'We'll jest call them services of mine in subdooin' your delirium
treemors a contreebution. It should shorely be remooneration enough
to know that I've preserved you to the Wolfville public, an' that
the camp can still boast the possession of the meanest sport an'
profoundest drunkard outside of the Texas Panhandle.'

"Bar none, Doc Peets is the bitterest gent, verbal, that ever makes
a moccasin track in the South-west. An' while Huggins ain't pleased
none, them strictures has to go. To take to pawin' 'round for
turmoil with Peets would be encroachin' onto the ediotic. Even if he
emerges alive from sech controversies--an' it's four to one he
wouldn't; for Peets, who's allers framed up with a brace of
derringers, is about as vivid an enterprise as Wolfville affords--
the Stranglers would convene with Old Man Enright in the cha'r, an'
Huggins wouldn't last as long as a drink of whiskey. As it is,
Huggins gulps his feelin's an' offers nothin' in return to Peets's
remarks.

"No; of course Doc Peets ain't that diffusive in his confidences as
to go surgin' about tellin' this story to every gent he meets. It's
ag'in roole for physicians that a-way to go draggin' their lariats
'round permiscus an' impartin' all they knows. You-all can see
yourse'f that if physicians is that ingenuous, it would prodooce all
sorts of troubles in the most onlooked-for places an' most
onexpected forms. No; Peets wouldn't give way to conduct so
onbecomin' a medicine man an' a sport. But rooles has their
exceptions; an so Feets, in one of them moments of sympathy an'
confidence, which two highly eddicated gents after the eighth drink
is bound to feel for each other, relates to Colonel Sterett
concernin' Huggins an' his perfidy with them Bird Cage checks.