A local fame, to be sure; never so wide-spread as the notoriety of Abilene, Dodge City and Wichita in their formative rawness, nor approaching in any measure the far-spreading fame that came to the town, years and years after the last cowboy had gone his way into the mists, when it elected a woman mayor to rule over it.
The railroad had reached down there after cattle, pausing at the line only because it could not secure a franchise to pass through the Indian lands. It required more of a pull than this particular railroad had, even in those free and easy days, to obtain a grant through the Indian country, so the little branch line sprangled down to the very edge of the forbidden territory and stopped, waiting its day, which came, duly, but not until the fires of adventure had dulled and deadened out of Drumwell's window-panes.
The railroad finished, the construction-gangs went on to other conquests, leaving certain of the camp-followers behind. These people, dropped there like foul settlings out of the turgid, hurrying stream of railroad life, saw prospect of good picking that had begun to pour in from the south even before the loading-pens were completed. It was a big saving in time, and wear and tear, to the cattlemen, that little branch line wandering down to the Nation's edge. There was not much grazing along the trails to the old shipping-points in Kansas; farmers were fencing the country, leaving only dusty streaks.
So it came about that Drumwell's importance descended upon it in a single day, bringing a prosperity to the railroad leavings such as they never had fattened on before. This easy fortune made them arrogant, even though it
