"Well," observed Mr. Masterson, turning on his heel for a stroll down the street, "I won't dispute all day with you. Rattlesnake's of full age, free, and half white, and if he wants to wed Calamity it's his American privilege."

"Which you could say the same," returned Cimarron Bill, "if Rattlesnake was aimin' at sooicide."

It is to be supposed that Miss Barndollar and Rattlesnake Sanders would have drifted quietly and uneventfully to the altar had it not been for the intervention of an accident. Rattlesnake was aiding Mr. Trask in cutting out a particular mule from the bunch in his corrals. His pony, slipping with its unshod hoofs, fell and in falling broke Rattlesnake's left leg-both bones-below the knee.

There was no resident surgeon in Dodge. There had been; but an Eastern past having found him out, he vanished between sun and sun. In the emergency presented by Rattlesnake's fractured leg a surgeon was summoned from Cimarron.

The Cimarron pract.i.tioner was a young, sappy, callow, pinefeather form of scientist, excessively in the springtime of his career, and no one to excite confidence. Rattlesnake Sanders debated him with distrustful eye, but, since nothing better presented, was fain to surrender to him his broken leg. The sappy one set the leg and withdrew, programming a call for the next day.

Everything, according to Cimarron Bill who came upon the scene an hour after the sappy one departed, was wrong about that leg-setting. The bandage was an error, the splints were a crime. Their plain effect was to torture the stricken Rattlesnake. The views of Rattlesnake fell in with those of Cimarron Bill. Between groans and maledictions, heaped upon the sappy one, he wholly agreed with him.

The pair were alone at the moment, and acting in concert they removed the offending bandages and splints. Giving the patient a bottle of arnica wherewith to temporarily console his aches, Cimarron, with a fine conceit of his powers that commonly would have challenged admiration, walked over to the carpenter shop in Mr. Trask's corral, and fashioned new splints after original designs of his own. Then, with the help of Rattlesnake, he re-set the leg and restored the bandages as seemed to him best and mete. Following these deeds the worthy Cimarron and his patient took a drink, looked upon their work, and p.r.o.nounced it good.

Those feats in medicine and surgery were performed in an upper chamber of the Wright House which on the spur of the moment had been set aside as a hospital in the interests of Rattlesnake Sanders. The first to learn of them, beyond the two therein engaged, was Miss Barndollar. She had been with her beloved Rattlesnake while the lawful sappy one was busy about his repairs. Coming again into the room following the exploits of Cimarron Bill, her glance of love was sharp to mark the change.

"Whatever's up?" asked the wondering Miss Barndollar.

"Nothin's up," replied Rattlesnake. "Only me an' Cimarron, not approvin'

of them malpractices of that jacklaig doctor, has had a new deal. An'

that reminds me," he continued, turning to Cimarron, who was surveying the bandaged result with a satisfied air; "give me my pistol. I'll keep it in bed with me a whole lot, an' when that igneramus comes chargin' in to-morry mornin' I'll stand him off."

"But you mustn't shoot," warned Cimarron, as he brought the weapon.

"When he shows up, tell him to pull his freight. An' if he hesitates, sort o' take to menacin' at him with the gun. But don't shoot none; Bat's gettin' that partic'ler he wouldn't stand it."

The composed manners of both Rattlesnake and Cimarron worked upon the credulity of Miss Barndollar. In the face of so much confidence it was difficult to doubt. Still, she cross-questioned Cimarron when she found him alone on the Wright House porch.

"Be you sh.o.r.e," she asked, "that Rattlesnake's laig'll come right? Which if it's out o' plumb when he's cured, I'll sh.o.r.ely make you hard to find!"

"Rattlesnake's laig," returned Cimarron, rea.s.suringly, "will eemerge from them splints as straight as Luke Short's deal box, an' said implement of faro-bank has allers been reckoned the straightest thing in town. You need give yoursel'f no oneasiness, Calamity."

"Which I'll take your word," responded Miss Barndollar. "But if that laig ain't all that heart could wish, I'll keep you plenty oneasy for the balance of your days!"

Mr. Masterson, when given word of the matter, was somewhat troubled by Cimarron's unlooked for debut in the field of surgery. Like Miss Barndollar, Mr. Masterson asked questions.

"Did you ever set anybody's leg before?" he inquired.

"Did I ever set any sport's laigs before!" retorted Cimarron Bill, with a yawn of careless indifference. "I've set twenty cows' laigs, an'

what's the difference? Thar's nothin' to the play. It's as easy as fittin' together the two ends of a broken stick, with your eyes shet. Of course them doctor sharps raise the long yell about it bein' difficult, aimin' tharby to bluff you out o' your bankroll."

Upon his arrival next day, the sappy one was much confounded to find his patient propped up in bed, smoking a bad cigar. His confusion was increased when the patient drew a Colt's-45 from beneath the blankets, surveying him the while with a loathely scowl. The sappy one thought that Rattlesnake Sanders had added insanity to a broken leg. This theory was strengthened when the forbidding Rattlesnake waved him from the room with his weapon. The sappy one went; he said that he loved his art, but not well enough to attempt its practice within point-blank range of a hostile six-shooter. When the sappy one found himself again in the street, Jack, who, although the _Weekly Planet_ had been dead for months, was still beset of all the instincts of a newsmaker, laid bare to him the interference of Cimarron Bill in the affairs of that fractured leg. The sappy one waxed exceedingly bitter, and spoke freely of Cimarron Bill.

"He called you an empiric," said Jack, relating the strictures of the sappy one to Cimarron an hour later.

"A what?"

"An empiric."

"Spell it," and Cimarron drew a deep, resentful breath.

"E-m-p-i-r-i-c."

"Whatever does it mean?"

"It means a four-flush," said Jack, who was liberal in definitions.

"I won't shoot him," observed Cimarron, after a profound pause; "no I won't spring no gun on him, for that might prove disturbin' to the public peace. Which I'll merely burn him at the stake."

The sappy one was miles away from Dodge when these flame and f.a.got threats were formulated; and as he took pains to remain away thereafter, he gave Cimarron Bill scant chance to execute them. At long range, however, he continued to make his malignant influence felt. He sent for Miss Barndollar and told her that Rattlesnake's one remaining hope was to have that mismanaged leg re-broken and re-set. Failing these measures, the sappy one gave it as his professional opinion that the leg would look like an interrogation point. As an upcome, Miss Barndollar came back weeping to Dodge.

"But the laig's O. K.," remonstrated Rattlesnake Sanders, when Miss Barndollar unfurled to him the sappy one's predictions. "It's comin'

round as solid as a sod house."

"But you'll do it to please me, Rattlesnake," coaxed Miss Barndollar.

"I'm a proud girl, an' I don't want to wed no gent with a laig like a corkscrew."

Rattlesnake was shaken by the tender persistency of Miss Barndollar.

However, he said that he must see Cimarron Bill.

"What do you think yourse'f, Cimarron?" asked Rattlesnake earnestly, when the worthy Cimarron had been rounded up by Jack for the conference.

"That limb," observed Cimarron, judgmatically, and c.o.c.king a wise eye like a crow looking into a jug, "that limb, as framed up, is a credit to us both. It's simply aces before the draw! Don't tech it."

"But Calamity allows she'll throw me down about that weddin'."

Miss Barndollar was not in the room, and Cimarron took on a look of grim cunning.

"Ev'ry cloud has a silver linin'," remarked Cimarron, enigmatically.

"Rattlesnake, this yere will turn out the luckiest laig you ever had."

Following these foggy announcements, Cimarron said that it would be a point of honour with him to prevent any intromission with the leg of Rattlesnake Sanders.

"This offensive sawbones," he explained, "publically allooded to me as a empirick. In so doin' he compels me to go through the way I'm headed. I shall consider any attempt to break that laig again as an attack upon my character, an' conduct myse'f accordin' with a gun."

"That sounds on the level," observed Rattlesnake to Miss Barndollar, who had come into the room in time to hear the ultimatum of Cimarron. "For us to go tamperin' with this yere member that a-way, would be equiv'lent to castin' aspersions on Cimarron."

"You never loved me!" murmured Miss Barndollar, beginning to cry.

"Calamity!" exclaimed Rattlesnake, reproachfully. "You're my soul!"

"An' yet," she sobbed, rocking herself in her chair, "you refooses my least request! Is it love to ast me to go through life as the wife of a party with a game laig?"

"But Calamity!"

"I knows gents who'd break their hearts for me, let alone their laigs!"

Rattlesnake looked appealingly at Cimarron, who was bearing himself with studied dignity.

"Which you'll nacherally thank me a heap for this some day!" said Cimarron, replying to the look.