Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/214

 then when the band was at practice of an evening in the Woodmen's Hall.

Dine Fergus was the tuba, Larrimore one of the trombones, others of equal consequence filling out the band. Burnett supplied the instruments and cowboy regalia, Peters giving his services as instructor and leader for the honor of the town. The first public appearance of the band away from home had been made at the livestock convention in Wichita the autumn past. Burnett had provided a special car for the trip, with large advertisements of its contents along the sides.

This Sunday afternoon the band was out, expanding its bellows in the public square. There was a stream of music coming down Custer Street that seemed as if the dam had burst as Dr. Hall waded against it on his way to Major Cottrell's sod house, to learn how his patient fared. Hall thought of the noise as a flood, the impetu' osity of it whirling and mixing things as it spread. It was as if orderly music had been turned out to go its way, losing its head in the exuberance of freedom.

The band had on its red neckerchiefs, sombreros, fringed pants, and all the other regulation adornments of romance cowboys, many of them being articles which the slow headed smallwits who rode at the tails of cattle never wore, either at work or at play. Peters, a short man, stood on a box at the head of his double line formation, the base drum at the bottom end. They were just finishing a tune when Hall arrived at the square. He stopped on the edge of the crowd to see how they went about the business of mauling a tune so mercilessly, that being his first sight of the assembly as a whole.

Peters emptied his instrument genteelly, his example