“Say, Doc,” said “Mexico,” drawing back a little from him, “I guess not. That there debt goes back for twenty years, and it's piled out of sight. It never bothers me much except when I see you and hear you talk. It would be a blank—that is, a pretty fine thing to have it cleaned off. But say, Doc, your heap agin mine would be like a sandhill agin that mountain there.”
“The size makes no difference to Him, 'Mexico,'” said the doctor, quietly. “He is great enough to wipe out anything. I tell you, 'Mexico,' it's good to get it wiped off. It's simply great!”
“You're right there,” said “Mexico,” emphatically. Then, as if a sudden suspicion flashed in upon him, “Say, you're not talkin' religion to me, are you? I ain't goin' to die just yet.”
“Religion? Call it anything you like, 'Mexico.' All I know is I've got a good thing and I want my friend to have it.”
When the doctor was departing next morning “Mexico” stopped him at the door. “I say, Doc, would you mind letting me have that there book of yours for a spell?”
The doctor took it out of his bag. “It's yours, 'Mexico,' and you can bank on it.”
The book proved of absorbing interest to “Mexico.” He read it openly in the saloon without any sense of incongruity, at first, between the book and the business he was carrying on, but not without very considerable comment on the part of his customers and friends. And what he read became the subject of frequent discussions with his friend, the doctor. The book did its work with “Mexico,” as it does with all who give it place, and the first sign of its influence was an uncomfortable feeling in “Mexico's” mind in regard to his business and his habits of life. His discomfort became acute one pay night, after a very successful game of poker in which he had relieved some half a dozen lumbermen of their pay. For the first time in his life his winnings brought him no satisfaction. The great law of love to his brother troubled him. In vain he argued that it was a fair deal and that he himself would have taken his loss without whining. The disturbing thoughts would not down. He determined that he would play no more till he had talked the matter over with his friend, and he watched impatiently for the doctor's return. But that week the doctor failed to appear, and “Mexico” grew increasingly uncertain in his mind and in his temper. It added to his wretchedness not a little when the report reached him that the doctor was confined to his bed in the hospital at Kuskinook. In fact, this news plunged “Mexico” into deepest gloom.
“If he's took to bed,” he said, “there ain't much hope, I guess, for they'd never get him there unless he was too far gone to fight 'em off.”
But at the Kuskinook Hospital there was no anxiety felt in regard to the doctor's illness. He was run down with the fall and winter's work. He had caught cold, a slight inflammation had set up in the bowels, and that was all. The inflammation had been checked and in a few days he would be on his feet again.
“If we could only work a scheme to keep him in bed a month,” groaned Dick to his nurse as they stood beside his bed.