Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/190



looked in at the boxcar office as he was passing, he said, after the west-bound train had gone on its way to California. He found Dr. Hall comfortably seated in his surgical chair, the floor around him strewn with newspapers, the small doings of Damascus forgotten in the news of that other division of the nation east of Dodge.

Jim was dressed in his formal Sunday clothes, which appeared that morning to be largely a big-chested white shirt without a collar, the neckband of it clasped and locked as securely as the section boss' tool-house door by an onyx-ornamented arrangement with a spring top. He wore no coat, but a vest that was a considerable garment in its own right, being of green velvet, elaborately dressed with buttons of some metallic substance resembling zinc. Straps of strong suspenders were displayed with assurance below the vest, attesting that Jim's mournful, large-legged trousers were there to stay.

When Jim stepped, a movement of something stiff and tubular, like a joint of stovepipe, could be noted inside his trouser legs below the knees. Like a true, old-fashioned Missouri gentleman, Jim wore boots, hiding the tops of them away in this manner. He prided himself on his boots, and his way of concealing the tops of them under his pantaloons, feeling distinguished and superior