“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 dollars or forty cents, and the Kulanche doctor has got to the mules already, having a lien on ’em for twenty-five.

“Pete hurried over and put the proposition up to me.  He says his little chief is badly sick and he’s got a fine white doctor, but will I stake him to enough to get this fine Injin doctor?—­thus making a cure certain.  Well, I tore into the old fool for wanting to let this depraved old medicine man tamper with his baby, and I warned him the Kulanche doctor probably wasn’t much better.  Then I tell him he’s to send down for the best doctor in Red Gap at my expense and keep him with the child till it’s well.  I tell him he can have the whole ranch if it would cure his child, but not one cent for the Injin.

“Well, the poor boy is about half convinced I’m right, but he’s been an Injin too long to believe it all through.  He went off and sent for the Red Gap doctor, but he can’t resist making another try for the Injin one; and that old scoundrel holds out for his price.  Pete wants him to wait for his pay till haying is over; but he won’t because he thinks Pete can get the money from me now if he really has to have it.  Pete must of been crazy for fair about that time.

“‘All right,’ says he; ‘you can cure my little chief?’

“The crook says he can if the money is in his hand.

“‘All right,’ says Pete again; ’but if my little chief dies something bad is going to happen to you.’

“That’s about all they ever found out concerning this threat of Pete’s, though another Injin who heard it said that Pete said his brother-in-law would make the trouble—­not Pete himself.  Which was likely true enough.

“Pete’s little chief died the night the Red Gap doctor got up here.  Ten minutes later this medicine man had hitched up his team, loaded his plunder into a wagon, and was pouring leather into his horses to get back home quick.  He knew Pete never talks just to hear himself talk.  They found him about thirty miles on his way—­slumped down in the wagon bed, his team hitched by the roadside.  There had been just one careful shot.  As he hadn’t been robbed—­he had over” a hundred dollars in gold on him—­it pointed a mite too strong at Pete after his threat.