Doc Tunnel and the Arapahoe
Doc Tunnel was one of the few doctors around when I first came to Lander in 1920. And he was a good one. He would go anywhere, in any kind of weather, to make house calls on folks who were too sick to make it into town.
One wet spring day, I was driving down the road from the coal mines near Hudson to Lander when I came upon Doc Tunnel with his car stuck in the mud. He had gotten off the road trying to get out of the deep ruts those old Model T's and A's made with their tall narrow wheels. It was all I could do to keep moving myself, and I had chained up before I left the mines. I stopped and tried to pull Doc Tunnel back onto the road, but I couldn't budge him. I was discussing what we should do next when an Arapahoe Indian came down the road driving a team of horses.
The Indian stopped and sized up the situation up; then without saying a word, he unhitched the team from the wagon and hooked onto Doc's car. The team had no problem at all pulling the car back onto the road. That done the Indian hitched his horses back to his wagon and drove on down the road. Doc Tunnel never said a word to him as he left, not even thanks. I told Doc that I thought the Indian was expecting him to pay him something for pulling him out of the mud.
"Alex, you haven't lived around here long enough," Doc Tunnel replied. "Thanks is a white man's custom. And as for paying him for what he did: I've doctored him and his family several times and he's yet to give me a penny, and he has never said, thanks. I'll just consider this payment for services rendered. In his mind he thinks he owes me nothing after today."
