THE ART OF DOCTOR JAMIESON
Eleazar proved a faithful messenger once more. Before the evening
shadows had greatly lengthened, three figures appeared at the
lower end of the approach to Tallwoods mansion house. Jeanne, as
usual looking out from their window, saw these.
"It is the old man, Madame," she commented. "And yes, _Monsieur le
Docteur_ at last--thank the _Bon Dieu_! But one other--who is
that?"
[Illustration: "It is the old man, Madame," commented Jeanne.]
It was a very worn and weary doctor who presently swung out of his
saddle at the gallery step. His clothing was stained with mud, his
very shoulders drooping with fatigue. In the past few days he
scarcely had slept, but had been here and there attending to the
wants of surviving sufferers of the boat encounter. None the less
he smiled as he held out his hand to Josephine.
"How is my patient?" he inquired. "Plumb well, of course. And how
about this new one--I thought I fixed him up before he came home.
I've been grunting at Eleazar all the way, telling him it's all
foolishness, my coming away out here--he could have fixed Dunwody's
leg up, somehow. I suppose you know the old man's son, Hector. He
came along for good measure, I reckon."
The young man referred to now advanced, made a leg and pulled a
black forelock. He was a strapping youth, attired in the latest
fashion of French St. Genevieve. He bowed to this lady; but at the
same time, the glance he cast at her French waiting-maid was
evidence enough of the actuating cause of his journey. He had
heard somewhat of these strangers at Tallwoods house.
"I'll been forget to tell the _docteur_ h'all about Mr. Dunwodee,"
began Eleazar.
"What business have you to forget!" demanded Jamieson sternly.
"Has anything gone wrong?"
"_Mon pere_," began Hector, "I'll tol' him, if he didn't tell the
_docteur_ about how Monsieur Dunwodee he'll broke it his leg some
more--"
"What's that?" The doctor whirled upon him.
"It's quite true," said Josephine. "He had a fall, here in the
house. He thinks he has broken the injured bone. I didn't know
for a long time that he had been shot. He stood out here last
night talking to me."
"_Stood_ out here--_talking_ to you--with his leg broken
through--the front bone? Couldn't you have any mercy? You didn't
have to _use_ that broken wrist, but he--standing around--"
"He did not tell me, until the last moment. He said he thought he
had a little fever and believed he would take a little quinine."
"Oh, quinine--a Missourian would take that to save his immortal
soul--and quite as well as to take it for a broken bone like that.
I did the best I could with it--out there in the dark, but it
wasn't half dressed. Come--" He motioned Josephine to follow him
to Dunwody's room.
Eleazar had slunk away about the house, but Hector, left alone with
Jeanne, improved the shining hour. In a few moments he had
informed her that he was most happy to see one so beautiful, one,
moreover, who spoke his own tongue--although perhaps, it was true,
not quite as that tongue was spoken in Canada. As for himself, he
was a cooper, and had a most excellent business, yonder at St.
Genevieve. But the society of St. Genevieve--ah, well! And so on,
very swimmingly.
In the sick chamber Jamieson advanced with one glance at Dunwody's
fevered face. "What's up, Dunwody?" said he. "What has gone
wrong? Easy now, never mind."
He shook his head over the results of his first scrutiny. He
turned to Josephine, "Have you ever seen anybody hurt?"
"I've been on two battlefields," said she. "I've nursed a little."
Dunwody turned to her a face whose eyes now were glazed with
suffering. He nodded to Jamieson without any word.
"Sally, get some hot water, quick!" called out Jamieson in the
hall. "So, now, old man, let's see."
He stripped the covering quite down and bared the lower limb,
removing the bandage which he had originally applied. For a moment
he looked at the angry wound. Then he pulled back the covering,
and turned away.
"Well, well, what is it?" croaked Dunwody hoarsely, half-rising on
his crumpled pillow. Jamieson did not reply. "I fell, out there
in the hall. Weight must have come on the bad place in the leg. I
think the bone snapped."
"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 prone, 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 coon 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 coon 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 coon 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 pass 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. God 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. God bless you!"
The face of Josephine St. Auban was wholly colorless as once more
she assisted 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."
"How then was it possible, Madame, for you to endure such sights?
But is it not true, how the _Bon Dieu_ punishes the wicked? For
myself, I was in terror--even though I was some distance away; and
although that young gentleman, Monsieur Hector, was so good as to
hold my hand."