From that hour Trafford mended. He remained clear-minded, helpful,
sustaining. His face healed daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great
fragments of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined to
have a huge scar over forehead and cheek, but in that pure, clear air,
once the healing had begun it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a
little shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle of the
shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable leg none the less. They
examined it by the light of the stove with their heads together, and
discussed when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell when a
man may stand on his broken leg? She had a vague impression you must
wait six weeks, but she could not remember why she fixed upon that time.
"It seems a decent interval," said Trafford. "We'll try it."
She had contrived a crutch for him against that momentous experiment,
and he sat up in his bunk, pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and
whittled it smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that
slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!--while she knelt by the
stove feeding it with logs, and gave him an account of their position.
"We're somewhere in the middle of December," she said, "somewhere
between the twelfth and the fourteenth,--yes! I'm as out as that!--and
I've handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little beast until I
got him." She nodded at the skin in his hand. "I don't see myself
shooting much now, and so far I've not been able to break the ice to
fish. It's too much for me. Even if it isn't too late to fish. This book
we've got describes barks and mosses, and that will help, but if we
stick here until the birds and things come, we're going to be precious
short. We may have to last right into July. I've plans--but it may come
to that. We ought to ration all the regular stuff, and trust to luck for
a feast. The rations!--I don't know what they'll come to."
"Right O," said Trafford admiring her capable gravity. "Let's ration."
"Marjorie," he asked abruptly, "are you sorry we came?"