Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/263



and five of his men were in jail at Damascus when the county attorney, Judge Waters and a marshal from the state supreme court arrived two days after Major Cottrell's funeral.

They were a badly battered outfit, several broken bones among them, one of them lying inert with a cracked skull. There was no spirit alive in their town to attempt a rescue. Even the sheriff had returned to Damascus when he found himself on the losing side, and was now one of the loudest of its partisans.

The county attorney had obtained a restraining order from the high court, which the official accompanying him had come to serve on Simrall and thirty others of the opposing faction. To make Simrall's knockout complete, Dine Fergus sought the county attorney within an hour after his return, urged to that virtuous course by his mother, who had an eye to the future and did not want to give up her growing business. Dine made a bargain for immunity, confessed his part in selling his electoral services to Simrall, and named the other nine.

Whether the county attorney who, as has been said, was not an incorruptible man, tipped it off to the bunch with a fraternal warning, people could only surmise. However it was, Larrimore and a bunch of petty gamblers were missing from their accustomed places next