"Why don't you send her back, man?" asked the doctor, with very visible disgust.
"I can't. How can I, when she's blind? She wasn't born that way, Doc, far's I can tell, but she was blind when she come out here. Now, leaving her setting there alone, it makes me feel kind of nervous. You don't blame me, now, do you, Doc?"
"No," said Dr. Barnes gravely, "I don't blame you. You people out here get me guessing sometimes. But you make me tired."
He swept a hand across his face and eyes, just because he was tired. "That's all I'm going to do for you to-day, my man," said he in conclusion. "Go on back home and fight out your own woman problems—that isn't in my line."
"She—I reckon she'd be glad to see you—if she could. You see, she's a lady, Doc. She ain't like us people out here."
The physician looked at him with curious appraisal in his eyes, studying both the man and this peculiar problem which all at once had been brought to view.
"A lady?" said he at last, somewhat disgusted. "If she was any lady she'd never have answered any advertisement such as you two people say you have been fools enough to print."
"Look here! That ain't so," said Sim Gage with sudden heat. "That ain't so none a-tall. Now, she is a lady—I won't let nobody say no different. Only thing, she's a blind lady, that's all. She falls over things when she walks. She got her eyes plumb full of cinders on the train, I expect. Cinders is awful. Why, one time when I was going out to Arizony I got a cinder in my eye, and I want to tell you——"
"Listen at him lie, Doc!" interrupted Wid Gardner. "He never was nowhere near Arizony in his life. That's his favoright lie. But he's telling you the truth, near as I know it, about that woman. She did come out to be a housekeeper, and she did come out here blind. Now, couldn't she be a lady and that be true?"
"How can I tell?" said Dr. Barnes. "All I know; is that you people came down here and made me break loose from the best fish I've seen since I've been out here. My best fish of a lifetime—I'll never get hold of a trout like that again."