She followed his eyes to a rusty condensed-milk can, which she filled and rinsed, saying cheerfully: “Then some one does look after you?”
“No, it isn’t after me the old scoundrel looks.” With great eyes darkening, he lowered his voice: “Is he hanging about still? A sort of tramp with—”
“No, the man I think you mean has gone out to the gulch.”
“H’m! Tired of waiting! We saw that in his face when he brought in the water, didn’t we, Ky?” The dog raised her head. “Yes, he wasn’t anything like as afraid of you, Ky, as he used to be. Time’s short.” He pulled himself up and fell to work with a knife upon the piece of wood that lay on the gray blanket.
Suspiciousness has made him brain-sick, thought the girl. She dried the dripping can on her handkerchief as she looked over at the dog. “Poor Ky. What happened to her eye?”
“Left it up yonder.” He glanced through the open door to the white surf curling up above the tundra, and with his wild head he made a little motion to the north. But not even long enough to drink did he stop his feverish whittling. As she put the cup on a tin cracker-box, set within his reach, she saw there was a little heap of shavings and splinters in the hollow of the blanket between the man’s gaunt knees, and she noticed that he held his knife with grotesque awkwardness. Then, with an inward shrinking, saw that to every finger but two, the final joint or more was lacking. “How dreadfully you’ve been hurt.”
He looked up and then followed the direction of her glance. “Yes, I got a good deal mauled”—only half-articulate the iterated burden—“up yonder.”
His voice made her heart ache for pity of such utter weakness. The task he had set himself looked as painful as impossible. Yet remembering the solace whittling seems to be to certain backwoodsmen: “Do you do that for amusement?” she asked diffidently.