wasn't a doctor within a thousand
miles, and no need for one. If one of the boys got shot up much, we
always found some way to laundry him and sew him together again without
no need of a diplomy. No one ever got sick; and, of course, no one
ever did die of his own accord, the way they do back in the States."

"What's it all about, Curly?" drawled Dan Anderson. "You can't tell a
story worth a cent." Curly paid no attention to him.

"The first doctor that ever come out here for to alleviate us fellers,"
he went on, "why, he settled over on the Sweetwater. He was a allopath
from Bitter Creek. What medicine that feller did give! He gradual
drifted into the vet'inary line.

"Then there come a homeopath--that was after a good many women folks
had settled in along the railroad over west. Still, there wasn't much
sickness, and I don't reckon the homeopath ever did winter through. I
was livin' with the Bar T outfit on the Oscura range, at that time.

"Next doctor that come along was a ostypath." Curly took a chew of
tobacco, and paused a moment reflectively.

"I said the first feller drifted into vet'inary lines, didn't I?" he
resumed. "Well, the ostypath did, too. Didn't you never hear about
that? Why, he ostypathed a horse!"

"Did _what_?" asked Tom Osby sitting up; for hitherto there had seemed
no need to listen attentively.

"Yes, sir," he went on, "he ostypathed a horse for us. The boys they
gambled about two thousand dollars on that horse over at Socorro. It
was a cross-eyed horse, too."

"What's that?" Doc Tomlinson objected. "There never was such a thing
as a cross-eyed horse."

"Oh, there wasn't, wasn't there?" said Curly. "Well, now, my friend,
when you talk that-a-way, you simply show me how much you don't know
about horses. This here Bar T horse was as cross-eyed as a saw-horse,
until we got him ostypathed. But, of course, if you don't believe what
I say, there's no use tellin' you this story at all."

"Oh, go on, go on," McKinney spoke up, "don't pay no attention to Doc."

"Well," Curly resumed, "that there horse was knowed constant on this
range for over three years. He was a outlaw, with cream mane and tail,
and a _pinto_ map of Europe, Asia, and Africa wrote all over his ribs.
Run? Why, that horse could run down a coyote as a moral pastime. We
used him to catch jack rabbits with between meals. It wasn't no
trouble for him to _run_. The trouble was to tell when he was goin'
to