Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-02-28

Flight upon any terms then became
the order of the day, and il the place
had been suddenly plague-smitten the
panicky exodus could scarcely have
been more headlong.
Kent stayed partly because local
attorney for the railroad was as neces-
sary in CASTOR the bereaved as in Cas-
ton the strenuous; partly, also, be-
cause he was a student of his kind.
and the broken city gave him labor
atory opportunities for the study of
human nature at its worst.
He marked the raising of the black
flag as the CASTOR castaways, getting
sorrily afioat one by one, cleared their
decks for action. Some Bluebeard ad-
miral there will always be for such
stressful occasions, and David Kent,
standing aside and growing cynical
day by day, laid even chances on Hawk,
the ex-district attorney, on Major
Guilford, and on one Jasper G. Bucks,
sometime mayor of CASTOR the rides
cent.
Afterward he was to learn that he
had moderated the gifts of the former
mayor. For when the famine time was
fully come, and there were no more
argosies drifting Gastonward for the
buccaneers to sack and scuttle, it was
Jasper G. Bucks who called a con-
ference of his fellow werwolves, set
forth his new cast for fortune, and
brought the junto, the child of sheer
desperation fiercely at bay, into be-
ing.
1t was in the autumn of that first
cataclysmic year that Secretary Lor-
ing, travelling from Boston to the
state capital on a mission for the West
ern Pacific, stopped over train with
Kent. After a rather dispiriting din
ner in the deserted Mid-Continent
cafe, and some blowing of the field of
recollection in Kent's rooms in the
Farquhar building, they took the de-
serted street in the golden twilight to
walk to the railway station.
1T was decent thing for you to
do-stopping over train with me.
Grantham," said the host, when the
five squares intervening had been hall
measured. 81 have had all kinds of a
time out here in this God-forsaker
desert, but never until to-day any
thing approaching a chummy hour
with a man l know and care for"
Kent had not spoken since they
| had felt their way out of the dark
lower hall of the Farquhar building
Up to this point the talk had been
| pointedly reminiscent; of the men OF
| their first university year, of mutual
| friends in the far-away Goods coun-
| try to eastward, of the Gastonian epic
| of all things save only two-the ex.
lies cast for fortune in the untame6
| west, and one other.
THAT brings us little nearer to the
things that be-and to your prospects
| David" said the guest. How are
you fixed here?"
Kent shrugged.
Castor is dead, as you see; too
| dead to bury"
why don't you get out of it, them
| II shall some day perhaps. Up K
date there has been no place to go to
and no good way to arrive. Lik
some thousands of others, I've made al
ass of myself here, Loring."
by coming, you mean? Oh, dom
know about that. You have had som.
hard knocks, l take it, but if you ar
the same David Kent / used to know
they have made a bigger man of you.
think SOP"
'eI'd bet on it. We have had tn
Castor epic done out for us in tn
newspapers. No man could liv
through such an experience as yo
must have had without growing
few inches. Hello! What's this?"
A turned corner had brought Their
in front of lighted building in Texa
street with struggling crowd gath
cred about the porticoed entrance. A
| Loring spoke, there was rattle c
: snare drums followed by the dunn
| dunn of the bass, and brass ban
ramped out the opening measures {
} campaign march.
ct is rally" said Kent, when the
had passed enough beyond the ION
of brass-throated clamorings to max
| the reply audible. 81 told you thu
| ehC 1ooCOh WOIl-pdCh udu SOuc lit
politics. We are in the throes of
state election, and there is to be a DC
litical speech-making at the oper
house tonight, with Bucks in the It'll
role. And there is a fair measure
, the deafness of the town: When 70
see people flock together like that I
hear brass band play, it means on
of two things: that the town hash
outgrown the country village stag
or else it has passed that and all othe
stages and is we'll on it's way to til
cemetery"
"That is one way of putting it," Lt
ring rejoined. IF things are as ba
3 as that, it's time you were moving OF
2 don't you think?"
Il guess So" was the lack-luster r,
Spouse. "Only don't know where |
go, or what to do when / get there