There were flush times and slack times in Pawnee Bend, as in towns where the current of business ran a bit more honestly on the whole than it rippled there.
The railroaders did not count for a great deal among the parasites who spread their snares in that town, for the italians were not spenders, and the old-time tarriers turned everything loose in one grand burn-up right after payday, leaving nothing to dribble along until the next. It was from the men spread wide over the range in charge of its countless cattle, and those who rode in daily with herds to load, that the profit came.
If they couldn't get a man's money one way in Pawnee Bend they got it another. Knockout drops were no rural fiction in that town, and a knockout without drops by some limber-wristed bartender was one established method of hastening the parting of a fool and his money.
Pawnee Bend was an incorporated town of the most inconsequential class provided for under the laws of that state. It had its mayor and town council, and a marshal to represent the law. This marshal was a notable man, whose name was known from the Arkansas to the Pecos.
Ford Kellogg had progressed westward from Abilene, where he made his start, marking his way with slain men. He was a professional city marshal, a calling which, in the days of these frontier Kansas towns, was widely different from the somnolent occupation it came to be long afterwards, when the butt of a billiard cue would do instead of two guns. Kellogg killed with
