_ CHAPTER XI. THE COMPANY DOCTOR
The Two Forks, below their junction, make a mighty stream which has burst through a mountain range. Across this narrow gorge which it has rent for itself in time immemorial, the insect, Man, industrious and persevering, has cast a great pile of rock and concrete, a hundred feet high, for that good folk some hundreds of miles away one day may bless the Company for electric lighting. In this labor toiled many man-insects of divers breeds and races, many of them returned soldiers, much as did the slaves of Pharaoh in earlier times. The work was on one of the new government projects revived after the war, in large part to offer employment to the returning men of the late Army.
But Pharaoh had not dynamite or rack-rock or TNT; so that in the total it were safer for an insect to have labored in Pharaoh's time. The Company doctor--himself a returned major--stationed there by reason of the eccentricities of dynamite, rack-rock and other high explosives, was much given to the sport of the angle, and disposed to be irritable when called from the allurements of the stream to attend some laboring man who had undertaken to attach a fuse by means of his teeth, or some such simple process. That is to say, Doctor Allen Barnes was irritable until he had reeled up his line and climbed the bank below the dam site, and betaken himself to the side of the last hospital cot where lay the last victim of dynamic and dynamitical industry. After that he was apt to forget angling and become an absorbed surgeon, and a very able one.
But on this particular day, when word came to him at the stream side that a stranger not of the force had arrived in town with a "bum leg"--so reported the messenger, Foreman Flaherty--Doctor Barnes was wroth exceedingly, for at that moment he was fast in a noble trout that was far out in the white water, and giving him, as he himself would have phrased it, the time of his life.
"Tell him I can't come, Flaherty!" he called over his shoulder. "I'm busy."
"I reckon that's so, Doc," said the foreman. "Why don't you haul him in? That pole of yours ain't no good, it's too limber. If I had him on mine I'd show you how to get him in."
"Oh, you would, would you, dad burn you," remarked Doctor Barnes, who had small love for the human race at many times, and less at this moment. "I wouldn't put it past you. Well, this is my affair and not yours. Who is the fellow, anyhow, and where did he come from, and what does he want? Has he been trying to beat the shot?"
"He ain't on our job," replied the foreman. "Come down from twenty mile up the East Fork. Got kicked by a horse."
"Huh! What's his name? Look at him jump!" remarked the doctor, with mixed emotions and references.
"Sim Gage. Come down with a feller name of Gardner that lives up in there."
"Oh, above on the East Fork? Say, how's the fishing up there?--Did they say there were any grayling in there?"
"I've saw Wid Gardner lots of times before, and he says a feller can always get a sackful of grayling any time he wants to, in there, come summer time."
"Look at him go! Ain't that fine?" inquired Dr. Allen Barnes. "Did he say they were coming good now, up there? Ain't he a peach?"
"Yes, Wid said the grayling was risin' right good now," said Flaherty. "But this feller, Sim Gage, his leg looks to me like you'd have to cut it off. Can I help, Doc?--I never seen a man's leg cut off, not in my whole life."
"How do I know whether it's got to come off or not, I'd like to know. See that?--Ain't he a darling, now, I'm asking you?"
"He is. Like I was saying, this feller's leg is all swoll up. Leave it to me, I'd say we ought to cut it off right now."
"Well, you go tell him not to cut it off till I get this fish landed," said Dr. Barnes. "Tell him I'll be up there in a few minutes. What's the matter with it, anyhow?"
"Been gone a couple of days," said Flaherty, breaking off twigs and casting them on the current. "Blood poison, I reckon."
"What's that?" The Doctor turned under the spur of his professional conscience. "Oh, well, dang it! Here goes!"
He began to lift up and reel in with all his might, so that his fish, very much obliged, broke the gear and ran off with joy, a yard of leader attached to his mouth.
"That's the way it goes," said the Doctor. "Get fast to a six-pound brown trout, and along comes a man with a leg that's got to be cut off. Dang such a job anyhow--I will cut his leg off, too, just for this!"
Fuming as usual, he climbed the steep bank below the white face of the dam and crossed the street to his own raw shack, which was office and home alike. He gazed resentfully at his parted leader as he hung up the rod on the nails at the rear of the small porch, and sighing, entered the office for his surgical case.
"Where is that fellow?" he demanded of Flaherty, who had followed him in.
"That's him settin' on the wagon seat up with Wid Gardner, in the road," replied the messenger. "He's got his foot up on the dash board like it was sore, ain't he?"
Grumblingly Dr. Allen Barnes passed on up the road to the wagon where two passengers awaited his coming.
"Are you the man that wants me?" he asked, looking up at Sim Gage.
"Why, yep," said Sim Gage, his face puckered up into his usual frown of perplexity. "I reckon so, Doc. I got my leg hurt."
"Well, come on over to the hospital."
"Hospital? I can't go to no hospital. I can't afford it, Doc."
"Well, I can't cut your leg off right out here in the street, can I, man? I'm offering you the hospital free--the Company takes care of those things. Not that I've got any business taking care of you, but I will."
"Why, this ain't nothing," said Sim Gage, pointing a finger towards his swollen knee, "just a leetle kick of a bronc, that's all. I got to be getting right back, Doc--I ain't got much time."
"It don't take much time to cut off a leg," said Dr. Barnes. "Do it in three minutes." His face, professionally grim, showed no token of a smile.
"Well, I left my folks all alone up there," began Sim.
"You did, eh? Well, they'll be there when you get back, won't they?"
"I dunno, Doc----"
"Well, I don't know anything about it, if you don't. But tell me, how's the fishing up in there? Any grayling?"
"All you want," said Sim Gage. "Come along up any time, and I'll take you out. But no, I guess maybe----"
Dr. Barnes looked at him curiously, and Wid Gardner went on to explain for his neighbor.
"You see, Doc, Sim, he's just newly married," said he, "or else he's going to be right soon. Sim, he's kind of bashful about having you around."
"Thanks! But come--I haven't any time. Come into the office, and we'll have a look at the leg."
Wid drove after the stalking figure, which presently drew up in front of the little office. In a few moments they had Sim Gage, the injured member bared, sitting up in a white chair in a very white and clean miniature hospital which Dr. Barnes had installed.
"This wound hasn't been cleaned properly," commented the doctor at once. "What did you put on it?"
"Why, whiskey. I didn't have nothing else."
"Try water the next time," said Dr. Barnes with sarcasm. "We'll have to paint it up with iodine now. Lockjaw, blood poison and amputation is the very least that will happen to you if you don't look out."
"Amputation?" Sim turned with curiosity to his neighbor.
"It's where they cut off your leg, Sim," said Wid, explaining.
"Oh, well, maybe we'll save his leg," said Dr. Barnes, grinning at last. "But don't let this occur again, my Christian friend. This will lay you up for two or three weeks the best way it can happen, in all likelihood. Well, I'll swab it out and tie it up, and give you some iodine. Keep it painted. How big do the grayling go up in your country?"
"I've seen plenty over three pounds," said Sim Gage.
"I don't like to doubt your word, my friend, but if you'll show me one three-pound grayling, you won't ever owe me anything for fixing up your leg."
"I sure can, Doc," said Sim Gage. "Grasshoppers is best."
"For you, maybe. If you please, I'll try Queen of the Waters, or Professor, long-shanked, and about Number 8. And I say again, if you'll put me up to a three-pound grayling I'll cut off your leg for nothing any time you want it done!"
"Well, now," said Sim Gage, his forehead puckering up, "I don't want to put you under no obligations, Doc."
"He won't, neither, Doc," interrupted Wid Gardner, while the surgical dressing was going forward. "There's holes in there twenty feet deep, and I've see two or three hundred grayling in there dang near as long as your arm."
"Ouch, Doc!" remarked Sim Gage, "that yellow stuff smarts."
"It's got to, my man. A couple of days more and you might really have lost that leg, sure enough. I've seen plenty of legs lost, my man. I don't think it'll go much further up--I hope not. But blood poisoning is something bad to have, and I'll tell you that."
"You ain't been in this country long, have you, Doc?" queried Wid Gardner. "You come on up and go fishing with us fellers. A few weeks from now it'll be better. I ain't got no woman at my place, but I can cook some. Sim's got a woman at his."
"What's that?" inquired Dr. Barnes. "Oh, the woman that's waiting? What do you mean about that?"
"Well," replied his patient, his forehead furrowed, "that is, we ain't rightly married yet. Just sort of studying things over, you know, Doc. We're waiting for--well, until things kind of shapes up. You understand, Doc?"
"I don't know that I do," said the Doctor, looking at him straightly. "You understand one thing--there can't any funny business go on in this valley now. The administration's mighty keen. You know that."
"There ain't, Doc. She's my housekeeper. I'd ask you in all right, only she can't cook, nor nothing."
"A housekeeper, and can't cook? How's that?"
Sim Gage wiped off his face, finding the temperature high for him. "Well," said he, "Wid there and me, we advertised fer a housekeeper. This girl come on out. And when she come she was blind."
"Blind!"
"Blind as a bat. So she says she's fooled me. I sort of felt like we'd all fooled
her. She's a lady."
"Why don't you send her back, man?" asked the doctor, with very visible disgust.
"I can't. How can I, when she's blind? She wasn't born that way, Doc, far's I can tell, but she was blind when she come out here. Now, leaving her setting there alone, it makes me feel kind of nervous. You don't blame me, now, do you, Doc?"
"No," said Dr. Barnes gravely, "I don't blame you. You people out here get me guessing sometimes. But you make me tired."
He swept a hand across his face and eyes, just because he was tired. "That's all I'm going to do for you to-day, my man," said he in conclusion. "Go on back home and fight out your own woman problems--that isn't in my line."
"She--I reckon she'd be glad to see you--if she could. You see, she's a lady, Doc. She ain't like us people out here."
The physician looked at him with curious appraisal in his eyes, studying both the man and this peculiar problem which all at once had been brought to view.
"A lady?" said he at last, somewhat disgusted. "If she was any lady she'd never have answered any advertisement such as you two people say you have been fools enough to print."
"Look here! That ain't so," said Sim Gage with sudden heat. "That ain't so none a-tall. Now, she is a lady--I won't let nobody say no different. Only thing, she's a blind lady, that's all. She falls over things when she walks. She got her eyes plumb full of cinders on the train, I expect. Cinders is awful. Why, one time when I was going out to Arizony I got a cinder in my eye, and I want to tell
you----"
"Listen at him lie, Doc!" interrupted Wid Gardner. "He never was nowhere near Arizony in his life. That's his favoright lie. But he's telling you the truth, near as I know it, about that woman. She did come out to be a housekeeper, and she did come out here blind. Now, couldn't she be a lady and that be true?"
"How can I tell?" said Dr. Barnes. "All I know; is that you people came down here and made me break loose from the best fish I've seen since I've been out here. My best fish of a lifetime--I'll never get hold of a trout like that again."
Sim Gage was experiencing at the moment mingled gratitude and resentment, but nothing could quench his own hospitable impulses. "Aw, come on up, Doc," said he, "won't you? We can figure out some way to take care of you right at my place. You and me can sleep in the tent."
"So you live in the tent?" inquired Dr. Barnes.
"Why, of course. She stays in the house. And she's there all alone this very minute."
"Hit the trail, men," said Dr. Barnes. "Go on back home, and stay there, you damn sagebrushers!" _