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 jerries, there was nothing to marvel over in Dr. Hall's close brush the night before. He had done well in putting a stop to the disturbance, better still by patching up the poor savage of the prairies and sending him on his way. That was done like a railroader. There was nothing more to be said.

Mrs. Charles was indignant, rather than amused, over the effort of Jim Justice to unload his unprofitable hotel upon her hands. It required no records nor balance sheets to enlighten her on the state of business in that establishment. Compared to her own busy boarding-house on wheels, it was only a stagnant eddy beside the stream of the passing world.

"The time's comin' when a hotel in Damascus will pay, and pay big, but it's never goin' to do it under the management of any old crawfish like Jim Justice," she said. "I can see the time comin' when I'd like to have a nice white hotel of about twenty rooms in this town, but I can't see that time near enough to buy that man out for four thousand dollars."

"The old rascal!" Hall blurted indignantly. "He told me not a week ago he'd be glad to sell for three thousand."

"Yes, and he'd take two if anybody offered it to him. But I'm not ready right now to start up a hotel on land."

"I wish you was," Annie said wistfully.

"Yes, but in some town, not this flag station away out here in this cussid country!" Mary added, bitter in her scorn of Damascus and its insignificance in the railroad scheme.

"Dodge is overdone on hotels," Mrs. Charles returned, corrective and sarcastic in a breath.

"There's other places besides Dodge," said Mary hotly,