DURING all this time the fury of the storm had not abated in the least.
That, indeed, had been one of the worst obstacles with which he had
contended in mounting the steep to his hut. Immediately upon laying his
charge on the floor he had begun to prepare his bed for the guest,
but weakness from exhaustion overcame him. He reeled; a red blindness
assailed him; and, in spite of a fierce effort to maintain command of
his strength and faculties, he found himself plunging headlong upon his
bed.
A moan recalled him to consciousness, and it was not until later that he
realized the distressing length of time that he had lain unconscious.
He remembered that when he fell he was very warm from the exertion of
ascending the slope, and that when he awoke he was excessively cold.
Furthermore, twilight had come.
Dismayed over the loss of time, he proceeded at once to make his charge
comfortable. He prepared his bed for her and placed her upon it. She was
still unconscious, but he saw that she was rallying.
He suddenly realized that it was now impossible for him to summon Dr.
Mal-bone, for the fury of the storm had been steadily increasing, and
the crash of falling trees still sounded above the roaring of the wind.
It would be worse than foolhardy for him to brave the storm and the
darkness. At any moment she might recover consciousness and find herself
alone and suffering in this strange place; and a whole night and day
would hardly have been sufficient for him to fetch the surgeon, had that
been a physical possibility. So the young man realized that he alone,
with no training in the surgeon’s and physician’s art, must take this
woman’s life in his hands, and for a long time to come be her physician
and nurse, cook and housekeeper, mother and confidant, father and
protector.
That realization was sufficiently cruel and taxing, but the ordeal that
now confronted him was the most trying of all. He had not yet given any
attention to the appearance of his charge, further than to ascertain to
what extent she was hurt. When he now lighted a candle and held it to
her face, he saw that she was a young and handsome woman.
He noted the high-bred patrician face through the grime, the abundant
dark-brown hair, the black brows but slightly arched and nearly meeting
between the eyes, the fine nose, the habitual, half-hidden curve of scorn
at the corners of her mouth, and the firm, strong, elegantly moulded
chin.
It was evident that the man and the woman were father and daughter, for
the resemblance between the distorted dead face and the grimy living one
was strong; the manifest difference in ages finished the conclusion.
Was she fatally hurt? What if she should die? What effect would the
knowledge of her father’s death have upon her? How long would she remain
helpless on the couch, held by her injuries; and how long, after her
possible recovery, would she be held a prisoner by the impassable
condition of the roads? Would she be cheerful and brave through it all?
She was growing more and more restless; wise haste was now the crowning
necessity. First of all, she must have suitable clothing, and it must be
provided before he made his bungling efforts to set her broken bone.
How could he hope to perform this difficult surgical feat with no more
knowledge of its requirements than he had secured while serving a few
times as Dr. Malbone’s untrained assistant in the mountains, and with
the most inadequate understanding of the use of such splints, bandages,
needles, and ligatures as Dr. Malbone had given him for his use upon
himself in case of an emergency, and with an imperfect knowledge of the
narcotics, stimulants, febrifuges, and other medicines with which Dr.
Malbone had provided him? The sufferer had youth and superb health; but
how could he feel the smallest assurance that, in the event he should
secure a knitting of the fracture, crookedness and deformity from
improper adjustment would not result? But there was nothing to do but
try, and to bring every intelligent force of his nature to the task.
He hoped that she would not regain consciousness before he should make
another trip to the scene of the tragedy and secure her luggage. The
twilight was deepening. He threw logs on the smouldering fire in the
chimney-place and started to leave. He paused a moment at the door to
watch his patient. She was again stirring and moaning.
“A sedative would be safer,” he reflected. And then, when he had poured
it with great difficulty down her throat, he wondered if he had given
her too much, and if it would have a bad effect in depressing her
vitality and working against her rallying. He waited until she had
become still and quiet, and then hastened down to the road.
The storm had been gradually changing in character. He had expected
the snow to wait until the wind had fallen, but a hurricane was still
blowing, and snow was coming down in long gray slants. Already it had
begun to whiten and fill crevices into which the wind was driving it. It
would have been better had he brought a lantern, but there was no time
for that; and the wind doubtless would have made its use impossible.
At the wreck he found his axe and cleared away more branches. Only a
very faint suggestion of the dead white face peering up at him came
through the twilight; and there was work to be done in that quarter
to-morrow, however much snow might be lodged and packed in the branches.
Soon he found two large and heavy travelling bags, one larger than the
other; this, he reasoned, must be the woman’s; his strength to
carry both to the hut was inadequate now, and he needed all possible
steadiness of nerve for the task ahead. A laborious climb brought him
back to the hut with the bag and his axe. By the light of a candle he
anxiously read the name on a silver tag attached to the handle of the
bag. It was,--“Laura Andros, San Francisco.”
It was with awe and reverence that he opened the bag and in a gingerly
fashion drew forth its contents and carefully laid them aside. He had
already noted in a vague way that his guest was a woman of wealth and
elegance, and he now observed that, although the articles he disclosed
were intended in large part for vigorous mountain use, an unmistakable
stamp of daintiness and refinement was upon them all.
Having now found garments in which he could make her comfortable after
his surgical work was done, he proceeded with the stupendous task that
awaited him. He wondered how much precious time he had lost, if any,
through sheer dread of his duty. But whatever the delay, and whatever
its causes, it had been useful in preparing him for the ordeal. Up
to this moment an unaccountable and distressing trembling of all
his members at frequent intervals had alarmed him, but strength and
steadiness came with his nearer approach to the task.
Commanding his soul to meet the need of the hour, he went sturdily
about his work. He knew how desperately painful were operations for the
setting of fractured bones, and how great was the skill required for
the administering of an anæsthetic. He had never known even a skilled
surgeon to undertake alone what he must now do without either skill or
assistance. It would not be sufficient should he do his best: his best
must be perfectly done.
He produced his store of splints, bandages, stimulants, and
anaesthetics, and arranged them conveniently to hand, as he had seen Dr.
Malbone do. He examined his patient’s pulse; it was too quick and weak
to give him high confidence. He made a good fire, for the night was
cold; and he called heavily upon his store of candles to furnish as much
light as possible.
His bed, upon which she lay, was a most crude and inadequate affair. It
was of his own construction, and had been intended to serve its part
in the life of severe austerity that he had made for himself in the
mountains. It was made of rough boards nailed to wooden posts. To serve
for mattress, fragrant pine-needles filled it. Upon this were spread
sheets and blankets. The pillow also was made of pine-needles. Thus,
without springs, the bed was hard and unfit for a daintily reared woman;
more so because of the illness that she would suffer and the great
length of time that she would be confined to the bed; but it was the
best he had. As the hut was very small and had but one room, this bed
had been fitted snugly into a corner. Wilder moved it out, that he might
be able to work freely on both sides of it. This cramped the hut all the
more.
The examination that he had made in the road was for the purpose of
discovering broken bones. There he had found the bone of the left thigh
broken at some undetermined point between the knee and the hip. But
broken bones are not all the hurts that one may receive in such
an accident,--cuts and contusions might prove equally dangerous if
overlooked.
With exquisite care he prepared her for the work that he must do. As
she was fully dressed, this required patience from his unskilled hands.
Finally, this part of the task, inexpressibly hard for a man of his
delicacy of feeling, was accomplished. What anguish he suffered on his
own account and in foreseeing her confusion and possible resentment upon
realizing that he, an utter stranger, and not a physician, had done all
this for her, it were idle to set forth here.
To his great relief he found that the bone of the left thigh was, so
far as he could judge, the only one that had suffered fracture; but a
careful inspection revealed several bruises; and at last, in searching
for the source of the blood that had covered her face when he drew her
from the débris, he found a cut in her crown. His first work must be
there.
Covering her comfortably, he washed the blood from her hair and face,
and, bearing in mind the pride that she must have cherished for her
glorious hair, he quickly shaved as small a space on her crown as
possible. He first tried adhesive plaster to bring the edges of the
cut together; but the water and his handling of the wound started
the hemorrhage afresh, and this compelled him to close the wound with
ligatures.
He was pleased to observe that the hemorrhage was stopped. This made
him so well satisfied and so confident that the greater magnitude of the
remaining work appalled him less. Indeed, that had begun to exercise a
scientific fascination that abnormally sharpened his wits and steadied
his nerves. It was this task that he now attacked.
All this time the sufferer had lain unconscious. This was a blessing,
unless the state had been induced by causes worse than consciousness of
the pain from setting the bone. There was time hereafter to consider
all that. The one present duty was to proceed with the operation without
another moment’s delay, for inflammation had already set in.
While, with infinite care, he was fitting, as best he could, the ends of
the broken bone, he was startled out of all self-command by a scream
of agony from her, half-strangled, and therefore made all the more
terrifying, by the bandage under her chin; and she was sitting up,
staring at him. Every one of the young man’s faculties was temporarily
paralyzed. A benumbing coldness was upon him. With a mighty effort he
gathered himself up, but his breathing was difficult, and sweat streamed
down his face. He firmly laid her back upon the pillow, and said,--
“Be quiet; you shall not be hurt again.” She was singularly docile,
although he could see by the wildness of her eyes and a fluttering in
her throat that something was raging within her. With one hand he gently
pressed her eyelids down, and with the other he wetted a handkerchief
from a bottle of chloroform and held it just clear of her mouth and
nostrils. For a moment she rebelled against the stifling vapor and tried
to drag his hand away; but, finding him determined, she yielded, and
soon was stupefied.
The work must be rapid now. There was no time to wonder if she had
comprehended anything or seen in him a stranger. No interruption could
come from her now; that was the vital thing; but the anaesthetic would
soon lose its force. He resumed his work, taking great care, in matching
the injured member with the sound one, to avoid crippling her for life.
He then adjusted the splints, keeping the member straight. Finally, he
secured it against bending at the knee by adjusting a board on the under
side of the leg throughout its entire length. He finished his work by
binding the upper part of her body to the bed-frame, to prevent her
rising. Then, extinguishing his candles, making her as comfortable as
possible on the hard bed, and putting more wood on the fire, he sat down
to watch. Everything seemed to be going well.
By this time the night was far advanced. The wind was still blowing a
terrific gale. An aching, irresistible weariness stole over the watcher.
He drew his chair close to the bed and anxiously observed his charge.
He examined her pulse; it was rising; her skin was hot and dry. She had
passed from under the influence of the anaesthetic, and was now sleeping
restlessly. He waited in dread for her awaking, for the unexpected
situation in which the young man found himself was complex and
difficult. It was essential that his patient should be as tranquil as
possible. Knowledge of her father’s death might prove disastrous. Hence
she must be deceived, and yet deception was unspeakably repugnant to the
young man’s nature. But now it was a duty, which above all things must
be done. She must be buoyed with hope. All her fortitude would be needed
to bear the miserable conditions of her imprisonment. Meantime, the
young man would post notices along the road, calling for help from the
first persons passing.