“Doc,” said he, pulling his broncho up short before me, “Wolfie Jim’s about done. Can’t you go to him? He’s ’most busted up.”
Poor old Wolfie! I knew why.
Some time previously he had run in among his dogs, which were attacking a timber wolf they had turned up on the creek bank. He intended to knife it, as he had done many a time before, but the old fellow, maybe, was not so agile as formerly, and things had gone a bit wrong. Anyhow, he’d knifed the wolf all right, but the wolf bit his foot badly, and Wolfie doctored it in his own peculiar manner with unlimited bad whisky, taken both outside and in. Well, the foot didn’t heal, and Wolfie couldn’t understand it.
He was one of the old fur-cap-and-buckskin-shirt trappers who never consulted even a medicine-man, let alone a white doctor. I’d stopped at his shack once or twice and got a liking for the quaint old fellow, so I told Darky to get one of the boys to put a saddle on my old horse Pete while I got my “murder-bag,” as they called my medicine outfit, and was soon ready for Wolfie and his trouble.
Away loped Pete over the beautiful glistening prairie; I could have found my way to Wolfie’s with my eyes shut.
It occurred to me soon that I was foolish not to have brought a heavier overcoat, but I knew if I didn’t start on my return journey before sundown I could either stay with old Wolf or borrow something to make me warm; besides, although it was December, it was one of those prairie days that would almost fool a wise man into the belief that it was spring.
I shall never forget the shock I received as I pushed the door of the little hut open. I had started with my case full of all I thought I should want—even to vitriol, in case of a last resource. But Wolfie was beyond my skill. He lay stretched out on his blankets, dead, with his two dead hounds beside him. There was a half-empty bottle in his left hand and a big six-shooter in his right. There were three cartridges in the revolver and three empty shells. The old man and both hounds had each been killed with a bullet through the head.
“HE LAY STRETCHED OUT ON HIS BLANKETS, DEAD, WITH HIS TWO DEAD HOUNDS BESIDE HIM.”
I examined the injured foot and understood the whole thing.