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Chapter XXV
Safe and Respectable

Waco Johnson was right about it: Eudora Ellison would not let Tom Simpson die. Mrs. Ellison arrived in Drumwell while the alcoholic bottled goods were still burning blue in the ruins of Eddie Kane's bar, having hitched a team of wild young horses to the buckboard when Eudora failed to return home, making the drive in six hours.

By that feat Mrs. Ellison won Waco's unspeakable admiration. He was utterly unable to express himself. All he could do was make a hissing noise through his teeth, like a gander, and stare at the wild team with a great amount of white showing in his eyes.

In the rooms back of Mrs. Meehan's restaurant, where she lodged certain respectable trade, being a stickler for morality outside her traffic with the jug, the two women set up their camp to raise the siege that death had laid against Tom Simpson's life. He lay unconscious four days, from a blood clot formed by the concussion of the bullet that had "creased" his temple. When his senses slowly cleared as the clot was absorbed, the doctor said he was over the hill.

The coroner, attended by Sheriff Treadwell, came to Drumwell and held inquest in due form over the Indian who had fallen before Simpson's gun at the corner of the hotel, and three others who went down in the volley that