Damascus jumped to its guns with the fervor of a righteous cause. Major Cottrell spread the news of Simrall's impending raid, throwing off his weakness as a bedridden person is said to overcome his sickness in the menace of death by fire.
There were some who questioned the report at first, inquiring its source, the habit of humor being so well established in the town as to cause its citizens to poke every tied bag and turn every buffalo chip to look for the joke before accepting anything for what it appeared on the outside to be. Several young men leaped the saddled horses which always could be found hitched around the square, and rode off in the direction of Simrall to investigate, and the county clerk, who owned a spyglass, mounted the court house tower to take a peek at the road, which undulated over the hummocks like the picture of a tapeworm in the almanac.
It was a true report, the county clerk said, coming down from the tower white around the gills, sweating, with cobwebs across his extensive forehead, which occupied all the ground where his forelock used to be. He calculated them to be about three miles out of Simrall, with five to come. There were four wagonloads of them, escorted by a troop of horsemen, which appeared to number twenty or thirty. There were enough of them,
