Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/187

 "Medico" tacked upon the frame of the door of Sam's hovel. It made no difference to the budding practitioner what the disorder was; he had the appropriate remedy at hand, and was most liberal in the amount of dosing to be given to his patients, which went far to increase their confidence in a man who seemed so willing to give them the full worth of their money. The only trouble was that Sam never gave the same dose twice to the same patient; this was because he had no memorandum books, and could not keep in mind all the circumstances of each case. The man who had Croton-oil pills in the morning received a tablespoonful of somebody's "Siberian Solvent" at night, and there was such a crowd that poor Sam was kept much more busy than he at first supposed he should be, because the people were not disposed to let go by an opportunity of ridding themselves of all infirmities, when the same could be eradicated by a physician who accepted in payment anything from a two-bit-piece to a string of chile colorado. Sam's practice was not confined to any one locality. It reached from the southern end of the Mexican State of Sinaloa to the international boundary. Sam, in other words, had become a travelling doctor—he kept travelling—but as his mule had had a good rest and some feed in the beginning of its master's new career, the pursuers were never able to quite catch up with the Gringo quack whose nostrums were depopulating the country.

From the valley of the Verde to the town of Prescott, according to the steep roads and trails connecting them in 1871, was something over fifty-five miles, the first part of the journey extremely rough and precipitous, the latter half within sight of hills clad with graceful pines and cooled by the breezes from the higher ranges. The country was well grassed; there was a very pleasing absence of the cactus vegetation to be seen farther to the south, adobe houses were replaced by comfortable-looking dwellings and barns of plank or stone; the water in the wells was cold and pure, and the lofty peaks, the San Francisco and the Black Range and the Bradshaw, were for months in the year buried in snow.