“They treated me some scandalous, Perk,” the injured man was saying with a quirk, but little in the way of Scotch brogue cropping up in his speech, “but ye ken I’m a tough old bird and have pulled out o’ many a bad scrape in the past so it may be I’ll weather this knockout, if only that doctor can gi’e me a fair start.”
“Hamilton, they say his name is,” ventured Perk, musingly, “somehow I don’t ’member the name, so like as not he must be a new one around here since I kicked out some years ago.”
“Ay; that’s the truth, laddie—he dropped in on us something like a year back, sayin’ he was sick o’ civilization and a’ its cheats and wanted to live out his life where the primitive ways still held forth. I am o’ the opinion the man must have met with some serious trouble—had his wife run awa’ with a younger chap, more’n likely, as they sometimes do, ye ken. But for a’ that he’s a clever physician and he’ll pull me out o’ this slump if on’y he can be fetched before it’s too late.”
XXII
PICKING UP CLUES
“Make your mind easy on that score, Uncle Jimmy,” Perk went on to say as he bent over the wounded man, “we’ll get up to the river post and my ol’ haunts in a rush, pullin’ out inside the hour an’ either fetch the doctor back with us in the ship or on hossback, all that dependin’ on how things happen to be with Colonel Ascot, who I understand is still in charge o’ the Mounties.”
Perk gave his mate a questioning glance as he said this, and was pleased to see Jack nod in the affirmative, as though thus putting the seal of his approval to the plan as given by his assistant.
“An’ now, ol’ friend,” Perk continued in a soothing fashion, for he knew the Scotch nature of the other and could understand how the McGregor must be inwardly fuming concerning the robbery that had taken place and the losses to the great fur company of which he was an old and efficient official, “’fore we pull outen here you must let my boss take a look at them cuts an’ bruises. It happens he’s a fair surgeon—amatoor one, I mean—an’ could fix you up to carry on till the reg’lar doc gets here. How ’bout that, Jack?”
If either the factor or the ancient trapper noticed the rather odd familiarity existing between Perk and his supposedly wealthy employer, it did not strike them as strange—away up in this jumping-off place, as far as civilization was concerned, men were more or less equals, being judged more from what their accomplishments might be than from their money and besides, they doubtless remembered that Perk had always been a sort of free and easy independent fellow when with the Mounties.
“That’s just about what we aim to do, Perk,” Jack immediately told the other. “I don’t claim to be much of a surgeon, but if there’s anything I can do to stop the bleeding, or bind up the cuts, I’ll be only too glad to lend a helping hand, Mr. McGregor.”
He was as good as his word for inside of five minutes Jack had stripped off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves and commenced to examine the injuries suffered by the determined old factor when he dared take his life in his hands and try to defend the property of his employers.