Once by the fire he sat down. Step Hen went on with his simple cooking operations, while Thad, assisted by the ready Giraffe, started to look at the hurt.
“Lucky I had on my leggings,” remarked Allan. “With those, and my trouser leg underneath, it made more or less of a bumper. And then again, you know, traps are never made with teeth nowadays, like they used to be. A man told me they found that the old style lacerated the leg of the animal so much, they used to lose a third of their catch; for the fox or the mink or the otter would either pull and squirm till he’d amputated his leg, or else gnaw it off.”
“Gnaw it off—ain’t you romancing, now, Allan?” asked Giraffe.
“Not at all,” replied the other. “Why that’s often been done, though trappers are divided in their opinion about it. Some think the animal deliberately gnaws its leg off, ready to make the sacrifice for the sake of liberty. Others say that an animal naturally bites at anything that hurts it; and it’s while snapping at the jaws of the trap they keep on tearing at their wounded and broken leg, till it gives way. Anyhow, there are always a number of poor three-legged small animals in the woods where trapping is done. I’ve seen a red fox that was minus a leg; and I tell you right now, the way he could get over ground was a caution.”
While Allan was talking along in this fashion, doling out interesting information, he was rolling up the leg of his trousers, though Thad could see him wince a little as though it gave him pain to do so.
“Only a black and blue place on each side,” Allan went on to say, as if surprised not to discover a worse looking wound. “Funny how that could hurt as much as it does.”
“Here, let me put on the liniment, and then bind it up,” remarked Thad. “You’ll find it cooling; and I warrant it’s going to help along a lot. These black and blue bruises are always mighty painful. That’s where you got the blow, and the blood’s already settling there. This stuff will help to keep it moving, for there’s witch hazel in it, and that, you know, is really the extract of hamamelis. How’s that now?”
“Feels better, yes, fifty per cent better,” declared Allan, as the amateur scout surgeon fastened the wet bandage snugly with a couple of safety pins, and started to draw down the leg of the other’s trousers, so the outside covering of canvas legging could be replaced.
After this had all been done, Allan got up, and commenced to walk around.
“Sort of trying out myself, you know, boys,” he remarked, laughingly, to hide any grimace of pain, his actions might be causing.