Ora Simrall came riding into Damascus at the head of his forces, pretty well filling the seat of his buckboard, bending the slatted platform of it under his weight. From a big man in the beginning, he had grown through inactivity and indulgence into a very tun of a man, his chin lying in rings against his collar-bone. He had a little streak of black mustache, thin as a mandarin's, which ran out to almost a single hair at the points, ridiculous adornment in his vast red countenance.
Dr. Hall, watching the invaders from the window of Major Cottrell's office, saw the suspicion with which they marked the quietude and passivity of Damascus. Merchants had removed the hurried barriers out of their windows and opened their doors; people were passing about their business, or pretense of business, with no more apparent concern than if the visitors had come to do peaceful trading, with money in their hands instead of guns. It was the biggest surprise for Simrall that could have been devised.
All this indifference, this outward show of innocence, was only a blind covering a trap of some kind, the leader of the raiders believed, as shown by his cautious movements, his hurried posting of mounted men around the square, his conference with lieutenants before the court house steps. A wagon was drawn up before the main door, guarded by four men with repeating rifles; a squad of half a dozen or so, led by Simrall, marched up the steps.
Dr. Hall knew Simrall had picked his most determined men for that charge to the very seat of their objective. They came into the corridor noisily, brave fellows, Hall credited them, not knowing when a burst of shots from one of the numerous doors might cut them down. They stopped at the county recorder's office, trying the door. Finding it locked, one beat on it with something harder than a human fist.
"Cottrell, open this door!" came the peremptory demand.
Dr. Hall crossed to the door softly, opened it, to be confronted by Simrall, pistol in his fist. Hall was coatless, his shirt sleeves were tucked up. He held a hypodermic syringe in his hand, poised carefully, as if he had been disturbed in applying it to his patient. He kept one hand on the door, opening it only partly, but enough to give them a sight of Major Cottrell on his bed under the window.
"Open her up!" Simrall ordered, making a gesture with his gun.
"What's all this about?" Hall inquired, simulating surprise, but holding the door as it was.
"You know damn well, and none of your stallin'!" Simrall replied. "We're after the county books."
"Gentlemen," Hall said softly, "I've got a mighty sick man in here—I'm Dr. Hall, the railroad physician. Major Cottrell's been struck by an internal hemorrhage. He's a dying man."
"He can do all the dyin' he damn pleases after we take them books," Simrall said. "It's a bluff you fellers're tryin' to put over on us—I thought there was something suspicious in the looks of this town."
Simrall gave the door a sudden push, throwing it wide open. Hall stepped quickly in front of him as he started to enter, his men crowding behind.
"Gentlemen, I'm a deputy in this office for the time being, and I can't permit you to come in," Hall said firmly, stretching his arms across the door to bar Simrall's way. "You're on the wrong scent, there's nothing here you want. We heard you were coming before you left Simrall. We removed every dollar, every scrap of paper, to a safe place. You can see for yourselves there's nothing here."
"I'll see for myself, all right," Simrall replied. He swung his gun to brush Hall aside, pushing his big body, which fairly filled the door, into the room.
Hall plunged the hypodermic needle against Simrall's paunch.
"Drop that gun!" he ordered, his quick words sharp with warning.
Simrall was caught between doubt and fear, plainly expressed in his hesitant manner, the surprised look of cheapness in his face. The point of the needle was biting through his shirt, cold tooth that carried what venom he did not know. He tried to squirm away from it. Hall grabbed his open vest, one stout suspender with it, jerking him suddenly forward until the needle gouged him to the quick. Simrall dropped the gun.
"There's enough strychnine in this needle to kill you in thirty seconds," Hall declared. "If any man out there lifts a gun I'll jab it to your gizzard! Send them out of here. As soon as Mrs. Cottrell and her daughter come, I'll meet you out in front. I'm responsible for the county books; I'll answer to you for them."
Mrs. Cottrell and Elizabeth were in the corridor that moment, their way blocked by Simrall's men. The presence of the two women, their distracted appearance, the panting eagerness of the elder one to reach the room, her piteous entreaties to let her pass, convinced the men that Dr. Hall was not playing a part in a trick to deceive them. They cleared a way for the women to pass. Hall, still pressing the needle to Simrall's stomach, backed him into the corridor, kicked his gun into the room and closed the door.
That done, Dr. Hall put the bright little instrument in its case, stuck it in his pocket, motioned Simrall to the outer door.
"Go on; I'll talk to you outside."
"Simrall went as far as the front door, where his followers had stopped, a certain respect, if not much sympathy, in them for Major Cottrell's wife and daughter. Simrall snatched a gun from one of them, and jammed it against Hall's ribs.
"I'll make you swaller that damn squirtgun!" he threatened. "Are them books in that office?"
Dr. Hall looked at Simrall with an expression of amused tolerance, as if to say he considered him quite harmless and quite comical, but not impressive in his threatening attitude. He stretched himself with a high superiority of ease, seeming to grow two inches or more, while Simrall and the others, not accustomed to this sort of silent expression of gratification, thought he was gathering himself to throw some sort of trick. Three rifles were thrown down on him while he still balanced on his toes; Simrall screwed the gun against his short ribs as if to bore him to the gall.
"Are the books in there?" Simrall asked again.
"I told you everything was taken out of that office, Mr. Simrall."
"Where are they?"
"In a safe place," Hall replied calmly.
"You'll stick around with us till we search this buildin'," Simrall announced. "If we don't find the books, we'll see if there ain't some way to make you tell the truth. We'll start at the recorder's office."
The search didn't go very well in that quarter. Simrall and the two men who started with him in such fullfeathered assurance came back with a good deal more speed than they went, ducking and dodging, running doubled as if they had touched off a blast which they expected to shower them with rocks before they could get to cover.
"Them two hellions!" Simrall puffed, safe around the angle of the wall.
"Guns enough in there to start an army," said a cowboy-looking little old chap with a grizzled tuft of whiskers.
"I ain't a fightin' women, nohow!" another one of the bunch declared, in that renunciatory tone of a man who has picked up something too hot to hold.
At this declaration the youngest man in the crowd winked, grinning broadly, directing his pleasantries: to Hall, in which quarter he rightly calculated they would be most appreciated. Hall was standing with his back against the wall, a look of unconcern on his face that he did not entirely feel, raising himself to his toes: up and down, up and down, with the gusto of a man who had eaten a good dinner and felt at peace with everybody, especially himself.
Simrall looked on these gymnastics with ill-favoring eye.
"Yes, by hell! I'll give you stretchin' enough if we don't find them books!" he said.
Simrall sent a man to the tower, to see if they had hauled the books up there; he led the expedition from room to room of the building himself, even to the basement, Hall meantime in custody of the winking young man, outside on the front steps.
"We've been hearin' about you over in Simrall, Doc," the guard said.
"I'd like to believe it was something good, but I don't," Hall replied.
Hall was roaming his eyes around the square, glad to see the placidity that seemed to rest on the town in spite of this burglarious invasion of its rights. The Simrall men were stretched out in a long line covering Custer Street and the front of the court house, suspicious and alert, even a little anxious. There was not a ripple of excitement, scarcely of interest, in the town.
The barber was lounging in his door, smoking a cigar, shoulder against the jamb; the butcher could be seen moving around behind his counter, his white cap with red letters—it was a soda advertisement—quite plain. From Peters' hardware store a tinny sound of hammering issued, like a chant of some hard-legged insect among the bushes. A few boys were standing near the corner of the saloon, ready to scoot at the first shot. Pink Fergus was putting her false-fronted head out of the door and drawing it back, like a hen in a coop.
"Yeh. We heard how you bluffed the crowd that was after Gus Sandiver with a sponge soaked full of water," the young man said, grinning widely, showing short, worn teeth and red gums, as if he had been gnawing his subsistence out of hard things since very early in life. "Yeh, and I'm bettin' that was a bluff you run on Simrall, too. I'm bettin' I could swaller all the strickenine you had in that gun and never gag."
"You'd lose," Hall told him, confidently, taking the little case from his vest pocket. "If you've got any doubt, just stick out your arm."
The young man shuffled back, presenting his rifle threateningly.
"You stand right there, pardner! you stand right there!" he said.
"Just as you feel about it," Hall replied indifferently, as if he had offered something that the young man had been the loser by refusing.
Dr. Hall looked at his watch with the bored air of a man kept waiting in an appointment that was of little consequence to him. A train whistled faintly, far to the west. Dr. Hall drew out his watch again, although he had slipped it into his pocket only a second before, in the railroad habit of looking at the watch to identify by time everything that goes on wheels. He stood that way, watch in his palm, head turned to listen for the whistle again, and at that minute, full of interest and speculation for the young man with the rifle, Ora Simrall and his searching crew came out of the court house basement.
Simrall beckoned for the guard to bring Hall down.
Simrall's humor had not improved with the prospect of his expedition turning out a failure. The prisoners in jail had guyed them as they went poking into the empty cells, not willing to take the deputy sheriff's word that no records had been hidden there. This deputy was a loyal Damascus man. When Simrall had tried to make him tell what he knew about the removal of the records, he had hinted darkly that they had been shipped out of the county on Number Six that afternoon.
"Dr. Hall, you've got a name of bein' a purty shrewd kind of a man," Simrall addressed him, puffing and mopping his hot face. "Throwin' a bluff seems to be your long suit, but I want to tell you now you're goin' past the limit of this game. We've got one more place to look for the record books of this county, and if we don't find them there you and me we'll have a little session off to the side between ourselves. We're not goin' back without them records. If they've been shipped out of this county, you'll answer for it."
"They haven't been sent out of the county; I can assure you on that point," Hall replied.
"You'll have to tell us what you've done with them, Hall. You can't stall around this way any longer. But we'll take a look in your office as we go by."
Simrall appeared to be in earnest, but it was hard to tell how far he would go to get what he wanted out of Hall, for he was not a convincing sort of man. Hall did not feel himself in any danger, although Simrall added two men on horseback, who carried ropes on their saddles, to his picked gang of six as they started down Custer Street toward the railroad. There were trees along the river. Between them and the ropes, there seemed to be some sort of hint of Simrall's intention delicately suggested, Hall believed.
Hall did not like the notion of parading the street as a prisoner. More than that, he was troubled deeply over the final outcome of this affair, for he knew he could not go on stalling them off from their final search of Cottrell's office, which they were sure to make when all other sources failed. No matter what he might tell them under stress, it would not be where the books were. That was his solemn decision as he went along the dusty street, the young man's rifle close to his shoulder-blade.
And Elizabeth and her mother would fight. There was no doubt about that. With the guns left by Peters and the others in the room they could stand the raiders off a while, but no longer than the ammunition in the magazines lasted. It would be a deplorable finale to this unfortunate day.
As he walked among his armed escort down Custer Street, Hall thought nobody in town appeared to be greatly interested in what was going to happen to him. While he did not hope for any attempt to rescue him, he did feel a little hurt, in a foolish, prideful way, that nobody even came to the door to see him pass.
The worktrain was coming down to the switch head, loafing along to give the brakeman time to run ahead and throw the switch, as they arrived with Hall in front of his office. Mrs. Charles and her daughters were interested, and anxious, spectators of this proceeding.
They were grouped in the kitchen door, Mrs. Charles carrying a big yellow bowl which she wiped vigorously by spells with a cloth, running her hand round and round its wide mouth. She would stop this wiping abruptly, to turn and say something to one of the girls, or lean out a little to try and catch what was being said by the men with guns who were marching Dr. Hall among them. Then she would wipe again, furiously, as if she had to engender fire in the yellow bowl to heat up the jerries' supper.
The worktrain was worming down the siding, where it would come to a stand presently between Mrs. Charles' kitchen and Dr. Hall's boxcar office. The engine was not more than five or six rails' length away when Mrs. Charles saw a large fat man come out of Dr. Hall's office, red and wrathful, and shove a gun in the doctor's face. With each jab of the weapon the fat man shoved it a little nearer, Dr. Hall backing away from him. It was a very insulting, extremely humiliating, proceeding, Mrs. Charles thought, for a man of Dr. Hall's dignity to bear.
A similar thought was passing through Dr. Hall's mind at the same moment. It was trying on a man's patience, a test of his self-control. Simrall had no call to make that insulting play, and he. Andrew Hall, had no business to stand and take it.
As his cogitations rose to a sudden hot head with this conclusion, Dr. Hall hauled off and hit Simrall somewhere in the several folds of chin that hung like heavy dewlaps in front of his red neck. It was a good punch, and well directed, with all the force of outraged dignity and overtaxed forbearance in it. Simrall flopped back into the open door as Mrs. Charles shrilled encouraging applause.
Being started. Andrew Hall was not an easy man to stop. He at once landed a good solid kick on the young man who had been detailed as his personal guard, putting it in the place where he carried his provisions; swung round and planted his big bruiser in the whiskered cowboy's countenance as that person clapped his elbow against his ribs and pulled a quick shot.
The shot went wild under Hall's punch, smashing the yellow bowl that Mrs. Charles held on her hip.
"They're killin' Herself!" an old jerry yelled, as the engine of the worktrain came between Mrs. Charles and the fight.
"They're murtherin' the dochter!" Mickey Sweat shouted, grabbing a tamping-bar and leaping from the flatcar.
Dr. Hall was having a busy moment just then. They had him hemmed against his office, Simrall kicking his heels in the door like a floundered cow, pressing him so close none of them would risk another shot for fear of hitting a friend. Some were pegging him with their fists, some trying to land a crack over his head with reversed guns, others prancing around the edge of the disturbance dodging and squinting to get in a shot, like men looking for a rabbit through a fence.
That was the situation when the jerries began to pour off the worktrain with their pick-handles, shovels and tamping-bars. The Simrall men were too busy to notice them until the pick-handles began to fall.
Mrs. Charles, far from killed, hot as a hornet over the loss of her bowl, threw a leg to the top of a flatcar and was across the track in a wink. She grabbed a shovel as she came, landed with it lifted, rushing into the fight with a whoop. There was a shot or two, futile, foolish little pops in that hurricane of Irish wrath, before the Simrall men broke and ran for the square.
Simrall was the last to get under way; he was just getting up off his haunches in Dr. Hall's door as Mrs. Charles arrived. He caught a crack from her shovel that put him down again, nothing left stirring inside him to bring him up.
The jerries went whooping up Custer Street after Dr. Hall's assailants, Micky Sweat leading them on his long legs, his tamping-bar carried like a gun with a bayonet at the end of it. Close after him, second in pursuit, Dr. Hall himself ran, going a bit foggily on account of a bunged eye, but careless of appearances, dignity, and everything else but vengeance, the pick-handle some kind jerry had given him ready for the first head he might reach.
At the square there was consternation among the Simrall ranks. Those left to guard against an uprising in town were terrified at sight of this tremendous, sudden charge from an unexpected quarter. From their distance the jerries' bars looked like guns. There was a break for the wagons; somebody got Simrall's buckboard. It led the retreat at a gallop, carrying three men.
Up Custer Street the railroaders came, roaring like a tornado, Mrs. Charles in the midst of them, her hair flying, her sharp voice rising high. One by one the jerries overtook the men who had come to search Hall's office, a cottonwood tree on the river bank their ultimate objective; as fast as they were overhauled they fell, were submerged, thumped and kicked, nobody but the two on horseback getting away unmarked.
To make matters worse for the Simrall men who were whipping their teams to escape this irresistible charge of railroaders, somebody began shooting at them from the court house steps. It was a woman, somebody said Well, they hadn't come there to fight women—not on your life! That was a good and valiant excuse for going, and going faster with every turn of the wheels.
When the railroaders arrived at the square there was nothing but a cloud of dust to speak for the Simrall raiders. A girl was sitting on the court house steps, a rifle beside her, head bent to her knee, face hidden in her arm, crying and crying, as if she, too, had held a golden bowl and seen it shattered by some relentless hand.
Major Cottrell lay dead on his couch of books, sacrificed in the county seat feud, squabble so unworthy to exact such consequential toll. Mrs. Charles sat on the court house steps beside Elizabeth, the yellow bowl forgotten, the jerries' cooling supper a thousand miles out of her mind. She put her arm around the weeping girl and drew her head to her bosom, where she soothed her with those tender Irish endearments which no other tongue can equal in all the sympathetic vocabulary of human-kind.