“No,” Doc said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t care nothing about this Gautier, nor no other Frenchman. I don’t like ’em. They got a mean streak in ’em when it comes to fighting. They’re suspicious of everybody, and they act dirty to everybody, whether they need to or not. It wouldn’t do this Gautier any harm to let us go back, but he’s made up his mind he’s going to fix us so we can’t. Well, I ain’t going to let him do it. I can fix him first. Fact is, I got him fixed already.”

“Fixed? How have you got him fixed?”

Doc’s reply was placid. “You remember that old idea of mine—that idea about how these red vermins maybe might turn us loose if I made ’em a present of the Talking Book and the lancet and all the rest of my medical supplies?”

I said I did.

“Well,” Doc said, “I called a meeting of the Grand Medical Society right away; and me and Verrieul, we talked to the shamans. We talked to ’em as pretty as they ever got talked to. I asked ’em how they liked my magic, and they said they liked it. I said, Well, they’d done well by me, and I wanted to do well by them, and the best way to do it, as I saw it, was to divide my magic among ’em. The trouble was, I says, that I didn’t have but just enough magic to go around, and if I divided it, there wouldn’t be nothing left for me. Therefore, I says, what I’d ought to do was to go east with the boys that are going to do their spring fighting and try to pick up some new magic, and meanwhile leave the Talking Book and all the rest of it with them, so to make sure I’d come back.”

“They didn’t believe that, did they?” I asked.

Doc coughed. “Well, it sounds different when Verrieul tells it to ’em in Indian. I can’t tell it the way Verrieul does. You ought to hear Verrieul tell it!”

“But don’t they know they could have all your magic, just by taking it away from you?”

“How could they?” Doc asked. “They can’t roll dice the way I can. Everything they own, pretty near, I won from ’em and then gave it back; and they ain’t never won nothing from me. They can’t use my dowsing rod, can tthey? That’s what I told ’em: they can’t learn how to use any of my magic till I show ’em how, and I ain’t going to show ’em how till we start east with Sponge-belly—all three of us.”