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Page 61
"Very well." He stood up briskly, went to his pack, and began
unstrapping. "I shall need help. Bring his brother in. Bring them all
in. Boiling water--let there be lots of it. I've brought bandages, but
let me see what you have in that line.--Here, Daw, build up that fire
and start boiling all the water you can.--Here you," to the other man,
"get that table out and under the window there. Clean it; scrub it;
scald it. Clean, man, clean, as you never cleaned a thing before. You,
Mrs. Strang, will be my helper. No sheets, I suppose. Well, we'll manage
somehow.--You're his brother, sir. I'll give the an�sthetic, but you
must keep it going afterward. Now listen, while I instruct you. In the
first place--but before that, can you take a pulse?..."
IV
Noted for his daring and success as a surgeon, through the days and
weeks that followed Linday exceeded himself in daring and success.
Never, because of the frightful mangling and breakage, and because of
the long delay, had he encountered so terrible a case. But he had never
had a healthier specimen of human wreck to work upon. Even then he would
have failed, had it not been for the patient's catlike vitality and
almost uncanny physical and mental grip on life.
There were days of high temperature and delirium; days of heart-sinking
when Strang's pulse was barely perceptible; days when he lay conscious,
eyes weary and drawn, the sweat of pain on his face. Linday was
indefatigable, cruelly efficient, audacious and fortunate, daring hazard
after hazard and winning. He was not content to make the man live. He
devoted himself to the intricate and perilous problem of making him
whole and strong again.
"He will be a cripple?" Madge queried.
"He will not merely walk and talk and be a limping caricature of his
former self," Linday told her. "He shall run and leap, swim riffles,
ride bears, fight panthers, and do all things to the top of his fool
desire. And, I warn you, he will fascinate women just as of old. Will
you like that? Are you content? Remember, you will not be with him."
"Go on, go on," she breathed. "Make him whole. Make him what he was."
More than once, whenever Strang's recuperation permitted, Linday put him
under the an�sthetic and did terrible things, cutting and sewing,
rewiring and connecting up the disrupted organism. Later, developed a
hitch in the left arm. Strang could lift it so far, and no farther.
Linday applied himself to the problem. It was a case of more wires,
shrunken, twisted, disconnected. Again it was cut and switch and ease
and disentangle. And all that saved Strang was his tremendous vitality
and the health of his flesh.
"You will kill him," his brother complained. "Let him be. For God's sake
let him be. A live and crippled man is better than a whole and dead
one."
Linday flamed in wrath. "You get out! Out of this cabin with you till
you can come back and say that I make him live. Pull--by God, man,
you've got to pull with me with all your soul. Your brother's travelling
a hairline razor-edge. Do you understand? A thought can topple him off.
Now get out, and come back sweet and wholesome, convinced beyond all
absoluteness that he will live and be what he was before you and he
played the fool together. Get out, I say."
The brother, with clenched hands and threatening eyes, looked to Madge
for counsel.
"Go, go, please," she begged. "He is right. I know he is right."
Another time, when Strang's condition seemed more promising, the brother
said:
"Doc, you're a wonder, and all this time I've forgotten to ask your
name."
"None of your damn business. Don't bother me. Get out."
The mangled right arm ceased from its healing, burst open again in a
frightful wound.
"Necrosis," said Linday.
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