United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Where, last month, the cactus bloomed, tar-paper shacks surrounded by chicken-wire, kid-proof fences was home the next to families of tow-heads. Crowheart, the citizens of the newly incorporated town told each other, was booming right. They came in prairie schooners, travel-stained and weary, their horses thin and jaded from the long, heavy pull across the sandy trail of the sagebrush desert.
Jackson could not truthfully say that she ever had felt that she had exhausted Crowheart, but she agreed weakly "Uh-huh." "I had so many new and delightful experiences, too." Mrs. Symes smiled a sweetly reminiscent smile. "You musta had." "Going out in the train we had cantelope with cracked ice in it. You must try it sometimes, Mrs. Jackson it's delicious."
She liked the feeling that she already had become a factor in the affairs of Crowheart and she intended to remain one. The practice of medicine with Dr. Harpe was frankly for personal gain. No ideals had influenced her in the choice of her profession and her practice of it had developed no ambition save the single one of building up a bank account.
The clairvoyant milliner was barred owing to the fact that she was "in trade," but "Tinhorn Frank," who no longer sat drunk and collarless in his dirt-floored saloon fumbling a deck of cards thick with grime, went down upon the list as "Mr. Rhodes," the citizens of Crowheart learning his name for the first time when it appeared on the sign above the door of his new real estate office.
Then he screamed. He had not intended to scream, but the monster had moved toward him, hypnotizing him with its stare. He could see clearly the poisonous vapor which it was said to exhale! He screamed again and a man's scream is a sound not to be forgotten. The Dago Duke "had them," as Crowheart phrased it, and "had them" right.
In Crowheart, she believed that through her strong personality and the support of Andy P. Symes she could accomplish nearly anything she undertook; but she knew that in the great world outside where she had discovered Van Lennop was a factor, she would be only an eccentric female doctor, amusing perhaps, mildly interesting, even, but entirely inconsequential.
That she had never been known to refuse a drink to the knowledge of any inhabitant was one of the stock jokes of the town, yet it was never urged against her. Already she had come to be pointed out to strangers with a kind of affectionate pride as a local celebrity a "character." She had a strong attraction for the women of Crowheart an attraction that amounted to fascination.
A diploma doesn't mean so much in these days of cheap medical colleges where they grind 'em out by the hundreds; you need only know where to go and have the price." "This is illuminating." Symes wondered at her candor. She seemed very sure of her position with him, he thought. "What difference does it make where your diploma's from to jays like these?" She waved her arm at Crowheart.
"I am sorry for what you have told me, since, if what seems threatening comes to pass, Crowheart will be only a middle class, commonplace town of which it has a thousand prototypes. Its strongest attraction now is its western flavor, the lingering atmosphere of the frontier.
In his shirt sleeves, minus his cuffs, with his brain in a lather, one might say, Sylvanus Starr painted a picture of the coming Utopia, experiencing in so doing such joys of creation as he had not known since his removal from the obituary department. And reading, the citizens of Crowheart rejoiced or envied according to their individual natures. Dr.
Word Of The Day