My third episode of Frontier
Gentleman continued in an enjoyable and amusing vein, though less
action-packed than the previous two. In
this one, Kendall wanders into a saloon and immediately makes the acquaintance
of good-natured Wall-Eye Smith, a “cowpuncher” who attaches “son of a gun” to
everything he says, like a sufferer from Tourettes. The saloon is called, in Kendall’s words, the
“sanguinary” Jug of Blood. Inside,
Kendall drinks some beer (no doubt of very inferior quality to that he might
have had in London, though alcohol as an index of class doesn’t function quite the
same here!) and unwittingly picks a fight with a young gunslinger. The gunslinger accidentally shoots himself
and gives himself up for dead. “There
ain’t no doctor ‘round here.” The
multi-talented Kendall next attempts a surgery in very primitive
conditions. He has the reluctant help of
Wall-Eye and two of the saloon girls, though all they actually do is staunch
bleeding and pray.
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