struck southward from the main trunk to end at Drumwell, employed hundreds of riders to care for their herds. There always was a good representation of them in town during the months of cattle activity, either with cattle to load or from long rides after payday with their little wads to squander in one brief riot which exemplified the highest ambition of their barren lives.
These were not the kind of cowboys that are to be met, for example, on the streets of Hollywood to-day, or seen frisking through chivalrous adventures in that romantic shadowland where beauty is ever in distress and virtue continually on the perilous edge of despair. They were slouchy, rancid, unwashed, foul-mouthed, lewd, lascivious, unlettered men. They came to Drumwell as they had come to Abilene, Wichita, McPherson and other Kansas frontier towns in their day, to drink whiskey and dawdle around with parasitical females until they had been parted from their money in the good old way of separating fools from that encumbrance.
There were good men among them, and chivalrous spirits, but taking them as they came they were light chaff of humanity, serving well enough in their time and place. They were no more the intelligence of the cattle business of the old range days than the men who drove the spikes and tamped the ties were the brains of railroad building. Mainly they were men of obscene tongues and shameful lusts, served by despicable panderers among whom Eddie Kane was not notable except in his own little sphere.
On this patronage the little town, which had its beginning in railroad leavings, grew into a lively, flourishing
