“Now, don’t go to talking about that,” said Rob. “When a fellow gets scared of anything is when he catches it. They say that if a man goes to Africa and expects to come down with a fever he always does, and if he doesn’t think anything about it he probably gets along all right. Now, let’s have a look at your foot. Take off your shoe; and put the kettle on the fire, so that we can get some warm water. The first thing always is to keep a cut clean; and I have read, too, that where there is any rusty nail or toy pistol around the best thing is to keep a wound open.”
“That doesn’t seem to be the way you are treating your fingers,” said Jesse, looking at the cloth in which Rob still kept a big poultice of black mud.
“Well, a poultice draws poison out of a wound, you see,” said Rob, “and mud is good for that. We had a pointer dog once, and he came home with his face all swelled up, and my father said he had been bitten by a snake. We didn’t know what to do, but the dog did; he wouldn’t let any one touch him, but went off to a slough back of the house and lay down in the mud, and he kept his head in the mud for two or three days. He got well all right. Your foot cannot be any worse than if you had been snake-bitten, surely, and you and I ought to have as much sense as the dog. My hand does not hurt now, and I’ll warrant Skookie and I will fix up your foot in a jiffy.”
He put his head out of the door and called for John and Skookie, both of whom presently came, the latter soon returning with a double handful of mud, for which Rob had asked. Meantime they had taken off Jesse’s shoe and stocking, cleaned the wound, and Rob had cut it open even a little wider with his knife—at which Jesse made a wry face.
“I hate to do it, Jess,” said Rob, “but that is what I read doctors do in a case like this. Now for a good poultice. You will be all right in a day or so.”
In truth, they very probably did the very best that could be done in such circumstances. There might have been serious trouble from a wound from an old klipsie barb. Surgeons have died from poison received from knives used in post-mortem work. Lockjaw might very well follow upon a wound from a piece of dirty iron of this kind; but, luckily, the germ of that disease seemed not to exist in this case; at least the treatment which Rob applied proved quite effective and no evil results followed. Although Jesse limped for a time, in a few days he became quite well, and the swelling in the foot amounted to very little.
“But now,” said John one morning, as the three of them sat by the fireside in the barabbara, “we are a fine-looking lot, aren’t we? Just look at us—every one of us has got something the matter with him!” They all took a glance and broke out in a loud laugh together, in which Skookie joined uproariously. As a matter of fact, each one of them was wearing a bandage. Rob had his hand done up, Jesse’s foot was encased in a mud plaster, and John still wore his handkerchief tied over his nose, whose tip he had nearly severed in his attempt at eating after the Aleut fashion.
“Well,” said Rob, “it’s lucky that none of us is hurt bad enough to cripple him seriously, anyway; although I guess Skookie will have to do most of the work of getting wood and water for a day or so yet.”
“There’s no reason why I could not carry wood and water,” said John. “My nose is not in the road.”