# West of Dodge/Chapter 12

There was room for all the dancers in Damascus, both railroad and secular, on the station platform, which surrounded the building entirely and extended in a long wing on each side, up and down the track. Pieces of scantling had been nailed upright along the edge of the platform at frequent intervals, where lanterns were hung. The illumination was smoky and vague, but it had a gala effect in the eyes of Damascus. The engineer of the work-train had run his loose-jointed old mogul up the house track and backed and fiddled until he brought the headlight beam to bear on part of the rough floor. That was too much light; they told him to take it away.
Annie and Mary Charles were clearly the stars of the occasion, although Damascus had done its best to eclipse them by turning out the finest it had. The daughters and wives of resident railroad people, who held themselves a social notch higher than those who followed the frontier of construction, were there; the young woman who served the dining-room of the West Plains Hotel was present, ably escorted by a scented cavalier in bell-bottomed trousers. He was Mit Sniveley, who ran the Railroad Barber Shop. It was situated in a corner of Kraus' livery barn.
Pink Fergus, mother of the astute humorist, Dine, was there, the falsity of her curls apparent even in the smoky ​light of railroad lanterns. These curls were as much an institution of Damascus as the bank. They were two strong shades lighter than the original hair which they amplified and adorned, a dusty brown, dry and lusterless as the winter coat of an old horse. Pink was the only honest woman in Damascus who painted her face. It was a weakness that brought her close to the dividing line. She had crow's-feet around her languishing dark eyes.
Larrimore was there in his shirt sleeves, the waistband of his trousers around his hips. His wife was not present, due to the jealous sequestration her husband exercised over her like a Turk. Larrimore was notable as a prompter of the dances most favored among the railroaders and others of the frontier at that time, the figures of which must be called out. If the caller had a high-pitched, wavering voice he could be heard to advantage above the fiddles, as a katydid among crickets. Dine Fergus, smelling of benzine, due to his mother's ministrations over his summer suit, was kicking a high heel among the first.
Charley Burnett was host of the occasion. It was through his influence as a big shipper that the company's permission to use the platform had been obtained, over the refusal of the local agent. Burnett always said he was more a railroader than a cattleman, having made his beginning as a telegraph operator before he was old enough to vote.
In deference to this early affiliation he appeared to-night without a coat, black sateen oversleeves to his elbows, a stylus and pencils in his vest pocket, clamped by the very three-barreled patented pencil-holder he had used as night operator on his first job. To make it ap​pear just as if he had come out of the bay window of the depot, he wore a green eyeshade.
The railroaders were a cosmopolitan crew. Although the Irish predominated, there were representatives, singly and by twos and threes, of many lands, especially those: northern countries which produce big men for the world's heavy work. There was a little band of Welshmen, who worked in stone abutments for bridges; some Swedish carpenters, two or three German jerries, and one lone. Englishman. This was a short, grizzled little Cockney who had sailed the seas, Edwin Blewitt by name. He had a blue lady on one thick forearm, a blue anchor on the other.
Although the boarding-train supplied but three ladies, the resident railroaders brought many. Several came from the grading camp, social barriers being down. There was no need of going out of town to find fiddlers, for fiddlers in plenty always are to be found in places like Damascus. They go along with the frontier's painted women and come-on men. There is the same difference between violinists and fiddlers of this type as there is between a gentleman and a gent.
The jerries were not dancing men, as a rule, although there were a few nimble exceptions in the gang at Damascus. It was the old-timers who hovered around the battery of beer kegs over against the boarding-train. Two kegs at a time were hoisted on carpenters' trestles, with the proper slant for draining the last drop, every man free to draw for himself as frequently as he was able. The kegs came down from the saloon cold and dripping, and would continue to come until the last jerry was filled to the brim. Charley Burnett was paying for it all.
​Being a Saturday night, there was no worry about steady legs for next day's work. In great amiability the older jerries crowded around the kegs, careful not to waste a drop. For his favored guests, his town cronies and close friends, Burnett had something in the baggage room considerably more potent than beer. Beer was no gentleman's drink at a dance.
Such of Damascus as did not regard it as an unholy affair, came down early in the evening to look on and take enjoyment out of the hilarious charge that enlivened the soft night air. These nonparticipants would go home before the jerries began to knock handles out of their picks. Burnett had a big bunch of cowboys in from his nearest camp.
Little Jack Ryan came to Dr. Hall's office when the dance was beginning to warm up to something worth while. It was then about nine o'clock; the third relay of kegs had come down from the saloon, Mickey Sweat, superintendent of the bung-knocking, giving his orders in loud voice, the way he sung to his gang when lining track. Jack approached from the direction of the kegs, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand.
Burnett's cowboys, as well as all other guests who came carrying arms, had been relieved of their weapons, which were hung around the walls of the baggage-room in barbaric array. The cowboys especially were limbering up to the night's merriment. When they swung the girls they whirled them high, heels clear of the boards, expressing their joy in sharp, quavering yelps.
"Them cow-whackin' boys are gettin' spiced up," said Ryan.
"It does sound like it," Dr. Hall agreed.
​"It's a good job Burnett made them take their goons off, or they'd be shootin' up company property, let 'em take a few more dhrinks. Little good them cow-herdin' fellys are, with their goons swingin' on 'em. Give one of them a linin'-bar and order him to j'int ahead, and where would he turn? He couldn't arn his salt at a man's worruk, and if it's fightin' that's to be done, leave me take a pick-handle in me fist and I'll defate a rigimint of them."
"There isn't a doubt about it," Hall said heartily, without the slightest consideration of the valor or merits of either side.
He only thought that Elizabeth must have reconsidered her promise to come down and stand on the rim of the crowd a while. She was not among the spectators who fringed the platform, or sat off at a distance more aloof on piles of ties and rails. Several mounted visitors were present, but Elizabeth was not among them. Just as well, Hall thought. It was a rough affair, and likely to be rougher.
The station agent, whose name was Nance, inhabited the upper part of the depot with his young wife, who was famed as the prettiest woman in Damascus. He had come to that station only recently from the indefinite region known as the east, which included all the world on the opposite side of Dodge City. Dr. Hall saw him at an upstairs window now, looking down on the boisterous crowd that thronged his planked domain.
Nance was a frail pale man, disproportionately consequential in comparison with his situation, a$ station agents in small places usually are. Even among agents, Nance was an aggravated case. He was bitter over being ​sidetracked in the matter of the dance, his authority overridden by Burnett's appeal. Instead of bringing his handsome wife down and airing his heels on an equal with the rest of them, thus making a place for himself in their regard, he sulked, nursing his abused dignity.
Dr. Hall had discharged his social obligations early in the evening. He had cut some high capers in a quadrille with Mrs. Charles, danced a schottische with Mary, waltzed with Annie. He had a reservation, soon to fall due, with Delia O'Hare, the saloon keeper's daughter, for another waltz. It wasn't so bad. The jerries had gone over the platform with their spiking-mauls, driving down the big nails which winter moisture and spring sun had started. There were six sets of quadrille going at that moment on the long platform, the pale face of the station agent at his window like a sour moon.
Elizabeth had not yet appeared when the ordeal with Delia O'Hare was over. Dr. Hall was relieved, rather than disappointed, to find that she had not come. She might, in that spirit of something glimpsed now and then in her eyes, want to take a fling at the dance. In such event, would she expect him to invite her out? He would not like to assume the responsibility for her caprice, being no authority on social usage in Damascus.
In that connection, Hall noted that none of the aristocracy was present, at least not mingling with the proletarians on the floor. There were only a few families of the exalted in Damascus, such as the circuit judge's, the county officials', and Judge Waters', the judge being president of the bank. Hall had not been introduced into any of these families, except by the adventure that ​opened the Cottrell's door to him. He was, by the very nature of his connection, an outsider.
It was a warm night, the wind not more than a breath in comparison with its daytime vigor, a portent of rain in the gabbling of the frogs along the river. Hall returned to his office sweating from his exertions with the pudgy Delia O'Hare, to find Little Jack Ryan sitting complacently in the door as he had left him, smoking a cigar in honor of the celebration. Jack said Edwin Blewitt, sole representative of England on the boarding-train, was making trouble over among the kegs.
"Somebody'll lay the little divil out flat," Jack said, "and a good job it'll be for him. He has one song in him that he wants to sing when he's dhrinkin', no thought in him of the accoutrements of it. Last winther he sung it when Aggie Mooney, the section boss' daughter, was married to a Swede carpenter be the name of Sorenson. It was a lucky job—"
"What is the song?" Hall inquired, genuinely interested in such a musical sensation.
"I don't know the title of it, if it has one, and the worruds of it I never heard, barrin' the big-innin'. I've heard Blewitt attimpt it many times, but he's never gone past the worruds where he says: 'Hold Hireland, wot 'ast thou come to!' He got along with it to that p'int at Aggie Mooney's weddin', where they sthrangled him off. Siven sthrong men leaped on him and throwed him out on his neck. He's sthrugglin' with 'em now to mount the flure and sing that same song. The man has no dacency in him at all."
"So they'll not allow Blewitt to sing it?" Hall said, ​hoping the little Englishman would succeed in making a start at it, anyway.
"They will not, then," Ryan replied.
Dr. Hall was hanging up his long black coat, having paid his social obligations, and preparing for more serious work. There was a new case, brought in only that evening from the west, a young man with a mangled foot which required an operation. Hall dreaded an amputation. He knew too well the terrible fear a laborer on trackwork had of becoming a maimed man. The doctor would have to bear not only the reproaches of his patient, but the censure, the suspicious distrust thereafter, of nearly every man on the train. A man's capital was taken from him, viewed from the point of an untrained laborer, and rightly viewed, when a hand or foot was taken off. He was a pauper from that day.
It was Hall's hope that the patient would recoup strength during the night to be sent in the morning, with one of his comrades of the gang as nurse on the way, according to the usage, to the hospital at Topeka. But it was a long journey for a case so grave, and all this noise and hilarity was not conducive to the patient's rest.
Coat and vest off, white shirt gleaming in the light of the two guiding lanterns at his door, hung there each evening with religious punctuality by Ryan, Dr. Hall started to the hospital car to see what more he might do to relieve the young jerry's pain. Jack Ryan slewed his knees out of the doorway to let him pass.
"Will you hang around here, Jack, and keep an eye on things?" the doctor requested. "Some of the town boys are sneaking around here to-night."
"I will do that," Jack assented heartily. "Poor young ​"Gallaher! I hear him groanin' and cryin' above the n'ise of the fiddlin', You'll be givin' him a dhrop of something to aise his sufferin', Dochter?"
"Yes, Jack."
"The fut av him is crooshed bad, they say."
"Yes. I'm afraid it'll have to come off, poor fellow!"
"Ah-h-h! Don't say it, Dochter. Save the lad's fut to him, if you have to cut off his head!"
"One would be about as bad as the other, I'm afraid, Jack."
"You know best. Poor Gallaher! You'll be back soon?"
"In a little while."
Jack waved him on with his cigar, grandly expressive of his sufficiency to meet any exigency during his absence. Dr. Hall laid a diagonal course across the track for his hospital car, which stood on a short spur that Bill Chambers had thrown out among some cottonwood trees to accommodate it. The dance was becoming more noisy every minute, with much cowboy yelping and deep railroad laughter, the delighted shrill squeal of the ladies splitting the heavier noise like little red bursts of flame. But it was all so good humored and carelessly happy there did not appear to be a spark of trouble for some hot breath to blow into a blaze.
Another quadrille had begun, a cowboy caller standing on a kerosene barrel high above the dancers, bringing gales and shrieks of laughter by his frills and comical embellishments, even mixing them up in the figures by applying the terms of his trade to the movements of the dance. It seemed such an honest hour of enjoyment that Hall paused a moment to watch them. The dust danced ​up out of the heavy planks made rings around the lanterns.
As he stood there on the border of the merry scene, instrument case in his hand, almost out of reach of the lanterns' sickly light, Dr. Hall saw the station agent appear in the baggage-room door. This door was broad, like a freight car door, running on rollers at the top. It was the only opening into the room, except the smaller door that connected with the agent's office. Nance stood there a moment, peering cautiously around the jamb. Then he closed the door, the noise of its movement drowned in the merriment of the dance.
Dr. Hall grinned in appreciation of the agent's trick. Although the little man had done it in assertion of his authority over the station, he had locked up the possibility of a lot of trouble. There was no window in the room. They scarcely would risk breaking a lock to get at their whisky and guns. A pretty good move, although the agent doubtless never had considered it in that light when he sneaked down and closed the door.