The doctor waited, his eyes on his patient, his ears strained for the sound of vanishing footsteps. He heard none. The other was doubtless just outside, watching. The doctor walked to the table, took a square of prepared plaster from his case and, having turned the light down a little, laid the plaster upon the top of the globe.
The light went out. He stepped swiftly to the head of the bed and put a hand against the blind door. It swung inward a foot or more, then back into place again.
“Here!” The threatening voice was at the outside door, which opened and closed with a bang. “What’re you trying to do?”
The doctor took one long stride in the direction of the speaker. “Got a match?” he inquired innocently. “That blamed lamp went out.”
The other muttered and struck a match. When its light flashed the doctor was standing beside the table, the square of plaster in one hand.
“You ’tend to business!” warned the man with the scar. His thin lips were parted in a snarl.
“Now, look-a-here,” returned the doctor; “I’ve stood all the abuse I’m goin’ to. There ain’t another physician in this county that would a-came out here a second time with his eyes blinded and his hands tied—not if you had ten friends dyin’. And I expect you to show me decent treatment.” He leaned forward across the table and looked the other man squarely in the face.
“Last night you wanted hot water. To-night you want cold.”
“Wal, excuse me, but I’m the best judge of what the sick gent needs. If I ain’t, why the dickens do you come after me?”
For the space of a minute they stood in silence, face to face. Then, as if partly convinced, the man with the scar once more took up his oil can. When his quick, shuffling steps had died away the doctor tried another plan. He stooped over the sick man until his lips were close to the crack that ran down the full length of the blind door, and began to speak the name that the grief-crazed mother at the mine had spoken: “Laurie! Laurie! Laurie!”