The Salt Line

All sorts of adventurers and explorers came to Leh motivated by curiosity or the will to make a name for themselves, and others were motivated by a sense of remoteness, seeking a place far enough in which to put roots down, and to which of these the wounded man belonged it was not possible to know.

His heartbeats were not promising. As to his state of mind, the doctor only knew what Rasul had told him, but who amongst all those coming to Leh do so with a completely lucid mind? He himself certainly did not belong to the lucid of mind when he arrived here, and after all, the definition of lucidity of mind changes from place to place, as the gods change and also as the rules of morality change. Things that Doctor McKenzie would not have conceived, of doing on a different continent, and which even his unfortunate luck did not lead him to do there, he was undeterred from here in Leh.

He now treated all the rogues whom he saw here with forgiveness, only if their roguery was not the cause of a death: crossing that boundary was forbidden. But in his eyes it was not terrible when they deceived customers as to the quality of the merchandise if those could afford to pay, or when they used trickery in some dubious miracle that found enough fools to believe it. Was he himself not aided by trickery in his veterinarian days? For example with the sublimated iodine and with turpentine...