Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/99



are always pantalooned bipeds enough to make a crowd in a town like Damascus, who have nothing to do but collect on some convenient roost and talk it over when something happens, nationally, locally, or even in the remote reaches of the earth. Local news is preferred above all others, to be sure. A fight in Damascus was of far more lively interest, and certainly of more importance in their conception of relativity, than a revolution in Mexico or the massacre of a British general in Egypt.

The crowd that had assembled to witness Old Doc Ross's suppression of competition in the medical field west of Dodge, and lend him the encouragement of its appreciative and partisan presence, reassembled on the hotel porch shortly after the downfall of their champion, to talk the thing over from all points, groping around to discover the weak spot in their tactics that had been responsible for the overthrow of Old Doc Ross.

Ed Kraus was there, and Larrimore, the town cobbler, who had a lean little stock of shoes on the other side of his cobbling room; Dine Fergus, ready with his wit, and Jim Justice, distended in his wisdom. Several others were on hand who have no part to play before you in this small drama of a far-off place and day. The downfall of Old Doc Ross was incomprehensible to them all.