Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/299

 Hall took his medical case along to give the desertion a color of excuse, went to Pink Fergus' many-sided place of business and dined satisfactorily on fried chicken, which Pink cooked after the Indiana style, not surpassed in the culinary prescriptions of the earth.

Pink was full of gossip about the town's tragedy. She had not been caught, but Old Doc Ross had lost five hundred dollars. He had changed to his drinking clothes. When he was on a bender he didn't eat, she said. He had gone two weeks at a time and never shown his face inside her door for as much as a cup of coffee.

Pink reported Jim Justice rippin' and snortin', parading around with his old cap and ball gun buckled on, telling what he would do if Burnett ever showed his face above the rim of the earth again. Kraus had lost something, and was morose and glum; the lumberman had been pinched, and served him right, in Pink's opinion. She catalogued all the losers, with the amounts set opposite their names, with comment that would not have been a very soothing salve to the victims' pride if they had been by to hear. Pink had not been comforted by much charity in her life as she had gone her rocky way; she was giving as she had received.

She was sorry for the woman and two little children Burnett had left behind, as only a woman who has suffered humiliation and pain and shame at the hands of a man can feel for another left alone and unfended, shuddering naked in her misery before a sneering world. Hall never had seen Mrs. Burnett, not having been called in when the latest heir to this paternal disgrace arrived. Pink said she was a scared, pale, little woman, all eyes, with an old way about her, although she was very young.