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 back some alarming scent, heads up, ready to stampede. They were ready to break for cover at the first shot from anybody's gun but Old Doc Ross's.

"I'm mean!" Old Doc Ross declared, his voice hoarse and strained like a camp-meeting preacher's. "I was raised on catamount livers, I drink ox gall by the pint! No man can come into my town and set up opposition to me. I've got a graveyard full of 'em that tried it."

Dr. Hall took a step toward him, Ross drawing back with a nimble leap.

"Don't approach me, or by the gods!" Ross threw his hand to his gun, looking every bit as mean as his self-proclaimed reputation.

"I wasn't going to touch you, Dr. Ross; I only wanted to talk to you, not for the entertainment of that bunch of loafers. I don't want to jerk your damn town from under you—I wouldn't have it as a gift. I'm the railroad doctor, and I'm here to stay as long as the company wants me. You keep on your side of the town and I'll stay on mine—unless I have business on yours. I'm not after your patients. I wouldn't touch 'em if you offered them to me on a hot shovel."

"There's just one way you can stay in this town," Ross declared loudly, in blustering contrast with Hall's low-modulated words, "and that's to buy my practice. I put it to every starved-out wildcat of your breed that strays into this town smellin' for something to grab away from me; I put it up on the block before 'em, fair and square. My practice in this town's worth fifteen hundred dollars. You can hand me over the cash money for it, or you can hit the grit. Them's your orders. Put 'em in your craw and grind 'em."