Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/71

 fast. We are their natural supply point; the future of this town is written large."

"As you say, I've got the stranger's view of it, nothing more than can be seen and felt from the surface. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd like to see you have a second Kansas City here."

"We'll outstrip Kansas City in fifteen years," Judge Waters declared, striding along a little faster as his enthusiasm grew, the city of his vision no doubt plain to his inner eye. "We've got a certain amount of riff-raff here now, it's always that way with frontier towns. People that are thrown off and driven out by the orderly places naturally drift to the new ones and stay till things begin to stabilize and settle down. We've got a lot of that kind in Damascus, tin-horn adventurers, I guess you might call them. Real estate sharpers, crooked storekeepers, men that run shady little games of one kind and another, all of them with some kind of a crooked side to them. They're only temporary; they'll drift along to the next town that starts up."

They had come to the railroad station, where they paused beside the plank platform flanking the two-story red building, running parallel to the track.

"I'm looking for superintendent Farley," Hall explained.

"If he was in town his car would be on the house track back of the depot," Judge Waters said, looking around for that evidence of the superintendent's presence. "No, he's not in town."

"Frankly, Judge Waters, I'm troubled over this scrape I've got into," Dr. Hall confessed. "I didn't want to mix in the affairs of this town and county. Do you suppose they're going to report it around that I killed Sandiver?"