"Well," said the doctor, "do you know anything about them?"
"Sure," said the other, and having finished his cigarette he introduced
it between his lips. It seemed to occur to him instantly, however, that
he was committing an inhospitable breach, for he produced his Durham and
brown papers with a start and extended them towards the doctor.
"Smoke?" he asked.
"I use tobacco in no form," said the doctor.
The cowboy stared with such fixity that the match burned down to his
fingertips and singed them before he had lighted his cigarette.
"'S that a fact?" he queried when his astonishment found utterance.
"What d'you do to kill time? Well, I been thinking about knocking off
the stuff for a while. Mame gets sore at me for having my fingers all
stained up with nicotine like this."
He extended his hand, the first and second fingers of which were
painted a bright yellow.
"Soap won't take it off," he remarked.
"A popular but inexcusable error," said the doctor. "It is the tarry
by-products of tobacco which cause that stain. Nicotine itself, of
course, is a volatile alkaloid base of which there is only the merest
trace in tobacco. It is one of the deadliest of nerve poisons and is
quite colourless. There is enough of that stain upon your fingers--if it
were nicotine--to kill a dozen men."
"The hell you say!"
"Nevertheless, it is an indubitable fact. A lump of nicotine the size of
the head of a pin placed on the tongue of a horse will kill the beast
instantly.
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