Upon this scene of Damascus, when the sun was red on the rim of the world one April evening, there arrived a stranger whose stride was so swift it seemed he must be hastening on in the fear that whatever slim chance there might be for a man west of Dodge would be used up before he could arrive. He carried an overcoat across his arm, a strapped suitcase with swelled sides in his hand.
There was something far more eager and alert about this stranger than the general drift of men who came to Damascus, although he seemed to be an indoors man who had not straightened his back from wrestling with the soil to come to that country looking for land. But there was something in his eye; he seemed to have it just before him as he poled along toward the hotel. Some of the loafers along the way said he looked like he'd been sent for to put out a fire.
At the corner of the square in front of the White Elephant, the stranger stopped, put his over-packed valise on the ground to rest his arm, and stood looking around the town, and such of the country beyond it as he could see. Not with the undecided, dazed look of a man who had come to the end of the road and did not know which way to turn, but with something of a glad expectancy, a swelling eagerness, as if he had made that pause only to rest a moment, when he intended to gather himself and break forward faster than before.
He appeared to be smiling, although his face remained set, his lips immobile. It was that light of great eagerness, or great ambition, or great hope, in his eyes that seemed to illumine his face with pleasure. In a little while he took up his heavy luggage and crossed over to the hotel.
Jim Justice, proprietor of the West Plains hotel, was sitting on his porch in a chair bottomed with hickory bark, in the very spot where he would be found, from that time of the year forward, until the wind began to roll tumble-weed in the autumn, and whip clouds of dust against his windows in stifling assault. Jim's chair-posts had notches worn into the side of the house where he leaned; the hinder legs had sockets drilled into the floor of the porch. He was anchored in the serene comfort of proprietorship; he would no more lower his tilted chair to rise and meet a guest than he would stand on his head in the middle of the road.
Justice had been a Missouri bushwhacker in the days of the Southern rebellion. While he had been a rebel in spirit, it was a spirit small in proportion to his body, altogether inadequate to the task of carrying him out into the open to uphold his sentiments. Those days of brush-skulking were far behind Jim now, to be sure, but the habit of them endured as close-fitting upon him as his own skin. While he might not shoot a man from ambush any longer, he would take under-handed advantage of him in every other way.
Justice was a thick, short man, rounding out like a pigeon in front, standing with something of a pigeon strut about him; a man vain of his parts and his properties, illiterate, bombastic, full of words. He had a walrus-like dignity about his face, more the dignity of impassibility than wisdom, not altogether unpleasant in its well-nourished rotundity. He was a brown and toughened man, having interests on the range which carried him abroad in sun and storm. His heavy gray mustache hung like a curtain over his mouth, his fat cheeks having the appearance of being distended always to puff it out of the way of his words.
The traveller passed Jim without as much as an eye turned in his direction, entered the office, where the winter stove still stood in its desert of tobacco-sprayed sand, its immense pot red and sullen from the ardor of past fires. The stranger paused a moment, questioningly, just within the door, seeing the place empty; advanced toward the counter, where the register lay spread beside a showcase displaying cigars.
Jim Justice retained the dignity of his repose outside the door, proclaiming, by his attitude, to the public of Damascus that he was contemptuous of business, especially business that passed so much importance with such indifference. Meantime, the stranger was looking around on the dingy discomforts of that frontier hotel.
There was a large map of Kansas on the wall, flanked by pictorial calendars of rival St. Louis breweries. These were very large, bright-colored oleographs, displaying ladies in startling undress, as if to suggest to the beholder the thought that beer and indecent exposure were to be associated, from what trade reason not revealed. A brown-painted, blistered wainscot almost the height of a man lent a cloudy gloom to the cheerless place, which the row of chairs drawn back against the wall increased. It seemed as if these uninviting chairs had discharged the last of their guests from their crude, curved arms; that the business of the house was concluded and sealed. A little stock of tobacco in sacks and caddies filled the shelf behind the counter. There was a smell of lye; the boards of the floor were leached by it, with dark strips, where the joints had gathered greasy sweepings, running like column rules of a newspaper between.
Justice came in presently, placing himself behind the counter with something the manner of a high judge disposing himself to hear the plea of inferior counsel in a despised cause.
Judging him by his baggage, Jim did not rate the guest as first class. This single piece of luggage the traveler had put down in the middle of the floor, where its battered and kicked condition was apparent to the hotel man's critical eye. No man of consequence stuffed all his belongings into one suitcase, Jim Justice believed. He adjusted his small mental machinery to give the fellow a reception fitting the outward appearance of his bag.
The guest appeared to be either indifferent to the presence of the landlord, or too rustic to know what such appearance behind the counter implied. He stood near his bag, hands in his breeches pockets, looking at the pictures on the wall as if absorbed in a comparative study of brewers' art. Justice sized him up as a timber cruiser estimates a tree, scanning him for all that could be cut out of him in a sharp and frowning sweep of his bristle-shaded eyes.
Not much to him; just an ordinary gangle-shanked farmer who had been working in town through the winter. Jim thought. A tall fellow, broad in the shoulders but rather flat, the kind that cannot be worn out on a job nor left behind in a race; bony and stringy-muscled, a look about his legs that suggested boots. Dark, not the kind of a man that bleaches working in a livery stable or store; big nose, hard, bleak-looking cheek-bones that looked as if they had been hammered and had stood it pretty well, and were up for more hammering if it came along.
That much Jim noted, taking the man side-on. It was at that point in the inventory that the stranger turned. Jim Justice felt as if somebody had opened a door and a cold breeze had struck him in the face. It was the man's eyes that gave him this unpleasant start. They reminded Jim of the eyes of the judge back in Clay county, Missouri, before whom he had been taken to stand trial once for stealing a horse. Jim had thrown the crime upon his partner and come clear, but he always shivered when he remembered the mind-reading eyes of that judge.
"The guest pushed back his broad-brimmed black hat, a regular Missouri hat, Jim thought, resenting it somehow, just why he did not know. Only that it seemed lawyer-like, even judicial, creased sharply in that manner, its shadow over the stern features of this unaccountable, and not too welcome guest. Hair as black and straight as an Indian's, thought Jim. Needed the shears laid to it. Kind of a judge's coat, too, dang him. Long, nearly down to his knees. He kept one hand in his breeches pocket, like he was going to pull out a pair of brass knucks and smash a man between the eyes.
"Something you wanted?" Jim inquired.
"Can I get accommodations for the night—maybe several days?" the traveler inquired, his voice deep and gentle, but with that judicial note in it exactly as Jim had expected to hear.
Jim was resentful. This thing was working out too unpleasantly all around. He could afford to be ugly and bullying with his guests, having no competition.
"What do you suppose I'm runnin' this ranch for?" he asked, whirling the register around, scowling as if the answer to his question were in his look, and that answer was robbery and murder of impertinent upstarts.
"To make money, I'd say," the stranger answered, unmoved by the landlord's sneering interrogation.
The reply mollified Jim a little. It had been given in such even, unmoved, unconcerned tone; the stranger had taken the pen so casually. He must not be as much of a rustic as at first supposed. Traveled around some; agent for something. Maybe some kind of a detective, dang his nickel-plated eyes!
"I might be runnin' it for profit anywheres else but this dern-blasted country," said Jim. "There ain't no show for no man to make money out of no hotel this fur west of Dodge. I'd sell to-morrow if I could run acrost a bigger fool than I am."
The stranger was so little interested in this complaint against the country that he did not glance up from the page where he was entering his name. Out of long practice in upside-down reading, Jim followed the pen as the stranger wrote:
Andrew Hall, Topeka, Kansas.
"I used to know a Hall that run a sawmill in Spickardsville, Missouri," said Jim, coming a little nearer now in his mental attitude, seeing the guest had a common, human name. "I don't suppose you might be related?"
"No telling; it's a big family."
"Blowed up and killed one of the boys about your age. Aimin' to stay here some time, you said?"
"A day or two, maybe longer."
"Not much of a country for canvassin' in," Jim informed him, ready to talk to any length when he could knock the land that gave him his living. "People's comin' here in droves, but they ain't the kind to sell books or enlarged pictures to. Poor as snakes; not enough money, most of 'em, to buy grub to hold 'em over till they make a crop—if they ever do make one in this daddasted country, which I doubt like misery."
"I'm not interested in spreading either literature or art," the stranger said, his face as solemn as the back of a fiddle, Jim thought.
"I thought you might be one of them college students startin' out to sell something, they wander out here sometimes, but you're old for a student—thirty-five, I'd judge."
"You're near enough to it," Andrew Hall replied, leaving it worse than if he had said nothing at all, for all the satisfaction Jim found in it.
"Horse liniment don't go out here, nor insurance, nor chromos to hang on the wall, 'less you git 'em for advertisement, free gratis, like I got them of mine. A feller was through here last fall with foldin' lightnin' rods he carried in a valise, but he never sold none of 'em that I ever heard of."
"I don't handle them," said Hall. His face remained as solemn as before, but there was a grin in his eyes, as Jim described the humorous softening. Jim liked him a little better for that. Curiosity had hold of him now like an itch.
"We ain't got no use for a dentist this fur west of Dodge," Jim speculated aloud again. "People's borned with teeth out here and never loses 'em—they've got all the teeth they need. What's worryin' most of 'em is gittin' something to chaw between 'em."
"I expect that's the big question everywhere," Hall agreed.
He went to the window, where he stood looking out, his long legs spread a little in a rather ungainly way, hands in his pockets, the skirts of his black coat held back in that lawyer-like fashion of parting the curtain to display the watch-chain and vest.
"If you're lookin' for a business openin' this hotel's for sale," Jim suggested.
"Not at all," Hall replied indifferently. "I'm not a—business man, Mr ?"
"Jestice," prompted Jim.
"Mr. Justice. Thank you; hope to know you better."
"Lookin' at you," Jim replied, in his most elegant barroom style. "Just out here to take your pleasure and look around, heh?"
"I expect to settle here, Mr. Justice, for a while, at least. I'm an Esculapian."
"A which?"
"Esculapian; a plain Esculapian."
"Might as well be a ruffled one for all the difference it'd make to me," Jim declared, highly resentful, feeling that the guest was poking covert fun at him, which was not altogether wrong.
"In other words, I'm a physician. I'm the railroad doctor."
Hall had turned to look at Justice as he revealed himself in language plain to the country west of Dodge. He was grinning, humorously and expansively, as if it might be some kind of a lark, out of which he expected to get a lot of fun.
"The hell you say!" Jim exploded in astonishment, being too shallow to receive the shock of a surprise without considerable splash.
"That's about it."
"Company doctor, heh? Old Doc Ross has been 'tendin' to the company cases here for two or three years. Does he know he's fired, do you reckon?"
"I don't know about that, but I suppose it's likely. I never heard of the gentleman."
"Bumped old Doc Ross out of his job, heh? Never heard of Old Doc Ross?"
"I never did. Is he especially famous in this part of the country?"
"He used to be a fit doctor, travelin' around with a wagon. Had a sign painted on the side of it: 'Old Doc Ross, He Cures Fits.' I remember the day he drove up here in that wagon. I don't reckon we had more than forty people in this town then."
"He must have found it fit headquarters to settle down here," Hall said, holding no high opinion of Old Doc Ross from this public fame.
"Well, if all of us didn't have fits he made us think we had," Jim said, laughing over the recollection, reddening in the heat of his mirth like a turkey gobbler. "Old Doc Ross can convince any man, woman or child they've either got fits, have had 'em or will have 'em before long. He says fits is at the bottom of all human cussedness and diseases, but when I figger back I can't recall of anybody ever throwin' a fit here in Damascus, and I've been here since it started."
"How much a bottle was it?"
"Five dollars," Jim replied, impressively. "I guess the price had a good deal to do with folkses' confidence in it. He's give up the fit business now, settled down to regular practice."
"He's probably an infernal old quack, and no doctor at all."
"I'd go light on spittin' out things like that here in Damascus if I intended to stay over night," Jim cautioned. "No, you're off there. He's a good doctor, good as they make 'em, if you can ketch him sober. He's been on a tear now four or five days. Wouldn't wonder if it was the news of gittin' fired out of that railroad job started him off."
"He may be consoling himself for the loss of the job," Hall said indifferently, plainly indicating that Old Doc Ross was a creature beneath his consideration.
"He used to practice back in Dodge till it cooled down too much for him," Justice explained. "They say he put a good many men out of business with his gun, but I don't know, personal. All I know is he's put hot embers under the feet of a couple of doctors and one dentist that tried to settle here."
"He seems to be a picturesque old villain," Hall commented, entirely undisturbed by this report.
Hall had faced to the window again, where he stood lifting himself to his toes with slow, easy movements expressive of great strength and elasticity of limb. It exasperated Justice to behold him so unmoved by this account of Old Doc Ross' savage disposition in the face of rivalry.
"I wouldn't like to stand in the boots of the man that'd come to root Old Doc Ross out of that good-payin' job," Justice said, adding seriousness to the declaration by expelling his breath with hissing sound through his drooping mustache.
"I guess nobody's going to be murdered over it," Dr. Hall replied.
"I wouldn't be too dam' sure, mister. Married man?"
"Not yet."
"Lucky for your wife you ain't. It ain't no place to bring a woman to, starvation country like this west of Dodge."
"It looks pretty good to me—pretty good," said Dr. Hall, in that provocative, mild, serenely satisfied way of his. Jim thought he said it like the words of a taunt repeated by a vexatious boy.
"Maybe it won't look so dam' pleasant to you after you've met Old Doc Ross!" Justice nagged.
Dr. Hall swung around from the window, confronting Justice again in that judicial, breath-cutting, abrupt fashion of his, hands in his pockets, the skirts of his long coat held back.
"Doctor Ross is free to continue his business of curing the men, women and children of Damascus of fits in his notable and established style, Mr. Justice. I'm not here to take a single patient out of his hands. I'm the railroad doctor; I'm hired and paid by the year for my services. I haven't the slightest intention of setting up opposition to your notorious Doctor Ross."
"That may help some," Jim admitted, but with a reservation of doubt.
"I want to buy a horse—"
"What do you want a horse for if you ain't goin' to practice around?"
"Because I take my exercise that way. Do you know of anybody that's got a good gelding for sale?"
"Yes, you can buy a crackin' good mare from Ed Kraus, the liveryman. Mares stand this country better than geldings. The hot wind don't seem to pull 'em down so hard."
"I prefer a gelding," said the doctor, in his sure and stubborn way.
He spoke like a man who was certain within himself that he was right on all questions, and was not to be turned aside for the consideration of anybody's opinion, nor taken in on anybody's scheme. That was the way Justice sized him up, forming a definite hope at the same time of seeing him brought low, and made a by-word in the scoffing mouths of Damascus.
"I reckon you can find one," Jim returned, coldly, to indicate that his interest in the matter had faded out with the possibility of a commission from Ed Kraus.
"No doubt," Hall agreed, dismissing it lightly, as if it were of no consequence at all.
Justice could have growled. Resentment filled him; indignation gorged his plump face with hot blood. This fellow was altogether too sure of himself to get along in Damascus. They didn't want educated fools of this kind in the country west of Dodge. They were the kind that built high schools for the taxpayers to pay for, and agitated around and closed up the saloons. They'd have to be frostbitten in the bud, and that minute Jim had no frost on his breath. Fire, rather, which gathered in his bristled old badger eyes.
"Do you want supper?" he asked, implying that it would be an unwelcome desire, the desire of one aspiring to a place above him and a privilege belonging to his betters.
"Why not?" Hall returned, in that self-sure, serenely adjusted way of his. He still had his hands in his trousers pockets, the long coat divided back from his lean body, pencils showing in his vest pocket, the braid of his watch, with a gold swivel, looped across his breast.
"A lot of fellers stay at hotels to make a front and take their meals out in cheap joints," Jim replied. His words were acrimonious as alum, insulting without diguise. The guest turned to the window again, feet wide apart to adjust his stature to a pane from which the winter's grime had been rubbed.
"Not a bad scheme," he said, giving it a genial endorsement, as if to say it had not come into his mind to do it, but that he would not be above trying it on if he liked, with no consideration for the profit or opinions of any hotel keeper whatever.
"I'll let any man that tries it on me know his room's better than his company," Jim declared. "I've done it before to-day."
"I think you're wrong there, entirely wrong."
Hall stood lifting himself to his toes, settling back to his heels; lifting, settling. It was a kind of preoccupied gymnastics, a habit of his argumentative mood, perhaps, which was a burning irritant to Jim Justice's already inflamed humor.
"If a man ain't got the money to set in at my table I don't want him sleepin' in my sheets," Jim blustered, intent on coming to a rupture with this unwelcome guest at any odds, it appeared. "Let any man I boot out of this hotel go and try to git a bed anywhere else in town, and see where he lands!"
Whether Andrew Hall appreciated the tragedy of such a situation, Justice was not to know at that time. Before the guest could have uttered any comment, if he had intended to do so, a sudden burst of shooting, attended by yells and a rush of galloping horses in the street directly in front of the hotel, broke the sunset peace of the town.
This noisy demonstration sweeping past his door seemed to strike Jim Justice witha tremendous fear. He turned from peering through the dusty window at the end of his counter, the red embers of anger dying in his fat cheeks as if doused by a sudden rain. He grabbed a canvas bag that lay with its mouth dangling from a little compartment of his open safe, his eyes bulging, his erect gray hair charged with the prickling shock of his fright.
"Git in there!" he directed, waving toward the open door that revealed the dining-room and interior of the house. "It's that Simrall gang!"
As he delivered this warning Justice stooped behind the counter and disappeared. Hall supposed he was reaching for his gun. He waited for Justice to reappear armed to defend his property and life against a raid of outlaws, greatly astonished and mystified when he did not come up again from his dive. Hall concluded that the hotel keeper was crouching behind a bullet-proof barrier, or that he had gone to the cellar by a secret opening prepared for such emergencies. The noise was drawing off toward the farther side of the square. Curious to learn what it was about, Hall went to the street.