Mr. Thompson slept fitfully that night. A hard day's paddling had left
him tired and sleepy, but the swarm of pain-devils in his slashed foot
destroyed his rest. When he got up at daylight and examined the wound
again he found himself afflicted with a badly swollen foot and ankle,
and a steady dull ache that extended upward past the knee. He was next
to helpless since every movement produced the most acute sort of
pain--sufficiently so that when he had made shift to get some breakfast
he could scarcely eat. In the course of his experiments in self-aid he
discovered that to lie flat on his back with the slashed foot raised
higher than his body gave a measure of ease. So he adopted this position
and stoically set out to endure the hurt. He lay in that position the
better part of the day--until, in fact, four in the afternoon brought
Sam Carr, shotgun in hand, to his door.
Carr had seldom been in the cabin. This evening, for some reason, he put
his head in the door, and whistled softly at sight of Thompson's
bandaged foot cocked up on a folded overcoat.
"Well, well," he said, standing his gun against the door casing and
coming in. "What have you done to yourself now?"
"Oh, I cut my foot with the axe last night, worse luck," Thompson
responded petulantly.
"Bad?" Carr inquired.
"Bad enough."
"Let me see it," Carr suggested. "It's a long way to a sawbones, and
Providence never seems quite able to cope with germs of infection. Have
you any sort of antiseptic dressing on it?"
Thompson shook his head. He would not confess that the pain and swelling
had caused him certain misgivings, brought to his mind uneasily a good
deal that he had read and heard of blood-poisoning from cuts and
scratches. He was secretly glad to let Carr undo the rude bandage and
examine the wound. A man who had spent fifteen years in the wilderness
must have had to cope with similar cases.
"You did give yourself a nasty nick and no mistake," Carr observed. "You
won't walk on that foot comfortably for two or three weeks. Just grazed
a bone. No carbolic, no peroxide, or anything like that, I suppose?"
Thompson shook his head. He had not reckoned on cuts and bruises. Carr
put back the wrapping and sat whittling shavings of tobacco off a brown
plug, while Thompson got up, hopped on one foot across to the stove and
began to lay a fire. He had eaten nothing since morning, and was
correspondingly hungry. In addition, a certain unministerial pride
stirred him to action. He was ashamed to lie supinely enduring, to seem
helpless before another man's eyes. But the effort showed in his face.
Carr lit his pipe and watched silently. His gaze took in every detail
of the cabin's interior, of Thompson's painful movements, of the poorly
cooked remains of breakfast that he was warming up.