"'It are,' says Tom Redmond.
"Doc he walks up to old Pinto, and has a look at him, frontways, sideways, and all around. Pinto raises his head up, snorts, and looks Doc full in the face; leastwise, if he'd 'a' been any other horse, he'd 'a' been lookin' him full in the face. Doc he stands thoughtful for quite a while, and then he goes and kind of runs his hand up and down along Pinto's spine. He growed plumb enthusiastic then, 'Beautiful subject,' says he. 'Be-yoo-tiful ostypathic subject! Whole osshus structure exposed!' And Pinto shore was a dream if bones was needful in the game."
Curly paused for another chew of tobacco, then went on again.
"Well, it's like this, you see; the backbone of a man or a horse is full of little humps—you can see that easy in the springtime. Now old Pinto's back, it looked like a topygraphical survey of the whole Rocky Mountain range.
"Doc he runs his hand up and down along this high divide, and says he, 'Just like I thought,' says he. 'The patient has suffered a distinct leeshun in the immediate vicinity of his vaseline motor centres.'"
"You mean the vaso-motor centres," suggested Dan Anderson.
"That's what I said," said Curly, aggressively.
"Now, when we all heard Doc say them words we knowed he was shore scientific, and we come up clost while the examination was progressin'.
"'Most extraordinary,' says Doc, feelin' some more. 'Now, here is a distant luxation in the lumber regions.' He talked like Pinto had a wooden leg.
"'I should diagnose great cerebral excitation, along with pernounced ocular hesitation,' says Doc at last.