Instead, he himself arose, stood facing his guest squarely.
"I feel that I owe you an explanation as well," he said repressedly.
"Would you like to hear?"
"Yes--if you don't mind. If you'd prefer not to, however--"
"No, I'd rather you--understood than to go that way." The doctor cleared
his throat in the manner of one who smokes overmuch. "We all have our
skeleton hid away somewhere, I suppose. At least I have mine, and it
keeps bobbing out at times like this when I most wish--" He caught
himself, met his companion's questioning look fairly. "Haven't you
wondered why I ever came here; why, having come, I remain?" he queried
suddenly. "You know that I barely make enough to live, that sometimes I
don't have a case a week. Did it never occur to you that there was
something peculiar about it all?"
"Peculiar?" The hat in the rancher's hand started revolving again. He
had, indeed, thought of it before, thought of it tolerantly, with a
vague sense of commiseration--an attitude very similar to that with
which the uninitiated observe a player at golf; but that there might be
another, a sinister meaning--.
"If it hasn't occurred to you before, doesn't it seem peculiar, now that
you consider it?" The question came swiftly, tensely, with a
significance there was no misunderstanding. "Tell me, please."
"Yes, perhaps; but--"
"But you do see, though," relentlessly. "You can't help but see.
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