"Not simple?" echoed the party, closing round him.
"I don't mean to say," continued the doctor, glancing around at their
eager, excited faces with an appearance of wonder, "that they are
positively noxious, unless taken in large quantities, for they are not
drugs at all, but I certainly should not call them 'simple.' Do YOU know
what they principally are?"
"Well, no," said Parker cautiously, "perhaps not EXACTLY."
"Come a little closer, and I'll tell you."
Not only Parker's head but the others were bent over the counter. Dr.
Duchesne uttered a few words in a tone inaudible to the rest of the
company. There was a profound silence, broken at last by Abe Wynford's
voice:--
"Ye kin pour me out about three fingers o' whiskey, Barkeep. I'll take
it straight."
"Same to me," said the others.
The men gulped down their liquor; two of them quietly passed out. The
doctor wiped his lips, buttoned his coat, and began to draw on his
riding-gloves.
"I've heerd," said Poker Jack of Shasta, with a faint smile on his white
face, as he toyed with the last drops of liquor in his glass, "that the
darned fools sometimes smell punk as a medicine, eh?"
"Yes, THAT'S comparatively decent," said the doctor reflectively.
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