Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/15

 Nature had done much to keep man out of the country west of Dodge, it is true, with its lack of wood, its scarcity of water; arid fierce summers, long and bitter winters, thin air light in the almost-mountain altitude. Yet man is an adjustable creature, and the beasts which serve him share his adaptability to change and conditions. Cattlemen had found their way far west of Dodge in the day, that you come to Damascus on the creaking wain of this story. They had spread their herds over the solemn hills which seemed to press forever like galloping buffalo down to the margin of the Arkansas; they had found profit in a land from which fear had withheld the unadventurous, and Damascus had risen by the side of the railroad to supply their needs, as well as to profit upon their follies.

The town was not as much then as it came to be in later years, as it is to-day, if you could identify it as you glide past on the California limited, cool bowers of elm trees in its green park, its paved streets swept clean by the wind that changes not with the years.

Yet it had its court house even that far back, it being a county seat. The people of Kansas always were a contentious lot: their history begins in controversies, their commonwealth was founded on a quarrel. Out of that ancient habit they always have been a great people for having court houses handy for the settlement, or prolongation, of their difficulties, as it may transpire after they bring them within the doors. The first thing they did was vote bonds for a court house whenever a few of them got together on the prairie and organized a county. It is altogether likely there are more court houses to the man, and better ones, in Kansas than any other state in the union.