these sophisticated times of ours. It was a two-storied structure; large, loose-jointed, altogether unlovely.
On the other hand, the bank was thoroughly, even lavishly, painted, although it needed paint less than any structure in town, being built of sheetiron nailed to studding, flat, squat, with a swaggering square front where the character of the institution was announced in broad letters which could be read half a mile away. The material of which its exterior shell was formed was pressed to resemble solid masonry laid in regular courses. The painter had treated it a granite-gray to further credit this illusion, pencilling in the joints between the hardware stones with white. The pretense was not convincing. It was a bank that would have tempted a burglar with a can-opener. That pleasantry was often directed against its doubly pretentious walls, indeed. For all the present historian knows, the joke may have had its beginning there.
Along the street between its beginning at bank and hotel and its gradual dwindling out to sod huts, tents and open prairie, small business undertakings were established, such as are to be found in any raw little town to-day, except that eating-places outnumbered all the rest. Range men were a hungry tribe; they required flapjacks and oyster stews at all hours of the day and night.
In every town such as Drumwell was at that time, there always was a dominating figure. Here it was not the banker, as one might assume from the prominence of his sign and the meticulous humbug of his tin walls, but Eddie Kane, proprietor of the Windsor Hotel. Kane had come to Drumwell with the other railroad camp-followers.
