“A lot. Has the whole town under hoodoo. It’s named for him. He has all the doctoring he can do and won’t half charge, so’s no other doctor’ll come here. That’s no way to build up a town. He’d get up at one o’clock in the morning to doctor a widder’s cow. Now, sure he would, when he knows even a dead cow’d make business for the butcher to render up into grease and the cattle dealer to sell another cow.”
“Not your style of a man then?” the stranger observed.
“Oh, pshaw, no, but, as I say, he’s got the whole country hoodoo’d. Notice how everybody give him right of way to get his mail first? Why him? And hear him order the best horse? I’ll bet a tree claim in hades right now that he’s off somewhere to doctor some son of a gun out of cussed good will.”
“Who is this James Shirley whose mail he seems to look after?”
There was a half-tone lowering of the voice as Smith pronounced the name, which was not lost on Champers, whose business was to catch men at all corners.
“Jim Shirley lives out in one of the rich valleys west. 63 Him and a fellow named Aydelot have some big notions of things out there. I don’t know the doc’s claim to control his mail, but nobody here would deny Carey any danged thing he wanted.” Champers twisted his face in disgust.
“You are in the real estate business here?” Thomas Smith asked after a pause, as if the subject fell into entirely new lines.
“Yes,” Champers answered absently with eyes alert on the opposite wall.
“I’d like to see you later, Mr.—”
“Champers—Darley Champers,” and the dealer in land shoved a soiled card across the table. “Come in any time. This cold snap will soon be over and I can show you no end of land worth a gold mine any time you are ready. But make it soon. Land’s goin’ faster here’n you Delaware fellers think, and”—in a lower voice—“Doc Carey’s drivin’ over it all the time, and that Jew of a Jacobs ain’t in business here on account of no lung trouble, and his hatred of saloons is somethin’ pisen.”