“A whiskey glass full three times a day, my friend, and there is a good
chance for even you. I give it to you, without money and without price.”
“But what have I got?” asts Hank.
“You have spinal meningitis,” says the doctor, never batting an eye.
“Will this here cure me?” says Hank.
“It'll cure _anything_,” says the doctor.
Hank he says, “Shucks,” agin, but he took the bottle and pulled the cork
out and smelt it, right thoughtful. And what them fellers had stopped
at our place fur was to have the shoe of the nigh hoss's off hind foot
nailed on, which it was most ready to drop off. Hank, he done it fur a
regulation, dollar-size bottle and they druv on into the village.
Right after supper I goes down town. They was in front of Smith's Palace
Hotel. They was jest starting up when I got there. Well, sir, that
doctor was a sight. He didn't have his duster onto him, but his
stove-pipe hat was, and one of them long Prince Alferd coats nearly to
his knees, and shiny shoes, but his vest was cut out holler fur to show
his biled shirt, and it was the pinkest shirt I ever see, and in the
middle of that they was a diamond as big as Uncle Pat Hickey's wen,
what was one of the town sights. No, sir; they never was a man with more
genuine fashionableness sticking out all over him than Doctor Kirby. He
jest fairly wallered in it.
I hadn't paid no pertic'ler attention to the other feller with him when
they stopped at our place, excepting to notice he was kind of slim
and blackhaired and funny complected. But I seen now I orter of looked
closeter. Fur I'll be dad-binged if he weren't an Injun! There he set,
under that there gasoline lamp the wagon was all lit up with, with
moccasins on, and beads and shells all over him, and the gaudiest turkey
tail of feathers rainbowing down from his head you ever see, and a
blanket around him that was gaudier than the feathers. And he shined and
rattled every time he moved.
That wagon was a hull opry house to itself. It was rolled out in front
of Smith's Palace Hotel without the hosses. The front part was filled
with bottles of medicine. The doctor, he begun business by taking out a
long brass horn and tooting on it. They was about a dozen come, but they
was mostly boys. Then him and the Injun picked up some banjoes and sung
a comic song out loud and clear. And they was another dozen or so
come. And they sung another song, and Pop Wilkins, he closed up the
post-office and come over and the other two veterans of the Grand Army
of the Republicans that always plays checkers in there nights come along
with him. But it wasn't much of a crowd, and the doctor he looked sort
o' worried. I had a good place, right near the hind wheel of the wagon
where he rested his foot occasional, and I seen what he was thinking. So
I says to him:
“Doctor Kirby, I guess the crowd is all gone to the circus agin
to-night.” And all them fellers there seen I knowed him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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