Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/321

 wound, just as if he had hope of a man with a bullet hole in the center of his brain.

"Al-l-l right, Cal," said the doctor, cheerfully, comfortably. "You'd better come in about Monday, I guess, and let me have a look at it."

He put the little instrument in his case, snapped it shut, picked it up, took his hat to go.

The doctor's amazing nonchalance, his more astonishing dismissal of Withers's hurt in that off-hand, careless way, removed the bar from the door that had held the onlookers respectfully back. They poured into the parlor now, packing it in a moment, pressing around the doctor, who stood smiling blandly; around Withers, who lurched up suddenly, with the ungainly quickness of a frightened cow.

"Do you mean I ain't goin' to die?" Withers demanded with something like resentful challenge.

"Not this time, Cal," the doctor replied. He held out his hand, revealing a little piece of mashed and flattened lead. "It'll take something bigger than a twenty-two slammed up against that old cast-iron pot of yours to put you out of business, Cal."

"Wait a minute," said Withers, getting to his feet, the color coming back into his face; "wait a minute, now. Wasn't somebody writin' a paper here a little while ago and gittin' me to sign my name to it?"

"You dictated a dyin' statement to me, Cal, and signed it of your own free will and motion," Myron replied.

"It don't go, it don't go!" Withers declared, glaring