Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/66

 not even one of the town! The story would go to Simrall speedily; the wrath that should have been divided, at least, between Damascus and himself would fall alone upon his head. Truly a plastic head, as Burnett had said, to drive him so thoughtlessly into a quarrel among men as base as all present information indicated both sides to embrace.

Somebody had killed Sandiver. He had not died from that blow on the head with the pistol. Dine Fergus, son of the town milliner, who carried an ice cream, candy and tobacco business on the other side of the room, and a lunch counter across the back, and Ed Kraus, liveryman, were the noble spirits behind that conspiracy. The fatal blow—no shot had been fired—lay between them, Hall believed.

There was something treacherous in Kraus' long, dark face, in his indolent carriage, his rocking, bear-like walk. He was a tall man, sloping in the shoulders, the crudeness of unrefined strength in his long, tapering neck. There was a spark of savagery in him that a word might provoke to give a blow.

Dine Fergus presented a far different type. He was short, alert, active on foot, trimly made. His small round face was ruddy, specked by large freckles which rather added to its shallow, boyish prettiness. His black hair sprang straight from his low forehead, trained in the uproaching fashion so popular with the small-town youth of that day. He was not more than twenty-two, ready with his words, flippant, half impertinent, a typical product of the atmosphere of daring and challenge to authority which had nurtured him from infancy. He was his mother's only child. In her eyes he was a mold contain