peakin' mental, he ain't better than an
even break with turkey gobblers. Even what he calls his science turns
finally out with him to be but the accepted ignorance of to-day; an'
he puts in every to-morrow of his existence provin' what a onbounded
jackass rabbit he's been the day before. It's otherwise with them
lower anamiles; what they knows they knows."

Plainly, something had to be done to fortify my old friend. I fell
back, quite as a matter of course, upon that first aid to the injured,
another drink, and motioned the black waiter to the rescue. It did my
old friend good, that drink, the first fruits of which easier if not
better condition being certain fresh accusations against himself.

"The trooth is, I'm a whole lot onused to these yere Fo'th of Jooly
outbursts; an' so I ondoubted suffers from 'em more keenly, that
a-way, than the av'rage gent. You see we never has none of 'em in
Wolfville; leastwise we never does but once. On that single festive
occasion we shore stubs our toe some plentiful, stubs it to that
degree, in fact, that we never feels moved to buck the game ag'in.
Once is enough for Wolfville.

"Which it's the single failure that stains the fame of the camp. At
that, the flat-out reely belongs to Red Dog; or at least to Pete
Bland, for which misguided party the Red Dogs freely acknowledges
reespons'bility as belongin' to their outfit.

"This yere Bland's dead now an' deep onder the doomsday sods. Also, he
died drinkin' like he'd lived.

"'What's the malady?' Enright asks Peets, when the Doc comes trackin'
back, after seein' the finish of Bland.

"'No malady at all, Sam,' says Peets, plumb cheerful an' frisky, same
as them case-hardened drug folks allers is when some other sport
passes in his checks--'no malady whatsoever. His jag simply stops on
centers, as a railroad gent'd say, an' I'm onable to start it ag'in.'

"Was Peets any good as a med'cine man? Son, I'm shocked! Peets is
packin' 'round in his professional warbags the dipplomies of twenty
colleges, an' is onchallenged besides as the best eddicated sharp
personal on the sunset side of the Mississippi. You bet, he
onderstands the difference at least between bread pills an' buckshot,
which is a heap sight further than some of these yere drug folks ever
studies.

"Colonel Sterett, who's fa'rly careful about what he says, reefers to
Peets in his _Daily Coyote_ as a 'intellectchooal giant,' an' thar
ain't no record of any scoffer comin'