"Which it's the single failure that stains the fame of the camp. At that, the flat-out reely belongs to Red Dog; or at least to Pete Bland, for which misguided party the Red Dogs freely acknowledges reespons'bility as belongin' to their outfit.
"This yere Bland's dead now an' deep onder the doomsday sods. Also, he died drinkin' like he'd lived.
"'What's the malady?' Enright asks Peets, when the Doc comes trackin' back, after seein' the finish of Bland.
"'No malady at all, Sam,' says Peets, plumb cheerful an' frisky, same as them case-hardened drug folks allers is when some other sport passes in his checks––'no malady whatsoever. His jag simply stops on centers, as a railroad gent'd say, an' I'm onable to start it ag'in.'
"Was Peets any good as a med'cine man? Son, I'm shocked! Peets is packin' 'round in his professional warbags the dipplomies of twenty colleges, an' is onchallenged besides as the best eddicated sharp personal on the sunset side of the Mississippi. You bet, he onderstands the difference at least between bread pills an' buckshot, which is a heap sight further 149 than some of these yere drug folks ever studies.
"Colonel Sterett, who's fa'rly careful about what he says, reefers to Peets in his Daily Coyote as a 'intellectchooal giant,' an' thar ain't no record of any scoffer comin' squanderin' along to contradict. Mebby you'll say that the omission to do so is doo to the f'rocious attitoode of the Daily Coyote itse'f, techin' contradictions, an' p'int to how that imprint keeps standin' at the head of its editorial columns as a motto, the cynicism:
"'Contradict the Coyote and avoid old age!'
"Thar'd be nothin' in it if you do. That motto's only one of Colonel Sterett's bluffs, one of his witticisms that a-way. You don't reckon that, in a sparsely settled country, whar the pop'lation is few an' far between, the Colonel's goin' to go bumpin' off a subscriber over mebby a mere difference of opinion? The Colonel ain't quite that locoed."
"But about your Wolfville-Red Dog Fourth of July celebration?" I urged.