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Page 54
"Our game," he announced, drawing in the last trick. "Now for the rub
and who digs the fishing hole."
A knock at the door brought a quick exclamation from him.
"Seems we just can't finish this rubber," he complained, as the door
opened. "What's the matter with _you_?"--this last to the stranger who
entered.
The newcomer vainly strove to move his icebound jaws and jowls. That he
had been on trail for long hours and days was patent. The skin across
the cheekbones was black with repeated frost-bite. From nose to chin was
a mass of solid ice perforated by the hole through which he breathed.
Through this he had also spat tobacco juice, which had frozen, as it
trickled, into an amber-coloured icicle, pointed like a Van Dyke beard.
He shook his head dumbly, grinned with his eyes, and drew near to the
stove to thaw his mouth to speech. He assisted the process with his
fingers, clawing off fragments of melting ice which rattled and sizzled
on the stove.
"Nothing the matter with me," he finally announced. "But if they's a
doctor in the outfit he's sure needed. They's a man up the Little Peco
that's had a ruction with a panther, an' the way he's clawed is
something scand'lous."
"How far up?" Doctor Linday demanded.
"A matter of a hundred miles."
"How long since?"
"I've ben three days comin' down."
"Bad?"
"Shoulder dislocated. Some ribs broke for sure. Right arm broke. An'
clawed clean to the bone most all over but the face. We sewed up two or
three bad places temporary, and tied arteries with twine."
"That settles it," Linday sneered. "Where were they?"
"Stomach."
"He's a sight by now."
"Not on your life. Washed clean with bug-killin' dope before we
stitched. Only temporary anyway. Had nothin' but linen thread, but
washed that, too."
"He's as good as dead," was Linday's judgment, as he angrily fingered
the cards.
"Nope. That man ain't goin' to die. He knows I've come for a doctor, an'
he'll make out to live until you get there. He won't let himself die. I
know him."
"Christian Science and gangrene, eh?" came the sneer. "Well, I'm not
practising. Nor can I see myself travelling a hundred miles at fifty
below for a dead man."
"I can see you, an' for a man a long ways from dead."
Linday shook his head. "Sorry you had your trip for nothing. Better stop
over for the night."
"Nope. We'll be pullin' out in ten minutes."
"What makes you so cocksure?" Linday demanded testily.
Then it was that Tom Daw made the speech of his life.
"Because he's just goin' on livin' till you get there, if it takes you a
week to make up your mind. Besides, his wife's with him, not sheddin' a
tear, or nothin', an' she's helpin' him live till you come. They think a
almighty heap of each other, an' she's got a will like hisn. If he
weakened, she'd just put her immortal soul into hisn an' make him live.
Though he ain't weakenin' none, you can stack on that. I'll stack on it.
I'll lay you three to one, in ounces, he's alive when you get there. I
got a team of dawgs down the bank. You ought to allow to start in ten
minutes, an' we ought to make it back in less'n three days because the
trail's broke. I'm goin' down to the dawgs now, an' I'll look for you in
ten minutes."
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