Claim Number One

by George W. Ogden

After a conference with Walker in the middle of the morning, Bentley decided that it would be well to wait until afternoon before beginning anew their search for the doctor. In case he had been called in his professional capacity–for people were being born in Comanche, as elsewhere–it would be exceedingly embarrassing to him to have the authorities lay hands on him as an estray.

“But his instrument-case is under his cot in the tent,” persisted Agnes, who was for immediate action.

“He may have had an emergency call out of the crowd,” explained Bentley.

In spite of his faith in the doctor, he was beginning to lean toward Walker’s view of it. Slavens was big enough to take care of himself, and experienced enough to keep his fingers out of other people’s porridge. Besides that, there had to be a motive behind crime, and he knew of none in the doctor’s case. He was not the kind of man that the sluggers and holdups of the place practiced upon, sober and straight as he always had been. Then it must be, argued Bentley, that the doctor had his own reason for remaining away. His unexpected luck might have unbalanced him and set him off on a celebration such as was common in such cases. 123

“Very well,” agreed Agnes. “I’ll wait until noon, and then I’m going to the police.”

Being a regularly incorporated city, Comanche had its police force. There were four patrolmen parading about in dusty déshabillé with prominent firearms appended, and a chief who presided over them in a little box-house, where he might be seen with his coat off and a diamond in the front of his white shirt, smoking cigars all day, his heels on the window-sill.

As Dr. Slavens had not appeared at the time designated as her limit by Agnes, Bentley went with her to the chief’s office to place the matter before him. It was well that they did not go there for sympathy, and unfortunate that they expected help. The chief received them with disdainful aloofness which amounted almost to contempt. He seemed to regard their appeal to him for the elucidation of the doctor’s mystery as an affront.

The chief was a short man, who vainly believed that he could sustain his trousers in dignified position about his hipless body with a belt. The result of this misplaced confidence was a gap between waistcoat and pantaloons, in which his white shirt appeared like a zebra’s stripe.

He was a much-bedizened and garnitured man, for all that he lacked a coat to hang his ornaments upon. Stones of doubtful value and unmistakable size ornamented the rings upon his stocky fingers, and dangled in an elaborate “charm” upon the chain of his watch. 124 The only name they ever addressed him by in Comanche other than his official title was Ten-Gallon. Whether this had its origin in his capacity, or his similarity of build to a keg, is not known, but he accepted it with complacency and answered to it with pride.

Ten-Gallon was the chief guardian of the interests of the gamblers’ trust of Comanche, which was responsible for his elevation to office–for even the office itself–and which contributed the fund out of which his salary came. It is a curious anomaly of civilization, everywhere under the flag which stretched its stripes in the wind above the little land-office at Comanche, that law-breaking thrives most prosperously under the protection of law.