It was long after dark when the Bar-Heart-Bar party reached Drumwell along with a miscellaneous assortment of cow-country travellers, some bound for the Nation, others to ride westward into the grazing lands of Kansas bordering thereon. That extension of railroad down to the line was such a luxury to the cattle country that everybody was taking advantage of it to go somewhere all the time. Cowboys took trips to Wellington and back for no other purpose than standing on the end of the train and looking off. It had become the vogue to stand on the end.
There was no disposition in the Bar-Heart-Bar party, from the boss downward, to move any farther along on the journey home that night. To them Drumwell was the kind of a place for having a good time in; it suited their limitations of enjoyment far better than Kansas City, which was big and bewildering, and full of wiles for taking a man's money away from him in strange and incompensative ways. A man was pretty certain to be parted from his roll in Drumwell, but he usually got a comfortable skinful first.
So they clumped off the train and into Eddie Kane's place for a snort all around before supper, toward which they had been yearning with ravenous anticipation. While the Bar-Heart-Bar men feasted happily on roast pork, a delicacy seldom enjoyed in their long rounds of beef
