Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/50

 "Yes, there's been a host of trouble over 'em. Major Bill Cottrell he's the daddy of this town, as I told you, and the daddy of this county, when it comes down to cases. He's been here patience knows how long, used to fight Indians all over here when they was buildin' the first railroad through Kansas. Him and Custer; he fought with Custer down in the Nation, cleanin' up the Pawnees. They say he was all shot to pieces in them Indian campaigns. You must 'a' run acrost some of them old scars, I guess?"

Dr. Hall nodded assent, his mouth buckled on further particulars of the major's scars.

"He settled down here after he quit the army, years before this county ever was organized, picked on it so he'd be off of the main road of people comin' and goin' and passin' through. Built him a big sod house, biggest ever put up here, six or seven rooms in it, they tell me—I never was in it. It was seventy miles to a railroad in them days, but that wasn't any more than a nice little lope to Major Bill. He shipped his pieanno and furniture out from Leavenworth, and settled down here with his wife and boy. That girl 'Lisabeth she was born afterwards, right here in the sod house they're livin' in to-day. She's a wild heifer, wild as hell."

"She must be an old-timer," Hall said, wondering what she could be like to fill Jim's notion of wildness in that extreme.

"Not more than twenty to twenty-five, I guess."

"Good looker?"

"Not accordin' to my tastes she ain't," Jim declared with emphasis. "Kind of a ginger-topped gal, straddlin' around on horseback all the time. She can jerk out a gun