Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/262

 court house steps. It was a woman, somebody said Well, they hadn't come there to fight women—not on your life! That was a good and valiant excuse for going, and going faster with every turn of the wheels.

When the railroaders arrived at the square there was nothing but a cloud of dust to speak for the Simrall raiders. A girl was sitting on the court house steps, a rifle beside her, head bent to her knee, face hidden in her arm, crying and crying, as if she, too, had held a golden bowl and seen it shattered by some relentless hand.

Major Cottrell lay dead on his couch of books, sacrificed in the county seat feud, squabble so unworthy to exact such consequential toll. Mrs. Charles sat on the court house steps beside Elizabeth, the yellow bowl forgotten, the jerries' cooling supper a thousand miles out of her mind. She put her arm around the weeping girl and drew her head to her bosom, where she soothed her with those tender Irish endearments which no other tongue can equal in all the sympathetic vocabulary of human-kind.