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 inci