"Then how is it he hasn't got killed himself?"
"That is what we have said a hundred times, Lightning. He has been shot all over, but never mortally. One thing, his looks are enough to scare a man. Somehow he don't look altogether arthly with that white hair of his—and it has been the same colour ever since I have known him—floating back from his face. He goes in general bareheaded when he sets out to shoot, and the hair somehow seems to stand out; not a bit like it does other times. I heard a chap who had been a doctor afore he took to gold-digging say his hair looked as if it had been electrified. Then he gets as white as snow, and his eyes just blaze out. I tell you, sirree, it is something frightful to see him; and when he comes right into a crowded saloon and says to the man, as he always does say in a sort of tone that seems somehow to frizz up the blood of every man that hears it, 'It is time for you to die!' you bet it makes the very hardest man weaken. I tell you I would rather face Judge Lynch and a hundred regulators than stand up agin the doctor when his fit is on; and I have seen men who never missed their mark afore shoot wide of him altogether."
"And he never misses?" Royce asked.
"Miss!" Sim repeated; "the doctor couldn't miss if he tried. I've never known his bullet go a hair's-breadth off the mark. It always hits plumb in the centre of the forehead. If there is more than one of them, the doc. turns on the others and warns them: 'Git out of the camp afore night!' and you bet they git. He gives me a lot of trouble, the doc. does, in the way of nursing. I have put it to him over and over again if it is fair on me that he should be on his back three months every year, 'cause that is about what it's been since I have known him. He allows as it ain't fair, but, as he says, 'It ain't me, Sim, I have got to do it; I am like a Malay running a-muck—them's chaps out somewhere near China, he tells me, as gets mad and goes for a hull crowd—and I can't help it;' and I don't think he can. And yet you know at other times he is just about the kindest chap that breathes. He is always a-nussing the sick and sitting up nights with them, and such like. That is why he got the name of doctor."
"He isn't a doctor really then?" Hugh asked.
"Waal, Lightning, all that's his secret, and ef he thinks to tell you, he can do it. I know he is the best mate a man ever had, and one of the best critters in God's universe, and that is good enough for me. I reckon he must be somewhere down among them Mexikins by this time," he went on, changing the subject abruptly.
"I almost wish one of us had gone with him," Royce said, "so that if he should get found out we might make a better fight of it."
"He ain't likely to get found out," Sim said quietly, "and ef he does he kin fight his way out. I don't know what way the doctor will die, but I allowed years ago that it weren't going to be by a bullet. I ain't skeery about him. Ef I had thought there wur any kind of risk, I would have gone with him, you bet."
It was two hours before the doctor suddenly stood in the moonlight before them. They had been listening attentively for some time, but had not heard the slightest sound until he emerged from the shadow of the ravine.
"Well, doctor, are we on the right scent?"