Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/67

 ing all the ordinary virtues, with several seraphic qualities spread over them, like icing on a cake.

While giving his testimony a flicker of a smile had played around Dine's mouth, making a merry little dimple in his ruddy cheek. It was such a notable piece of humor they were framing on the strange doctor, Dine had difficulty holding in a laugh that would have given it all away.

That appeared to be the attitude of Damascus now. Many approached Dr. Hall when the inquest was concluded, all of them grinning in appreciation of this comical notoriety he had attained. There was something behind the grins, invariably, which the grinner shrewdly believed the simple stranger who took a gun by the wrong end could not see. Such is the common attitude of mankind who has been initiated into more or less mysterious things. One sees the same glimmer of humorous superiority in the eyes of secret brethren when they try grips on strangers who do not respond. What the grinner knows is little worth the trouble of concealing, and does him no good in the world.

Dr. Hall left the court house with a feeling more of resentment than concern. He was not so much troubled over his personal danger as he was concerned about his professional dignity. He had just come from a long service in the railroad hospital at Topeka, taking this outside position for the picturesque appeal it carried and the experience that it proffered. He knew railroad men, from jerry to president. It would be an uphill business to win their respect, their confidence and esteem, appearing before them in this false guise of a ridiculous fellow who had killed a man with the wrong end of a gun.