They hung the big fish to the side of the boat. "I'll show you how to skin a channel-cat," said Burney as he drew forth his steel pincers. "We'll peddle him out this evening." It was a joyous pair that climbed the hill leading to the little town, the big fish swinging on a pole between them. There were plenty of buyers, and as they returned to the boat, Burney said to Shawn, "You'll be a great fisherman some day, Shawn," and Shawn said, "I'm goin' to be a doctor."
"What kind of a doctor, Shawn? steam or hoss doctor?"
"Neither one. I'm goin' to be a reg'ler doctor, like Doctor Hissong."
"You'll be a great fisherman, some day, Shawn"
"Shawn, this doctorin' business is a good deal like hoss tradin'; you've got to take your chance on a short hoss and blemishes, and some of the doctors look like they interfere powerfully with themselves—you know how a hoss interferes. I calkerlate that a good doctor is mighty rare, and after all, it's a good deal more in his encouraging talk than his medicine. You never knowed old Doc' Felix Simpson—he was away before your time and practiced in the country four miles above Skarrow. Doc' Simpson would have his joke, and to hear him laugh would cure 'most any case of ailment. Lawse! how I used to love to hear him tell about old P'silly Orton and the time she played dead. Doc' Simpson said that aunt P'silly took a notion that she wanted her old man to raise her some money to take a trip down to the city, and as the money wa'nt raisable, P'silly took on and 'lowed that she was goin' to die, and she kept on havin' sinkin' spells and such, and bye and bye she lays on the bed and wauls up her eyes and breathes her last, to all appearances. Uncle Buck gits skeered and digs out for Doc' Simpson, and when Doc' Simpson gits thar, thar was the old neighbor wimmen tryin' to comfort uncle Buck and sayin', 'Ba'r your burden, Buck; the Lord has give and the Lord has tuck away.' Doc' Simpson goes up to P'silly, who was layin' with folded hands, and feels her pulse, and says, 'Yes, she is dead, pore soul'; and they all bust out cryin' and the hounds begin to howl, and Doc' comes up to the bed and says, 'Bein' she is dead, I'll pour a little of this nitric acid in her yeer to make shore.' And as he took the stopper out of the bottle, P'silly opens one eye an' says, 'Doc' Simpson, if you pour that in my yeer, you'll never straddle that hoss of yourn again.'
"There's another sort of doctor, Shawn, the magic-healers, the sort as cures by the layin' on of hands and rubbin'. Pelican Smith was one of this sort. He practiced up on the Kentucky river and made a sort of circuit down in our country. Sometimes thar would come a report of somebody gittin' well, but when anybody died, Pelican always said, 'The Lord loved him best.' You never knowed Pelican. He was all sorts of a character—got his nickname from his nose—they weren't no other one like it, and him and that nose made history in the river country. His first marriage was to Addie Stringer, up at Ball's Landing, and it was all right as fer as it went. They started on their honeymoon from Ball's Landing on the steamer Little Tiger. They was goin' down to Wide Awake, some thirty miles. The boat caught fire, Pelican swum out on a crackerbox, and when they found the body of his wife next day, Pelican thumped the side of his nose with his thumb and said, 'Hit's a dam pity she couldn't swim'.
"It wasn't long before he got into business by starting a 'blind tiger', and he worked up several war dances in the community, but one night thar was started a mild argument as to whether the Methodists or the Baptists was the chosen of the Lord. The argument was in Pelican's place, and he had to close up the joint, for nearly all of his best customers passed out with the close of the argument. Pelican told me afterward that over three hundred shots was fired, and said to me, 'I reckon the only reason I was saved was that I didn't belong to either denomination, as I am a Campbellite.'
"Pelican moved down on the Ohio after this, and it was there I met him. There is always considerable interest, Shawn, in a stranger when he moves into a community, especially if there is some mystery about him. Pelican didn't have much to say—he had no desire to mention his past. He was wise. It was rumored that he had left a good farm at Ball's Landing and had moved down on the Ohio for asthma trouble that bothered him. About the only disease he ever had was the whiskey habit, but he did not dispute any of the statements made by an interested community. His stock went up with the talk about the farm. He was invited to take supper with Bill Bristow. Bill owned twenty acres of hill land, with a small house and a mortgage on it. Old Bill's daughter, Lettie, set next to Pelican at the table, and old Bill looked on with satisfaction at the headway they was making. Old Bristow was thinking of the farm up at Ball's Landing; Pelican was thinking of the one he was on. After a time, Pelican and Lettie was married. Bristow give a dance and ice cream supper and charged fifty cents admission. There was dancing, singing and a cuttin' scrape and the couple felt that the occasion had been one of success. Pelican certainly married into old Bristow's family for he never made any move toward looking for another home, and it wasn't long before Bristow begin to screw up his face.
"Time passed and then come the twins, a boy and a girl, and Pelican was proud of the boy, for he had the Pelican nose, but old Bristow rose up in his wrath and said that they would have to go, and so Pelican and his wife come down into my neighborhood to live in a shanty-boat on the river, but they didn't git along, and fit and cussed from mornin' till night. Bristow come down to patch up matters. Pelican knocked him off the boat with an oar, and as he floundered out to the shore and wrung the water out of his whiskers he said, 'Fix yer own troubles—far'well.' Two weeks after the fight Mrs. Pelican Smith went back to live with her father and Pelican went into the fishin' and 'blind tiger' business. I had two new nets and a set of trot lines, and we bunched into a sort of partnership. I couldn't git him to say anything about his family or whether he wanted to see them again. But one night we set together on the shore. We had run out of bait and was tryin' to make plans to git some, as the lines was dry upon the shore and the fish would be runnin' with the gentle rise comin' in the river. We set on an old sycamore log together. The moon had just swung over the hill and I could see the white rim of it above the edge of Pelican's nose.