The Lady Doc

E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

NO, ESSIE TISDALE, I CAN'T JUST SEE YOU IN ANY SUCH SETTING AS THAT
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912

A fellow must have something against himself—he certainly must—to live down here year in and year out and never do a lick of work on a trail like this, that he's usin' constant. Gettin' off half a dozen times to lift the front end of your horse around a point, and then the back end—there's nothin' to it!
Grumbling to himself and talking whimsically to the three horses stringing behind him, Dick Kincaid picked his way down the zigzag, sidling trail which led from the saddleback between two peaks of the Bitter Root Mountains into the valley which still lay far below him.
Quit your crowdin', can't you, Baldy! He laid a restraining hand upon the white nose of the horse following close at his heels. Want to jam me off this ledge and send me rollin' two thousand feet down onto their roof? Good as I've been to you, too!
He stopped and peered over the edge of the precipice along which the faint trail ran.
Looks like smoke. He nodded in satisfaction. Yes, 'tis smoke. Long past dinner time, but then these squaws go to cookin' whenever they happen to think about it. Lord, but I'm hungry! Wish some good-lookin' squaw would get took with me and follow me off, for I sure hates cookin' and housework.
Still talking to himself he resumed the descent, slipping and sliding and digging his heels hard to hold himself back.