I've got to eat, and if
this here is the only patient in this whole blamed country, why I'll
have to go you, if it's only for the sake of science,' says he. Then
we all bunched in together and drifted off toward the corral, where old
Pinto was standin', lookin' hopeless and thoughtful. 'Is this the
patient?' says the Doc, sort of sighin'.

"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.

"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways,
sideways, and all around. Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks
Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd
'a' been lookin' him full in the face. Doc he stands thoughtful for
quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down
along Pinto's spine. He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful
subject,' says he. 'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject! Whole osshus
structure exposed!' And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful
in the game."

Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.

"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is
full of little humps--you can see that easy in the springtime. Now old
Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky
Mountain range.

"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he,
'Just like I thought,' says he. 'The patient has suffered a distinct
leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"

"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.

"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.

"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore
scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.

"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more. 'Now, here is a
distant luxation in the lumber regions.' He talked like Pinto had a
wooden leg.

"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced
ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.

"'Now look here, Doc,' says Tom Redmond to him then. 'You go careful.
We all know there's something strange about this here horse; but now,
if he's got any bone pressin' on him anywhere that makes him _run_ the
way he does, why, you be blamed careful not to monkey with that there
particular bone. Don't you touch his _runnin'_ bone, because
_that's_ all right the way it is.'

"'Don't you worry any,' says the Doc. 'All I should do would only be
to increase his nerve supply. In time I could r