The Purchase Price Part 26

"I think so too! That mightn't have been so bad--but then you stood a while on that bad leg, eh? Now look here, Dunwody; do you know what shape you are in now?"

"No, I only know it hurts."

"If that leg were mine, do you know what I'd do with it?"

"No; but it isn't yours."

"Well, I'd have it off--as quick as it could come, that's all. If you don't, you'll lose your life."

"You don't mean that?" whispered Dunwody tensely, after a time.

"You don't mean that, Doctor?"

"I mean every word I say. It's blood poisoning."

The only answer his patient made was to reach a slow hand under his pillow and draw out a long-barreled revolver, which he laid upon the bed beside him.

"I didn't think you such a coward," ruminated Jamieson, rubbing his chin.

"If you think I'm afraid of the hurt of it, I'll let you do your work first, and I'll do mine afterward," gasped Dunwody slowly.

"But I'm not going to live a cripple. I'll not be maimed."

They looked each other firmly in the face.

"Is it so bad as all that, Doctor?" demanded Josephine. Her answer was a sad look from the gray old eyes. "Blood poison. Some kind of an aggravation. It's traveling fast."

Josephine gazed down at the bulky figure lying there p.r.o.ne, so lately full of rugged ferocity, now so weak and helpless. Her eye fell on the weapon lying on the bed. She gently removed it.

"That was what he preferred to my skill," commented Jamieson.

Dunwody turned, his gaze on Josephine now. "You don't belong here, now," said he at length. "You'd better go away."

"This is just where she _does_ belong!" contradicted Jamieson. "If she has courage to stay here, I want her. I've got to have help.

She'll do her duty, and with one hand tied! Can't you do as much?

Haven't you any idea of duty in the world?"

"Duty!" Dunwody's lips met in a bitter smile.

"Listen here, Mr. Dunwody," began Josephine, "I've seen worse wounds than that, seen weaker men survive worse than that. There's a chance perhaps--why don't you take it like a man? I exact it of you. I demand it! Your duty to me is unpaid. Come. We must live, all of us, _till all our debts are paid_."

He made no answer at first save to look her straight in the face for a moment. "Maybe there is such a thing as duty," said he.

"Maybe I do owe it--to you. I've--not yet--paid enough. Very well, then."

"Come," cried out Jamieson suddenly, "out you go on the table. Get a hand under there, girl."

There was no word further spoken. Gently they aided the injured man to his feet and helped him hobble through the hall and into the great dining-room beyond, where stood the long table of polished mahogany. Dunwody, swaying, leaned against it, while Jamieson hurried to the window and threw up the curtains to admit as much as possible of the light of late afternoon. Returning, he motioned Dunwody to remove his coat, which he folded up for a pillow. The remainder of his preparations necessarily were scant. Hot water, clean instruments--that was almost all. An anaesthetic was of course out of the question.

"Dunwody, we're going to hurt you a little," said Jamieson, at last. "You've got to stand it, that's all. Lie down there on the table and get ready."

He himself turned his back and was busy near by at a smaller table, arranging his instruments. "What then represented surgical care would to-day be called criminal carelessness. Next he went out to the front door and called aloud for Eleazar.

"Come here, man," commanded Jamieson, after he had the old trapper in the room. "Take hold of this good leg and hold it still.

Madam, I want you at the foot on the other side. You may get hold of the edge of the table with your hands, Dunwody, and hold still, if you can. I won't be very long."

Swiftly the doctor cut away the garments from the wounded limb, which lay now exposed in all the horrors of its inflammation. . . .

The next instant there was a tense tightening of the muscles of the man on the table. There was a sigh of deep, intaken breath, followed, however, by no more than a faint moan as the knife went at its work. . . .

"I'm not going to do it!" came back from under the surgeon's arm.

"There's half a chance--I'm going to try to save it! Hold on, old man,--here's the thing to do--we're going to try--"

He went down now into the quivering tissues and laid bare the edge of the broken bone, deep to the inner lines. Thus the front of the shattered bone lay exposed. The doctor sighed, as he pushed at this with a steady finger, his eyes frowning, absorbed. The bullet wound in the anterior edge was not clean cut. Near it was a long, heavy splinter of bone, the cause of the inflammation--something not suspected in the hurried dressing of the wound in the half darkness at the river edge. This bone end, but loosely attached, was broken free, thrust down into the angry and irritated flesh.

For an instant Jamieson studied the injury. The silence of death was in the room. The tense muscles of the patient might have been those of a lifeless man. Only the horrid sound of the dripping blood, falling from the table upon the carpet, broke the silence.

"I had a c.o.o.n dog once," began Doctor Jamieson cheerfully--"I don't know whether you remember him or not, Dunwody. Sort of a yellow dog, with long ears and white eye. Just wait a minute." He hastened over to the side of the table and bent again over his case of instruments.

"There's been all kinds of c.o.o.n dogs in these bottoms and hills, I suppose, ever since white folks came here, but Dunwody, I'm telling you the truth, that dog of mine--"

By this time he had fished out from his case a slender probe, which he bent back and forth as he once more approached the table.

"There's wasn't anything he wouldn't run, from deer to catamount; and, one day, when we were out back here in the hills--I don't know but Eleazar here might remember something about that himself. . . .

_Hold on, now, old man_!"

The old doctor's forehead for the first time was beaded. He wanted silver wire. He would have accepted catgut. He had neither. For one moment, in agony himself, he looked about; then a look of joy came to his face. An old fiddle was lying in the window. A moment, and he had ripped off a string. In two strides he was back at the dripping table, where lay one marble figure, stood a second figure also of marble.

"We were just trailing along, not paying much attention to anything, when all at once that _dog_. . ."

Doctor Jamieson's story of his famous c.o.o.n dog was never entirely completed. His voice droned away and ceased now, as he bent once more over his work.

What he did, so far as he in his taciturn way ever would admit, was in some way to poke the catgut violin string under the bone, with the end of the probe, and so to pa.s.s a ligature around the broken bone itself. After that, it was easier to fasten the splinter back in place where it belonged.

Doctor Jamieson used all his violin string. Then he cleaned the wound thoroughly, and with a frank brutality drenched it with turpentine, as he would have done with a horse or a dog; for this burning liquid was the only thing at hand to aid him. His own eyes grew moist as he saw the twitching of the burned tissues under this infliction, but his hand was none the less steady. The edge of the great table was splintered where Dunwody's hands had grasped it.

The flesh on the inside of his fingers was broken loose under his grip. Blood dripped also from his hands.

"I'm only a backwoods doctor, Dunwody," said Jamieson at length, as he began rebandaging the limb. "I reckon there's a heap of good surgeons up North that could make a finer job of this. G.o.d knows, I wish they'd had it, and not me. But with what's at hand, I've done the best I could. My experience is, it's pretty hard to kill a man.

"Wait now until I get some splints--hold still, can't you! If we have to cut your leg off after a while, I can do a better job than this, maybe. But now we have all done the best we could. Young lady, your arm again, if you please. G.o.d bless you!"

The face of Josephine St. Auban was wholly colorless as once more she a.s.sisted the doctor with his patient. They got him upon his own bed at last. To Dunwody's imagination, although he could never settle it clearly in his mind, it seemed that a hand had pushed the hair back from his brow; that some one perhaps had arranged a pillow for him.

Jamieson left the room and dropped into a chair in the hall, his face between his hands. "Sally," he whispered after a time, "whisky--quick!" And when she got the decanter he drank half a tumblerful without a gasp.

"Fiddle string in his leg!" he grinned to himself at last. "Maybe it won't make him dance, but I'll bet a thousand dollars he'd never have danced again without it!"

When at last Josephine found her own room she discovered her maid Jeanne, waiting for her, fright still in her face.

"Madame!" exclaimed Jeanne, "it is terrible! What horrors there are in this place. What has been done--is it true that Monsieur has lost both his legs? But one, perhaps? For the man with one leg, it is to be said that he is more docile, which is to be desired. But both legs--"

"It is not true, Jeanne. There has been surgery, but perhaps Mr.

Dunwody will not even be a cripple. He may get well--it is still doubtful."