were on the road, eager to drive the trade to the limit of their resources before spring rains made the prairie roads impassable.
Tom Simpson's arm hung as the doctor had predicted, at an angle from the elbow of about forty degrees. This gave him the appearance of always keeping his hand hovering over his gun, although he never buckled one on again after the historic cleanup of Drumwell that day.
In Drumwell there was an air of quiescence, of stagnation, those winter days. Nobody attempted to establish a saloon and profit by the economic slack Eddie Kane's exit had brought in certain phases of the town's life. There was not a great movement of cattle in winter, very few coming to the pens for shipment, and those lean ones, feeders forced on the market by the financial pinch some drover felt.
Cowboys did not make the long rides in winter that were pleasure jaunts when the weather was soft and fair; even in Kane's prosperous days there were two winter months when the wheels stood still. Now there was nothing in Drumwell but a change of fare to tempt the most frost-proof cowpuncher out of his winter hole.
Other great changes were pending for Drumwell, in addition to the drouth of ardent spirits which had overtaken it. A bill opening the Cherokee Nation, or Strip, as it was known, to settlement, had passed congress. A few years before, Oklahoma, bordering the Strip on the south, had been similarly opened. This opening of the new country might make Drumwell or might break it, snuffing it out like a cinder under the foot. The railroad, at any event, was going on down into the Cherokee country ahead of
