Burned Bridges

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.