FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Mr. Peter Dinsmore was of both an impulsive and obstinate disposition.
He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. Somewhere he had heard that
if a man desired his business well done, he must do it himself. Gurley
had proved a poor messenger. Peter would call upon Clint Wadley in
person and arrange an armistice.
He had another and a more urgent reason for getting to town promptly. A
jumping toothache had kept him awake all night. After he reached
Tascosa, Dinsmore was annoyed to find that Dr. Bridgman had ridden down
the river to look after the fractured leg of a mule-skinner.
"Isn't there any one else in this condemned burg can pull teeth?" he
demanded irritably of the bartender at the Bird Cage.
"There certainly is. Buttermilk Brown is a sure-enough dentist. He had
to take to bull-whackin' for to make a livin', but I reckon he's not
forgot how. You'll probably find him sleepin' off a hang-over at the
Four-Bit Corral."
This prophecy proved true, but Dinsmore was not one to let trifles turn
him aside. He led the reluctant ex-dentist to a water-trough and soused
his head under the pump.
"Is that a-plenty?" he asked presently, desisting from his exercise with
the pump-handle.
Buttermilk sputtered a half-drowned assent. His nerves were still jumpy,
and his head was not clear, but he had had enough cold water. Heroic
treatment of this sort was not necessary to fit him for pulling a tooth.
They adjourned to the room where Buttermilk had stored his professional
tools. Dinsmore indicated the back tooth that had to come out. The
dentist peered at it, inserted his forceps and set to work. The tooth
came out hard, but at last he exhibited its long prongs to the tortured
victim.
"We get results," said Buttermilk proudly.
"How much?" asked Pete.
It happened that the dentist did not know his patient. He put a price of
five dollars on the job. Dinsmore paid it and walked with Buttermilk to
the nearest saloon for a drink.
Pete needed a little bracer. The jumping pain still pounded like a
piledriver at his jaw. While the bartender was handing him a glass and a
bottle, Dinsmore caressed tenderly the aching emptiness and made a
horrible discovery. Buttermilk Brown had pulled the wrong tooth.
Considering his temperament, Pete showed remarkable self-restraint. He
did not slay Buttermilk violently and instantly. Instead he led him back
to the room of torture.
"You pulled the wrong tooth, you drunken wreck," he said in effect, but
in much more emphatic words. "Now yank out the right one, and if you
make another mistake--"
He did not finish the threat, but it is possible that Buttermilk
understood. The dentist removed with difficulty the diseased molar.
"Well, we're through now," he said cheerfully. "I don't know as I ought
to charge you for that last one. I'll leave that to you to say."
"We're not quite through," corrected the patient. "I'm goin' to teach
you to play monkey-shines with Pete Dinsmore's teeth." He laid a large
revolver on the table and picked up the forceps. "Take that chair, you
bowlegged, knock-kneed, run-down runt."
Buttermilk protested in vain. He begged the bad-man for mercy with tears
in his eyes.
"I'm goin' to do Scripture to you, and then some," explained Dinsmore.
"It says in the Bible a tooth for a tooth, but I aim to pay good
measure."
The amateur dentist pulled four teeth and played no favorites. A molar,
a bicuspid, a canine, and an incisor were laid in succession on the
table.
Buttermilk Brown wept with rage and pain.
"Four times five is twenty. Dig up twenty dollars for professional
services," said Pete.
His tearful patient paid the fee. This was the most painful, violent,
and high-handed episode of Buttermilk's young life. Never in
Shelbyville, Indiana, from which town he had migrated hopefully westward
with his diploma, had such outrages been heard of.
The instruments of Providence are sometimes strange ones. Nobody would
have picked Pete Dinsmore for a reformer, but he changed the course of
one young dentist's life. Buttermilk fled from the Southwest in horror,
took the pledge eagerly, returned to Shelbyville and married the belle
of the town. He became a specialist in bridge-work, of which he carried
a golden example in his own mouth. His wife has always understood that
Dr. Brown--nobody ever called him Buttermilk in his portly, prosperous
Indiana days--lost his teeth trying to save a child from a runaway. Be
that as it may, there is no record that he ever again pulled the wrong
tooth for a patient.
Having completed his deed of justice, Dinsmore in high good humor with
himself set out to call on Clint Wadley. He had made an inoffensive
human being suffer, and that is always something to a man's credit. If
he could not do any better, Pete would bully a horse, but he naturally
preferred humans. They were more sensitive to pain.