Damascus lost the county seat election by seven votes. It was the fourth day after election when final results were made known, the farthest off precinct being that long sending in its returns by horseback from the northern county line.
It was a shock to Damascus when the county clerk attested the returns and this disastrous verdict of the county's electors was posted. The degradation of defeat lay doubly on Damascus, for the judges of election there knew that ten votes for Simrall had been cast by traitors in the camp.
A week before election day it became known in Damascus that ten voters of that town had banded together, acting on knowledge of a canvass showing how tight the contest would be, for the purpose of selling their votes to the highest bidder.
Damascus fairly laughed itself hoarse when this gang of speculators announced through an advertisement in the Damascus Press their patriotic intention and made known the channel of approach. That being such a seat of high and refined humor, nobody in Damascus thought of the advertisement as anything but a joke, a sly piece of ridicule aimed at Simrall's forlorn chance. It was thought nothing more than a sharp editorial jibe.
The day before election it became apparent that it was not altogether a joke. Somebody was out for the money, and Ora Simrall, it was said, had taken a shot at the chance of being thrown down after the price was paid. Now it was certain there had been honor enough among the traitors to impel them to deliver what they had sold. Ten votes for Simrall were cast, duly counted and credited by the judges of election.
It was ground for contest which Damascus was not slow to begin. The county attorney was on his way to Topeka before the result of the election was announced publicly, to demand the proper writ from the supreme court to stay the hands of Simrall until the fraud of the election could be established in court.
Major Bill Cottrell had been able to go to the polls, but there his services to the county in this crisis had ended. He was scornfully impatient with himself for his slow recovery of strength after his wound had healed. In spite of large quantities of dried beef he remained as weak as a snail, pale and tottering, his hand palsied. Elizabeth had taken his place in the court house where, assisted by two other young women, she had carried on the work of county recorder and treasurer, no light job with this inrush of homesteaders and buyers of railroad land.
Cottrell was roused to fighting fervor by the news of his town's defeat through the treason of its own citizenry. He was for hunting out the scoundrels and shooting them where found, a proceeding which had the endorsement of other substantial citizens. He proposed rounding up all suspects, searching them, and dealing with them on the evidence found in their pockets.
But it was plain that such proceeding had its risks. Some fairly honest man who had been lucky in a game might suffer. So Major Cottrell was obliged to confine himself to denunciations, expressed to equally indignant neighbors who called at his house, and through the newspaper, which ran off an extra in the middle of the week to spread the disastrous intelligence of defeat.
For a few days it appeared that Simrall's purchased victory was not going to avail the town anything. The county officials, with the one exception of the sheriff, refused to recognize the election as valid. They announced their intention of remaining in the court house at Damascus until the courts had passed on the question. The sheriff, whose sympathies had been with the opposition all the time, removed himself and the records of his office to Simrall, leaving a deputy in charge of the prisoners in jail.
The sheriff had no sooner removed his spittoon and swivel chair from the old county seat to the new, than the citizens of Simrall made demand on the remaining county officials to follow suit, and bring their records and books, as well as the county funds, along. The matter hung that way a day or two, Damascus standing fast in its entrenchments waiting word from the county attorney.
Dr. Hall was not particularly touched by the turn of the election, not having been able yet to imagine a possible future for himself in that town. The general disappointment reflected on him from his belligerent friend, Cottrell, and that veteran's townsite partner, Judge Waters. The judge had followed the county attorney to Topeka, called by telegraph to lend his argument to the cause. Hall missed his stately, gander-like presence on the street. It seemed as if the very essence of Damascus had gone with him, that it must droop like a plantain leaf in the hot sun, to revive no more, if mischance should prevent his return.
Summer was beginning to concentrate its powers on the gray, buffalo-grass region west of Dodge. Inside the boxcar office Dr. Hall found the heat intolerable from midday onward well into the night, although Little Jack Ryan protested cheerfully, even hopefully, that this was only a little sip of a sample. Wait till the latter days of July, and from then on to October, he said, with what seemed a pride in the man-killing rigors of those blazing, quivering, long white days.
Out of gratitude for Dr. Hall's ministrations to Mrs. Ryan, Jack had contrived an awning from an old tent which made a little thumbnail of shade before the office door. Here, in spite of his conspicuosity in the eyes of all who traversed Custer Street between depot and square, Dr. Hall regularly planted a chair of afternoons, and took what comfort he could from a book.
The never-ceasing southwest wind had begun to blow harder, coming hot and shriveling from the grates of whatever inferno bred it to blast and torture the Kansas plains. It felt at times, along about three o'clock of a cloudless afternoon, that it would almost singe the hair. Wild sunflowers by the roadside hung despondently, the gray bunch-grass stood sere and brittle. On what had been the cattle range until a little while past, now dotted by plank huts of homesteaders, a vast transformation had fallen. The refreshing rills which had sparkled down the old buffalo trails a few weeks earlier, promising water in abundance, had dried up to the last drop; their hard-baked beds were cracked.
Good water was a grave problem among the settlers, who had depended largely on these springtime rivulets. One must bore deep to strike the living water that flowed from the mountains in widespread stream beneath those shaggy swells. It was a process beyond the means of most homesteaders, who were hauling water already long distances from the Arkansas River, or the few creeks which emptied into it. This water carried a heavy alkaline content, which brought illness to those unaccustomed to its use, especially true in the case of children. A few cases of typhoid had occurred; less dangerous enteric disorders were widespread.
Dr. Hall had responded to several calls from stricken families in instances where Old Doc Ross either could not or would not go. Ross was a hard bargainer, his invariable rule being the demand of payment for each visit in advance. His rate for country visits was two dollars, a large sum to the poor homesteader. If the caller could not produce the amount, or give satisfactory assurance that it would be paid on reaching his house, Ross refused to go. Hall never declined to attend one of these cases; feeling that, as he made no charge for his services and Ross had refused to act, he was not cutting any ground from under his unworthy confrère.
Due to Hall's charitable practice, the impression got sown abroad over the country that the railroad doctor at Damascus was a sort of free, public institution, something like the well in the court house square. It took a lot of explaining; many a man was obliged to go to Old Doc Ross and dig up two dollars after having counted on having the services of this public physician free. Whether Old Doc Ross appreciated this fair dealing, Hall did not know. While the old fellow was holding an unprecedented streak of sobriety, he never bent from his stiff, unforgiving attitude of lofty indifference, passing Hall, ignoring his friendly salutations, as if he were a shadow in his path.
Dr. Hall was sitting under his awning on a certain afternoon while the event of the county seat contest was still swinging undetermined, no definite encouragement having come from Topeka. It was especially hot and parching that afternoon, the steady wind pouring over the shimmering, treeless spaces drying the skin until it had a sandy feel to the touch. Nance, the station agent, came out of his office, standing bareheaded in the blazing sun, looking up and down the track. Then he came down the platform toward Hall, walking fast, as if he must go somewhere and back on an errand before some unexpected train, carrying no telling what dread and mighty official, might come along and catch him off duty.
Hall noticed Nance's appearance, and start in his direction, watching him with a divided interest, thinking he might be going to the White Elephant for a glass of beer. He remarked how the rails wavered and seemed to throw off a hot vapor, as if they were dissolving in the heat of the sun; to writhe and shimmer in the distance, where they came to a point down the long stretch of straight track. He thought of the jerries out there, toiling with heavy sledges, tamping-picks, bars so hot they would take the skin off the toughest hand unless kept driven into the ground when not in use. People who complained of life's hardships must go up against something like that, he thought, before they could qualify for a certificate of experience.
Nance crossed the little desert of cinders, pulled up before Hall, and stopped.
"Hello, Doc," he said, looking around in his sniffing, rabbit sort of way, like a man who could not even call his body, to say nothing of his soul, his own.
"Hello, Nance," Hall returned languidly, eyes turned away from the fascination of the shimmering rails a moment, open book fluttering its pages in the wind.
"Say, Doc, it ain't none of my business, and I don't want to be buttin' in, and I may be gittin' in bad by tellin' you," Nance said, sparring and sidling, but all the time straining his buttons to keep in some kind of news.
"What's up?" Hall inquired, alert and interested.
"I don't know as I've got any business tellin' you, Doc, and I may be gittin' in bad when I do, but you'll keep it under your hat where you got the tip, won't you, Doc?"
"You know it, Nance. What's happened?"
"Nothing's happened, but something's goin' to happen. I've just been talkin' with the operator at Simrall—but this is on the q.t., Doc, you understand?"
Hall nodded, his interest beginning to wilt. It was too hot for a piece of railroad gossip to hold a man's backbone stiff, especially when he had to wait on a cautious man like Nance to come over the fence with it.
"He called me," said Nance, pausing to spy around to see that nobody else was near, "to tell me they're gittin' up a crowd in Simrall to come down here and move the court house—but of course that was only a josh. What they're comin' after is the books, records, money—everything loose. He called me to put me wise."
"When are they coming, did he say?"
"Right away. He said they had four wagonloads of men and all kinds of guns. I thought you might want to tip it off to Burnett and the boys up-town."
"I don't know," Hall meditated. "I suppose they ought to be told, so they can get ready to stand them off—if they've got it in them to do it."
"Well, as a favor I ask you to keep my name out of it, Doc. I'm tellin' you because you stood by me one time when I needed a friend."
"You can breathe easy," Hall said. "Isn't that Six whistlin' up there?"
"She's about due, she was reported out of Simrall on time." Nance consulted his watch as he spoke, in the railroad habit of looking at a watch when any matter of time or circumstance of whatever nature is discussed.
"I'll tell them one of the boys on Six tipped it off to me," Hall said. "I'll ask one or two of them about it when she stops."
"You're a prince, Doc. I thought you'd want to tell that old major, anyhow—he's a good old guy, I kind of wanted him to know. But a man in my position's got to be careful. Sure. You know that, Doc."
"Thanks, old feller. We'll work it as carefully as if we were going to blow a safe."
Nance gave him the high-sign to show his appreciation of the promised secrecy, and trotted back to his bay window. There he was seen a few moments later, in due and official form, leaning out to look up the track at Number Six, which was rounding the curve three-quarters of a mile away, coming down under gravity, safety-valve singing, but scarcely a flag of the escaping steam seen in that superheated air.