long
ride."

"All right, Doctor," Jacobs responded.

Half an hour later the Jacobs House dining room was crowded for the midday
meal. By natural selection men fell into their places. Stewart and Jacobs,
with Dr. Carey and Pryor Gaines, the young minister school teacher, had a
table to themselves. The other patrons sat at the long board, while the
little side table for two was filled today with Champers, the real estate
man, and the latest arrival, Mr. Thomas Smith, of Wilmington, Delaware.

"Who's the man with the dark mustache up there?" Thomas Smith asked.

"Doc Carey," Champers replied with a scowl.

"You don't seem to need him?" There was a double meaning in the query, and
Champers caught both.

"No ways," he responded.

"Has some influence here?" the stranger asserted rather than questioned.

"A lot. Has the whole town under hoodoo. It's named for him. He has all
the doctoring he can do and won't half charge, so's no other doctor'll
come here. That's no way to build up a town. He'd get up at one o'clock in
the morning to doctor a widder's cow. Now, sure he would, when he knows
even a dead cow'd make business for the butcher to render up into grease
and the cattle dealer to sell another cow."

"Not your style of a man then?" the stranger observed.

"Oh, pshaw, no, but, as I say, he's got the whole country hoodoo'd. Notice
how everybody give him right of way to get his mail first? Why him? And
hear him order the best horse? I'll bet a tree claim in hades right now
that he's off somewhere to doctor some son of a gun out of cussed good
will."

"Who is this James Shirley whose mail he seems to look after?"

There was a half-tone lowering of the voice as Smith pronounced the name,
which was not lost on Champers, whose business was to catch men at all
corners.

"Jim Shirley lives out in one of the rich valleys west. Him and a fellow
named Aydelot have some big notions of things out there. I don't know the
doc's claim to control his mail, but nobody here would deny Carey any
danged thing he wanted." Champers twisted his face in disgust.

"You are in the real estate business here?" Thomas Smith asked after a
pause, as if the subject fell into entirely new lines.

"Yes," Champers answered absently with eyes alert on the opposite wall.

"I'd like to see you later, Mr.--"

"Champers--Darley Champers," and the dealer in land shoved a soiled card
across the table. "Come in any time. This cold snap will soon b