Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/264

 day. Fergus was accorded the promised immunity from prosecution as a reward for his betrayal. Some said he was obliged to split the five hundred dollars he got for his vote with the county attorney.

Dine appeared to consider himself a public benefactor. No taint had stuck to him in the transaction, as far as his rather dulled scent could discover, no disgrace whatever, according to his conscience, which was a very miniature affair, altogether. He strutted around town grinning and well satisfied; he held down his corner of Jim Justice's porch with equanimity and sang froid.

Damascus accepted his great public service in its notably jocular way, neither lifting nor lowering Fergus in the place that was his. They joked him about the money, and his designs for the outlay of it, making a very comfortable diversion out of the episode all around.

The wrecked invaders of Damascus' sanctuaries were under the ministrations of Old Doc Ross. Misfortune does not always make men honest; a drubbing seldom has acted as an agent of reform. This bunch from the rival town was sorer and wiser than when they came, but very likely in no particular a hair's breadth better. Old Doc Ross declared he never had set bones for such a doubly damned set of rakings from the settlings of horse-thievery as these.

Ora Simrall admitted his town was out of the contest for the county seat. Let him out of jail, he proposed, forget the trifling incident of bribery in the election, and he would lie down. The accommodating county attorney agreed, seeing a fertile field for votes when he should come out for circuit judge. The county attorney took