A deep sigh greeted this, which showed that Curly’s audience was in full sympathy.

“You always felt like puttin’ the saddle on to Pinto hind end to, he was so cross-eyed,” he resumed ruminatingly, “but still you couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for him, neither.  Now, he had a right pained and grieved look in his face all the time.  I reckon he thought this was a hard sort of a world to get along in.  It is.  A cross-eyed man has a hard enough time, but a cross-eyed horse—­well, you don’t know how much trouble he can be for hisself, and every one else around him.

“Now, here we was, fixed up like I told you.  Mr. Allopath is over on Sweetwater creek, Mr. Homeopath is maybe in the last stages of starvation.  Old Pinto looks plumb hopeless, and all us fellers is mostly hopeless too, owin’ to his uncertain habits in a horse race, yet knowin’ that it ain’t perfessional for us not to back a Bar T horse that can run as fast as this one can.

“About then along comes Mr. Ostypath.  This was just about thirty days before the county fair at Socorro, and there was money hung up for horse races over there that made us feel sick to think of.  We knew we could go out of the cow-punchin’ business for good if we could just only onct get Pinto over there, and get him to run the right way for a few brief moments.

“Was he game?  I don’t know.  There never was no horse ever got clost enough to him in a horse race to tell whether he was game or not.  He might not get back home in time for supper, but he would shore run industrious.  Say, I talked in a telyphome onct.  The book hung on the box said the telyphome was instantaneous.  It ain’t.  But now this Pinto, he was a heap more instantaneous than a telyphome.

“As I was sayin’, it was long about now Mr. Ostypath comes in.  He talks with the boss about locatin’ around in here.  Boss studies him over a while, and as there ain’t been anybody sick for over ten years he tries to break it to Mr. Ostypath gentle that the Bar T ain’t a good place for a doctor.  They have some conversation along in there, that-a-way, and Mr. Ostypath before long gets the boss interested deep and plenty.  He says there ain’t no such a thing as gettin’ sick.  We all knew that before; but he certainly floors the lot when he allows that the reason a feller don’t feel good, so as he can eat tenpenny nails, and make a million dollars a year, is always because there is something wrong with his osshus structure.

“He says the only thing that makes a feller have rheumatism, or dyspepsia, or headache, or nosebleed, or red hair, or any other sickness, is that something is wrong with his nervous system.  Now, it’s this-a-way.  He allows them nerves is like a bunch of garden hose.  If you put your foot on the hose, the water can’t run right free.  If you take it off, everything’s lovely.  ‘Now,’ says Mr. Ostypath, ’if, owin’ to some luxation, some leeshun, some temporary mechanical disarrangement of your osshus structure, due to a oversight of a All-wise Providence, or maybe a fall off’n a buckin’ horse, one of them bones of yours gets to pressin’ on a nerve, why, it ain’t natural you ought to feel good.  Now, is it?’ says he.