Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/113

 told him, were the farmers and ranchmen in the country around it. Their interests were lively, their partisan ship fiery. To these whiskered, shaggy, sharp-eyed men who lived in the mysterious envelopment of the prairie, the court house at Damascus was the sacred Kaaba. They covered it with the holy carpet of their defense.

With this feeling of interest apart from the town, Dr. Hall walked through Custer Street one fair morning on his way to pay his first visit to Major Cottrell in his own home. The hardy old soldier had made a quick recovery under the ministration of modern surgery. Damascus called it luck, with a sneer, and disparaging comparisons with the past achievements of Old Doc Ross. Mrs. Cottrell called it a marvel, and placed her gratitude where it belonged.

Hall met few people with whom he was acquainted that morning, although Custer Street was busier than he had seen it before. Many teams were hitched around the square, the sidewalks were thronged with rough-clad men carrying new tools and implements, weapons for the big battle they were engaging with the soil.

Major Bill Cottrell's sod house looked as if it had been built in the angle of a square. It was proportioned in the same manner as that principal working tool of a mason, being much longer in the main stem than the branch. There was nothing imposing about it, either in style or scope, where it stood gray and crumbling on top of a small knoll at the edge of town.

More like something designed for military, rather than domestic, purposes Major Cottrell's house appeared, its bleak angle presenting to the northwest, its doors and windows out of plumb, its situation as bare as if the rest-