"Thanks, youngster," was Burns's answer, and this time there was no smile on the face which he lifted again for an instant from above the tiny piece of steel which held in it such potentialities—in his hands.
"You seem to have got farther in under his skin than the rest of us," observed Chester to King as they walked slowly away. There was a touch of unconscious jealousy in his tone. He had known R.P. Burns a long while before Jordan King had reached man's estate. "I never knew him to say a word about a coming operation before."
"He didn't say it now; I happened to know. Come out and see the rigging we've put on the car so Aleck can work everything with one hand and two feet."
"And a few brains, I should say," Chester supplemented.
Though Burns had plenty of other work to keep him busy during the interval before he should lay hands upon Doctor Van Horn, his mind was seldom off his coming task. In spite of all that Ellen knew of the past antagonism between the two men she was in possession of but comparatively few of the facts. Except where his fiery temper had entirely overcome him Burns had been silent concerning the many causes he had had to dislike and distrust the older man.
As what is called "a fashionable physician," having for his patients few outside of the wealthy class, Dr. James Van Horn had occupied a field of practice entirely different from that of R.P. Burns. Though Burns numbered on his list many of the city's best known and most prosperous citizens, he held them by virtue of a manner of address and a system of treatment differing in no wise from that which he employed upon the poorest and humblest who came to him. If people liked him it was for no blandishments of his, only for his sturdy manliness, his absolute honesty, and a certain not unattractive bluntness of speech whose humour often atoned for its thrust.
As for his skill, there was no question that it ranked higher than that of his special rival. As for his success, it had steadily increased. And, as all who knew him could testify, when it came to that "last ditch" in which lay a human being fighting for his life, Burns's reputation for standing by, sleeves rolled up and body stiff with resistance of the threatening evil, was such that there was no man to compete with him.
It was inevitable that in a city of the moderate size of that in which these two men practised there should arise situations which sometimes brought about a clash between them. The patient of one, having arrived at serious straits, often called for a consultation with the other. The very professional bearing and methods of the two were so different, strive though they might to adapt themselves to each other at least in the presence of the patient, that trouble usually began at once, veiled though it might be under the stringencies of professional etiquette. Later, when it came to matters of life and death, these men were sure to disagree radically. Van Horn, dignified of presence, polished of speech, was apt to impress the patient's family with his wisdom, his restraint, his modestly assured sense of the fitness of his own methods to the needs of the case; while Burns, burning with indignation over some breach of faith occasioned by his senior's orders in his absence, or other indignity, flaming still more hotly over being forced into a course which he believed to be against the patient's interest, was likely to blurt out some rough speech at a moment when silence, as far as his own interests were concerned, would have been more discreet—and then would come rupture.
Usually those most concerned never guessed at the hidden fires, because even Burns, under bonds to his wife to restrain himself at moments of danger, was nearly always able to get away from such scenes without open outbreak. But more than once a situation had developed which could be handled only by the withdrawal of one or the other physician from the case—and then, whether he went or stayed, Burns could seldom win through without showing what he felt.