“What are you going to do?” said the Doctor, wonderingly.
“Show you directly,” growled Joses, who leisurely filled a short, home-made wooden pipe with tobacco, lit it at the Indian’s fire, which was now crackling merrily, and returned to offer it to the chief, who took it with a short nod and a grunt, and began to smoke rapidly.
“That’ll take a bit o’ the edge off it,” growled Joses. “Shall I hold his arm?”
“No; Bart, will do that,” said the Doctor, rolling up his sleeves and placing water, bandages, and forceps ready. “Humph! he cannot bend his arm. Hold it like that, Bart—firmly, my lad, and don’t flinch. I won’t cut you.”
“I’ll be quite firm, sir,” said Bart, quietly; and the Doctor raised his knife.
As he did so, he glanced at where nine Indians were seated round the fire, expecting to see that they would be interested in what was taking place; but, on the contrary, they were to a man fully occupied in roasting their dried meat and the portions of the antelope that they had cut up. The operation on the chief did not interest them in the least, or if it did, they were too stoical to show it.
The Doctor then glanced at his savage patient, and laying one hand upon the dreadfully swollen limb, he received a nod of encouragement, for there was no sign of quailing in the chief’s eyes; but as the Doctor approached the point of the knife to a spot terribly discoloured, just below the elbow, the Indian made a sound full of remonstrance, and pointing to the wound above the wrist, signed to his attendant that he should slit the arm right up.
“No, no,” said the Doctor, smiling. “I’m not going to make a terrible wound like that. Leave it to me.”
He patted the chief on the shoulder as he spoke, and once more the Indian subsided into a state of stolidity, as if there were nothing the matter and he was not in the slightest pain.
Here I pause for a few moments as I say— Shall I describe what the Doctor did to save the Indian’s life, or shall I hold my hand?