Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/316



OBODY else had fallen in that outpouring of lead and fire; nobody else was hurt. One hundred yards away from the scene of the battle, in a direct line, with nothing intervening but space, the Cottonwood Hotel stood. There was not a bullet in it. Where all that lead went, nobody knew; nobody knows to this day.

But nobody was thinking about this extraordinary feature of the fight just then. The railroaders were crowding into the office and parlor of the hotel, intent on knowing whether Cal Withers was dead or alive, or whether he would live or die. Angus Valorous had dashed off for the doctor, there being but one doctor in his rating, in McPacken, and that one his estimable father, who was a bearded, a slow and ponderous man. Angus would have waited for him to come back if he had been a hundred miles away, rather than's ummon a rival, As it was he waited until the doctor got out of bed and made his deliberate toilet, and drank a cup of coffee to clear his head of sleep.

While Angus was gone on this merciful errand,