an open-handed swipe to the side of the head that fairly set his whiskers on fire. He slammed up against the end of the car, where Dr. Hall laid hold of him with rough hands, wrenched the gun

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 away from him, doubled him ingloriously across his knee and stripped him of his holster and knife.

Then the assembled voters of Damascus saw the young doctor fold back the long coat-tails of his notorious competitor, and apply a spanking to his obscene old carcass such as a grown man never had laid on him before in the memory of those who watched. Old Doc Ross took the punishment with hoarse outbursts of blasphemous bellowing, with kickings of the heels, squirmings and twistings, all as ineffectual as the struggles of an infant across the maternal knee.

When Dr. Hall felt that the humiliating chastisement had gone far enough, he upended Old Doc Ross, planted him squarely before the crowd, held him steady by the back of the neck, and gave him a sound and solid kick. It sent the old ruffian off with such speed that his short legs were not equal to the pace. He fell, sliding his nose through the cinders, bringing up at the very feet of Jim Justice in a cloud of dust.

Dr. Hall turned around, as from some ordinary job, such as throwing a cat out of the door, picked up Old Doc Ross's formidable weapons, went into his boxcar office and kicked the bullet-splintered door shut in the faces of the gang that had come down to the railroad to see the thing played out to quite a different end. From the door of the kitchen across the track, Dr. Hall heard a loud burst of unrestrained, appreciative laughter.

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are always pantalooned bipeds enough to make a crowd in a town like Damascus, who have nothing to do but collect on some convenient roost and talk it over when something happens, nationally, locally, or even in the remote reaches of the earth. Local news is preferred above all others, to be sure. A fight in Damascus was of far more lively interest, and certainly of more importance in their conception of relativity, than a revolution in Mexico or the massacre of a British general in Egypt.

The crowd that had assembled to witness Old Doc Ross's suppression of competition in the medical field west of Dodge, and lend him the encouragement of its appreciative and partisan presence, reassembled on the hotel porch shortly after the downfall of their champion, to talk the thing over from all points, groping around to discover the weak spot in their tactics that had been responsible for the overthrow of Old Doc Ross.

Ed Kraus was there, and Larrimore, the town cobbler, who had a lean little stock of shoes on the other side of his cobbling room; Dine Fergus, ready with his wit, and Jim Justice, distended in his wisdom. Several others were on hand who have no part to play before you in this small drama of a far-off place and day. The downfall of Old Doc Ross was incomprehensible to them all.

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 The old feller was so bowed down by disgrace and humiliation, Justice said, they never need look to see him lift his head in Damascus again. In all his fighting experience Old Doc Ross never had suffered such contumelious subjection. To be boxed on the whiskers, spread out and spanked before the public eye, was more than his proud spirit could bear, Justice declared. Old Doc Ross's heart was broxen. That would be the end of him.

Doc Ross had been stunned by the vulgarity of his competitor's fighting method, they all agreed. Nobody ever had man-handled him before, putting foot to his flesh in coarse expression of scorn. It seemed to Doc Ross, they said, taking it from his mumbled expressions and maudlin tears as he left the scene of his defeat, as if the upstart doctor had disdained to fight him as an equal, mauling him that way as if he were nothing but a common ruffian. What could a gentleman with a gun do, Old Doc Ross had asked, turning a sad face upon his disappointed partisans, against a scoundrel who fought like a mule?

That was what Old Doc Ross wanted to know, and there did not appear to be anybody well enough versed in chivalry in that town to answer him. Unable to find consolation in words, Old Doc Ross had gone back to the balm in bottles that was available to the hands of downspirited gentlemen in Damascus. He had continued his carouse, his eyes black from the mauling he had taken, his little red nose rasped raw by his slide through the cinders.

That new company doctor, Jim Justice said, appeared to be a feller who always took hold of the wrong end of

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 the stick without getting his fingers burned. By the special dispensation in favor of fools, he had come through two scrapes in as many days with a whole hide, his high opinion of himself undiminished by the slightest degree. If that kind of luck continued there would be no putting up with him; they'd have to turn the town over to him and get out. It had been Jim's great hope to see the long-legged new doctor disappear like a pair of galloping shears down the railroad. He had given humorous expression to this anticipated pleasure, which made disappointment a very large and bitter pill.

"Yes, and what's this town goin' to do with Old Doc Ross drove off on another drunk that may last two weeks?" Larrimore wanted to know. "We might all break our legs or git pizened, and nobody to look after us—nobody that I'd trust to set no leg of mine, anyhow."

"He couldn't cure a cat," Dine Fergus said, giving it such a twist of disdain in word and facial grimace that it was almost nasty.

"My wife's got to have somebody to 'tend to her purty soon, and that's a cinch," Kraus said, proclaiming the condition of his spouse with the peculiar indelicacy common to men of his class. "It ain't goin' to be a doctor that's so green he has to hold a book in one hand while he works with the other."

"Did he do that?" Fergus inquired greedily. "Did he git out a book to study up what to do to old Bill Cottrell?"

"He set there nearly all night readin' some kind of a book, it had a black back like a medicine book, but I can't say positive it was one," Justice testified. He said it with such mean innuendo that no doubt was left in the

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 one-thought heads of the loafers assembled before his door.

"Several other women'll be needin' a doctor's attention purty soon, from what I've noticed," Larrimore said. "I'm darned glad mine ain't one of 'em. I wouldn't trust that feller to fetch a calf into this world, let alone a kid."

Larrimore was a young man, dark and surly, resentful of his condition in life, spitefully envious of everybody whose profits or earnings were greater than his own. He had a dark saying that the world owed him a living, always hinting by his manner that he was just about ready with his plans for enforcing the collection. He had a hedge of upended black hair that gave him the appearance of one of those crested barnyard fowls of Mediterranean breed which is always a trouble maker among its kind. His wife, whom he was not above giving a slap now and then, was sitting cowed and saddened in the little room behind the shop, waiting to explain to customers that her husband had been so busy he hadn't got around to their half-soles yet.

"He says he didn't come here to practice in town," Justice sneered, "but I wouldn't like to tempt him by offerin' him a case."

"He was so anxious to get one he rushed in among the bullets after it," Dine said, feigning an appreciation of the enterprising spirit in his subtle way of wit so keenly relished by his world.

"He thinks he saved Bill Cottrell's life," Justice told them, chuckling over the absurdity.

"I wonder what Charley Burnett'd say about that?" Dine speculated, with scornful lifting of his upper lip in

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 the cute little smile so fetching among the young ladies of Damascus. "Old Charley cut loose at 'em from the winder of his office before—"

"He'll hear from Charley, don't you worry. Charley ain't around swallerin' no talk like that feller handed him at the inquest."

This came from Larrimore, whose greatest pleasure lay in the contemplation of collections and adjustments of matters in arrears.

"Do you suppose Bill's wife she'll keep him on the case when she comes?"

Kraus put it as a general question, an open bid for the opinions of all.

"I've been wonderin'," Justice replied.

Jim was sitting tilted back in his accustomed place, the legs of his chair in the little depressions which held them secure against a slip. His hands were clasped across his replete paunch, his walrus face expressed the satisfaction he always found in taking a crack at somebody behind his back. It had been a life-long diversion. Jim had started bushwhacking when he was seventeen.

"I'll bet if we could sober Old Doc Ross up she wouldn't keep Hall on the case a minute," Kraus said. "I think some of us fellers ought to take him down to the barn and see if we can't git him goin' straight."

"Couldn't be done in time," Justice said, shaking his head in sad expression of fatuity. "She'll be here on the ten-seven to-night. Judge Waters got a wire from her this morning."

"Might as well order Bill's coffin, then," Kraus declared.

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 so serious a manner, that no impartial man would laugh at those reports.

I had not, as yet, had an opportunity of getting more nearly acquainted with that wonderful man, and I must confess, I was not very desirous of being introduced to him, for I always treated with scorn such supernatural events, yet I never liked to make those matters a subject for ridicule.

Some of my comrades were frequently inclined to have a fun, as they used to call it, and to request the sorcerer, Volkert, to raise up the ghost of one of their companions, who had died suddenly, in order to ask his departed spirit, whether he had found pretty girls and good wine in the other world; but I always dissuaded them from it, endeavouring to direct them to some other amusement:Mean while the rumour of Volkert's exploits increased from day to day, and some people would swear solemnly, that they had seen and


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 "Well, Hall's got this town into a lot of trouble," Justice sighed. "If it hadn't been for him takin' a hand where nobody didn't ask him—"

"Nor want him," Larrimore cut in. "We can take care of ourselves here in Damascus."

"If it hadn't been for him interferin'," Justice continued, a little curved off from his main course, but determined, "we'd 'a' drove them fool boys off without killin' any of them. Simrall wouldn't 'a' had any come-back on us then. I told him as much last night."

"What did he say?" Dine inquired, craftily curious.

"He said did we want them fellers to murder old Bill Cottrell and go on away without anybody interferin' with 'em. I said I guessed we'd 'a' made out without any of his help."

"They know over in Simrall by now who they've got their come-back on," said Larrimore. A glance of appreciative understanding passed between him and Fergus. Kraus sat like a sack of bran, his long back against a post of the porch, his dull face inexpressive of any interest. Justice shifted a little, making his chair creak.

"Bill Cottrell was a derned old fool, slashin' around the way he did," Justice growled. "If he'd a kep' his danged old gun where it belonged they never would 'a' took a shot at him. When a man runs out with a gun in his hand lookin' for trouble, my experience has been he's purty sure to find it."

"Do you think he'll live?" Larrimore inquired.

"No, I don't. He's too old. Mortification'll set in to-morrow and he'll go. This slick doctor stands around tiptoein' like he's tryin' to lift himself by his boot-years, lookin' wise and knowin' nothin', actin like he's had a

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 thousand cases like it, but I'll bet money he never had one before."

"The company'll wish it'd kep' Old Doc Ross—"

"Here he comes!" Fergus warned, cutting Kraus short.

Dr, Hall passed the loafers as if they were so many stones, although he recognized all of them as members of the late moral force behind Ross. He relieved the woman whom he had engaged to watch by Major Cottrell. The patient had regained consciousness, she reported, and fallen into a weary sleep.

Hall felt that he had been unfaithful to his charge, in a measure, concerned to see that he had been gone four hours, although there was nothing more to be done for Cottrell in his present state. Not altogether undisturbed by what had passed since his arrival in Damascus, nor entirely quiet concerning the future, Hall took up his vigil beside the wounded man, the black book that had brought the scorn of Jim Justice upon him, in his hand.

This was a book not more than a quarter as big as the standard medical volume, and as much like such work outwardly as it was inwardly, although it had much to say of a man who had suffered a wound. Tristram Shandy was the name of that book. Dr. Hall sat reading it by the window until the light of day failed away in the west. He was reading it by the light of the lamp when Mrs. Cottrell and her daughter Elizabeth entered the room something past ten o'clock that night.

Mrs. Cottrell was a placid lady several years younger than her husband, a capable woman, firm without severity. She still had much of the grace of figure and face that had been her fame throughout the far-set army posts of the western frontier thirty years before. A comely woman,

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 warm in her manner, direct in her way, resourceful and self-reliant, as pioneer women, above all other pioneers, must be. Her dark, wavy hair was a little gray, embellishment, rather than detraction, to the youthful flush of her cheeks. Dr. Hall felt Major Bill Cottrell's chances advance thirty percent the moment she entered the room.

Elizabeth carried much of her mother's grace, standing tall like her, yet not assertively tall. She was wearing a broad-brimmed, low-crowned black Leghorn hat, rather floppy in appearance and pliant of brim, which was the mode among young women of that period. This headgear was adorned by nothing more than a broad ribbon.

Her serge dress had something of military look about it, probably due to the brass buttons on the jacket. Dr. Hall noted, in the quick look he gave her to see mainly chow she came up to Jim Justice's description of her, that her face appeared thin and anxious, and that her eyebrows were too heavy; that her hair was the tinge of new cider, a dusty, cloudy blonde, which might be better, or worse, by day.

Justice came puffing into the room after them, leaving some luggage in the hall. Mrs. Cottrell went straight to the bedside, where she stood a moment looking into her sleeping husband's face, which was shaded by a card thrust into the burner of the lamp. Elizabeth followed, standing silently beside her. Dr. Hall stood by the little table supporting the lamp, finger between the pages of his book.

"This is the doctor, Dr. Hall," Justice said, seeming to disclaim any responsibility for him in his off-hand way of speaking.

Mrs. Cottrell turned quickly, offering her hand. Tears

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 were brimming her eyes, her lips were trembling, but her soft voice was steady when she spoke.

"I am Mrs. Cottrell," she said, finishing Jim's one-sided introduction. "My daughter, Dr. Hall."

Elizabeth was not as steady as her mother. Her grief at sight of her father stretched out as white and silent as if ready for the grave numbed her beyond words. The pain of it was reflected in her face and stricken eyes.

"Oh, now," said Dr. Hall, putting down his book, comfort, assurance, in his almost brisk words, "it isn't as bad as that."

"I can't tell you what relief we feel to find Major Cottrell in the hands of a competent physician," the mother said, at once brightened and cheered by his comforting manner of confidence. "We didn't know another doctor had come to Damascus, we trembled for the consequences, thinking all the time he was in other hands. Were you with him from the first?"

"I had that good fortune, madam."

"It was ours," she returned, expressing a volume in her simple words.

"Will he get well, Dr. Hall?" Elizabeth asked, pleading hope in her low-pitched voice, a great, heart-finding appeal in her solemn brown eyes.

"I think so."

Dr. Hall spoke brightly, with as much comfort in his words as if he had made no little corner of reservation at all. He looked very well satisfied, very easy in mind and conscience, very competent and kindly judicial—dang his nickel-plated eyes! thought Justice—as he stood lifting himself to his toes with slow, easy movement of confident strength.

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 "Oh, thank you!" breathed Elizabeth, sighing away a vast encumbrance of trouble and doubt.

"It was a godsend you were with him from the first!" Mrs. Cottrell said, her voice vibrant with emotion, softer for the great flood of thankfulness that suffused her eyes and made her hearty face pale.

"He was right here," said Justice, his coarseness so evident upon him in this refined company. "He's the feller—"

"I am the new railroad doctor, Mr. Justice would say," Dr. Hall interrupted, giving the old bushwhacker a silencing look. "I'm not a practitioner in general. The local doctor was—that is to say—I believe he—"

"Was drunk, as usual," said Elizabeth. "Thank heaven!"

"Blind," said Justice, with large elucidation. Then he added, to give it emphasis and remove all doubt: "Blind-stinkin' drunk."

Jim saw which way the wind stood for Old Doc Ross in that company. He wanted to make a show of coming over to the right side.

Mrs. Cottrell asked about the nature of her husband's wound, the cloud of trouble that had cleared for a little while out of her face settling darkly again as Dr. Hall explained. She had thought for a few moments, from the doctor's comforting assurance, that it had not been as serious as she had been informed in the news which brought her home.

"I don't look for any complications, everything is satisfactory, pointing to a quick recovery," Dr. Hall said. "He has vitality enough for two men."

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 "He's past sixty-five, Doctor," Mrs. Cottrell said doubtfully. "He looks so tired and hopeless."

"But, mother, Dr. Hall says he'll get well," Elizabeth reminded her.

"I'm sure he will, too," Mrs. Cottrell said brightly, either putting her fears aside or making a brave show of doing so.

"Your physician will agree with me, I'm certain," Dr. Hall declared, lifting himself with easy elasticity of muscle, settling back to his heels as if putting a period to all doubt.

"We have no doctor, there's no doctor in Damascus, nor anywhere near, but this besotted old ruffian, Ross. It was a special providence that saved Major Cottrell from his hands. It isn't a question of ethics at all, Dr. Hall—I know what you're thinking—but of necessity. You'll see him through?"

"Yes; I'll see him through," Dr. Hall returned, so quietly, so kindly, so full of that humane confidence of his that the hearts of the two women rose to him in a surge of great friendliness.

"He's sleepin' as peaceful as a baby," said Justice, determined to ingratiate himself by sympathy, strange as that way was to his scoffing habit.

"I'll stay with him till he wakes," Mrs. Cottrell said quietly. "Mr. Justice, please show my daughter to our rooms. Dr, Hall, you look tired—"

"He was with him all night, didn't shut his eyes," said Jim.

"You can tell me what there is to be done, I'm not inexperienced, to my past sorrow and anxiety, Dr. Hall. I

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 thought his fighting days were over. He's too old for that."

Dr. Hall gave her the few instructions necessary, while Justice went away with Elizabeth. When Dr. Hall was going to his room for the sleep he needed so acutely that it was almost pain to bear, Justice stopped him in the hall.

"I didn't have a chance to explain to you how I come to be down there with that crowd of bums this afternoon, Doc," he said.

"Oh, that's all right; I understand it perfectly," said Hall, annoyed by the interference, waving him aside impatiently.

"I don't want you to git me wrong, Doc," Jim insisted. "I told them fellers when they started that I'd see 'em carry their joke—it wasn't nothing but a joke, Doc—" blandly, suave discount in his tone—"told 'em I'd see 'em carry their little joke just so fur, and no furder. I told 'em that when they started down there with Old Doc Ross. I had my old gun on me, and I aimed to square off and use it if I saw that joke goin' too fur. That's what I was aimin' to do, Doc—I was goin' to square right off and throw lead."

"Thank you," said Hall, in the tone of a man unconvinced, and too indifferent to be either sarcastic or scornful. He went on, leaving Justice drawing his bushy eyebrows in a scowl as he looked after him.

"Damn your nickel-plated eyes!" said Jim, but well under his breath, not force enough in it to move his mustache the width of its thinnest hair.

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the days of Major Cottrell's convalescence Dr. Hall did nothing to enlarge either his acquaintance or his popularity in town. He had removed his belongings from the West Plains Hotel to his boxcar apartment, where he was installed in comfort. Mrs. Charles had taken him into her boarding-train for his meals on the footing of one of the railroad fraternity. She favored him as she did the roadmaster when that general of the jerries stopped in for a meal, "settin' him in" as she expressed it, at her private table in one end of the kitchen, along with her—self and daughters. There always was a cloth on the table, and a great deal of blackberry pie.

Dr. Hall was conscious of an unfriendly feeling as he passed through town on his daily visits to Major Cottrell at the hotel. The humorists of Damascus were not good dissemblers; their animosity stood in their eyes. Old Doc Ross was still out on his bender. Dr. Hall had seen him on the street several times, always headed toward the saloon, traveling as straight as a bee, stability of locomotion, even under a load, being a trait for which Ross was greatly admired in Damascus. More than once when he had passed the saloon Hall had seen the old rascal watching him over the swinging half-doors, furtive as a harried old badger at the mouth of its den.

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 It was a matter of indifference to Hall whether they liked or disliked him in that town. His future fortunes were in no way connected with it, he reasoned, his stay there being in its nature only vacational, a short break in the heavier exactions of his life. Beyond that little experience on the railroad frontier the serious business of his profession awaited for him to take it up again. Certainly that resumption would not be undertaken in the bleak town of Damascus. It was too far west of Dodge; that was what everybody said. Dr. Hall repeated the dismal refrain with a feeling of disdain. It always sounded to him like the defense of insufficient men who were to be tried presently for cowardice and failure, and shamefully convicted before the world.

Taking it by Jim Justice's demeanor, which Hall felt was a good barometer of public sentiment, Damascus appeared meanly resentful of the railroad doctor's presence. It was as if he had done the town a service which it was too mean to be grateful for, after the nature of small people everywhere, or an injury that it could not forgive.

Hall could not believe these slinking fellows with their come-easy little businesses, their traps for the unwary, their crooked small games, had any deep interest in the town. It could not be much to them whether Damascus held the county seat, or Simrall came with its wagons and teams, put skids under the brick court house and carried it away, as he had heard of triumphant factions doing with court houses in that country, where court houses seemed to be prized among the people above the justice which was vaguely supposed to have its seat within them.

The true defenders of Damascus, Judge Waters had

title: Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/112


text:
Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/518

478 Canterbury Plains, ''Armstrong! Kirk! Mackenzie Plains and Lake Tekapo, T.F.C. Otago—Not uncommon in the central and eastern districts, Buchanan! Petrie!'' Sea-level to 3000ft. December–March.

A remarkably variable little plant, closely allied to the common C. arvensis, L., of the Northern Hemisphere.

Small prostrate or creeping perennial herbs. Leaves orbicular-cordate or reniform, entire. Flowers small, solitary, axillary. Sepals subequal, distinct to the base. Corolla broadly campanulate, deeply 5-lobed; lobes induplicate. Stamens shorter than the corolla; filaments filiform; anthers small. Ovary of 2 distinct lobes or carpels, each 1-celled with a basal style and 1 or 2 ovules. Capsules 2, membranous, erect, 1- or rarely 2-seeded, indehiscent or bursting irregularly.

1. D. repens, ''Forst. Char. Gen.'' 39, t. 20.—A small silky-pubescent creeping herb; stems slender, 2–12 in. long, rooting at the nodes, branched, often forming broad matted patches. Leaves alternate or tufted at the nodes, usually on long petioles; blade ¼–1 in. diam., reniform, emarginate or rounded at the apex, silky on both surfaces. Peduncles as long or longer than the petioles. Flowers small, greenish-yellow, about ⅙ in. diam. Sepals obovate, silky. Corolla about equalling the sepals, rarely slightly longer. Capsules enclosed in the persistent calyx and shorter than it.—''Forst. Prodr. n. 134: A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 201; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 397; Raoul, Choix, 44; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 185; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 199; Benth. Fl. Austral.'' iv. 438.

2. D. brevifolia, Buch. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. iii. (1871) 208.—Much smaller and more densely matted than D. repens, often formmg a compact turf. Leaves on short stout petioles; blade ⅛–¼ in. diam., orbicular-oblong or reniform, emarginate or rounded at the apex, cordate at the base, rather thick, silky on both surfaces or almost glabrous. Peduncles stout, erect, usually longer than the leaves. Flowers larger than in D. repens, ¼ in. diam., yellowish.