d to have debates about which does the
most harm--fire or water? Nowadays I bet they'd have: Which does the
most harm--doctors or lawyers? Well, anyway, there Pete was in
jail--"

"Please tell in your own simple words just how this trouble began," I
broke in. "What did Pete fire the shot for and who stopped it? Now
then!"

"What! Don't you know about that? Well, well! So you never heard about
Pete sending this medicine man over the one-way trail? I'll have to tell
you, then. It was three years ago. Pete was camped about nine miles the
other side of Kulanche, on the Corporation Ranch, and his little
year-old boy was took badly sick. I never did know with what.
Diphtheria, I guess. And I got to tell you Pete is crazy about babies.
Always has been. Thirty years ago, when my own baby hadn't been but a
few weeks born, Lysander John had to be in Red Gap with a smashed leg
and arm, and I was here alone with Pete for two months of one winter.
Say, he was better than any trained nurse with both of us, even if my
papoose was only a girl one! Folks used to wonder afterward if I hadn't
been afraid with just Pete round. Good lands! If they'd ever seen him
cuddle that mite and sing songs to it in Injin about the rain and the
grass! Anyway, I got to know Pete so well that winter I never blamed him
much for what come off.

"Well, this yearling of his got bad and Pete was in two minds. He
believed in white doctors with his good sense, but he believed in Injin
doctors with his superstition, which was older. So he tried to have one
of each. There was an old rogue of a medicine man round here then from
the reservation up north. He'd been doing a little work at haying on
the Corporation, but he was getting his main graft selling the Injins
charms and making spells over their sick; a crafty old crook playing on
their ignorance--understand? And Pete, having got the white doctor from
Kulanche, thought he'd cinch matters by getting the medicine man, too.
At that, I guess one would of been about as useful as the other, the
Kulanche doctor knowing more about anthrax and blackleg than he did
about sick Injin babies.

"The medicine man sees right off how scared Pete is for his kid and
thinks here's a chance to make some big money. He looks at the little
patient and says yes, he can cure him, sure; but it'll be a hard job and
he can't undertake it unless Pete comes through with forty dollars and
his span of mules. But Pete ain't got forty dolla