Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/51

 and shoot quicker and better than any man on this range, knock a see-gar out of a man's mouth and never touch his mustache. Hell! She's done it, right here in this man's town!"

"Is that so?" Dr. Hall straightened up with a keen interest in this biography.

"Yes," Jim sighed, shaking his head over 'Lisabeth and her wild ways, "them old folks they've tried hard to make a lady of that girl, sendin' her down to Leavenworth to be educated and frilled up, but they've failed. The old man he's been hopin' to see her married off to some army officer, but she don't seem to go. Maybe they don't want a woman that handy with a gun around 'em. I know I wouldn't."

"It might make a difference to some people," Dr. Hall admitted, seeming to study over it as if it deserved the deepest consideration.

"You damn right it would! I don't want no see-gar shot out of my mouth just because a woman can't have something she wants."

"I should think not," Dr. Hall agreed. "The major went into the cattle business in those early days out here, I suppose?"

"Yes; he done well sellin' to the army. When they put this railroad through he organized the county, copied names off a hotel register down in Lawrence, I've heard, and put 'em on his petition, for this county didn't have sixty, much less six hundred inhabitants the law requires to organize a county, in them times. I don't care how he done it, he put it through. They put out bonds for a court house here in Damascus, and him and Judge Waters laid out this townsite on land the major owned.