Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/238

 Nance crossed the little desert of cinders, pulled up before Hall, and stopped.

"Hello, Doc," he said, looking around in his sniffing, rabbit sort of way, like a man who could not even call his body, to say nothing of his soul, his own.

"Hello, Nance," Hall returned languidly, eyes turned away from the fascination of the shimmering rails a moment, open book fluttering its pages in the wind.

"Say, Doc, it ain't none of my business, and I don't want to be buttin' in, and I may be gittin' in bad by tellin' you," Nance said, sparring and sidling, but all the time straining his buttons to keep in some kind of news.

"What's up?" Hall inquired, alert and interested.

"I don't know as I've got any business tellin' you, Doc, and I may be gittin' in bad when I do, but you'll keep it under your hat where you got the tip, won't you, Doc?"

"You know it, Nance. What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened, but something's goin' to happen. I've just been talkin' with the operator at Simrall—but this is on the q.t., Doc, you understand?"

Hall nodded, his interest beginning to wilt. It was too hot for a piece of railroad gossip to hold a man's backbone stiff, especially when he had to wait on a cautious man like Nance to come over the fence with it.

"He called me," said Nance, pausing to spy around to see that nobody else was near, "to tell me they're gittin' up a crowd in Simrall to come down here and move the court house—but of course that was only a josh. What they're comin' after is the books, records, money—everything loose. He called me to put me wise."

"When are they coming, did he say?"

"Right away. He said they had four wagonloads of