“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 practitioner 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 pronounced 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.”