The old feller was so bowed down by disgrace and humiliation, Justice said, they never need look to see him lift his head in Damascus again. In all his fighting experience Old Doc Ross never had suffered such contumelious subjection. To be boxed on the whiskers, spread out and spanked before the public eye, was more than his proud spirit could bear, Justice declared. Old Doc Ross's heart was broxen. That would be the end of him.
Doc Ross had been stunned by the vulgarity of his competitor's fighting method, they all agreed. Nobody ever had man-handled him before, putting foot to his flesh in coarse expression of scorn. It seemed to Doc Ross, they said, taking it from his mumbled expressions and maudlin tears as he left the scene of his defeat, as if the upstart doctor had disdained to fight him as an equal, mauling him that way as if he were nothing but a common ruffian. What could a gentleman with a gun do, Old Doc Ross had asked, turning a sad face upon his disappointed partisans, against a scoundrel who fought like a mule?
That was what Old Doc Ross wanted to know, and there did not appear to be anybody well enough versed in chivalry in that town to answer him. Unable to find consolation in words, Old Doc Ross had gone back to the balm in bottles that was available to the hands of downspirited gentlemen in Damascus. He had continued his carouse, his eyes black from the mauling he had taken, his little red nose rasped raw by his slide through the cinders.
That new company doctor, Jim Justice said, appeared to be a feller who always took hold of the wrong end of
