Bob sat down on the edge of the bed and quickly told him what had happened.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” the foreman said, when he had finished. “Ye sure do bate the bugs when it comes ter gettin’ into scrapes, so yer does. But,” he added hastily, “Yere like a cat and allays land on yer fate.”
“But hurry up and get some clothes on, Tom. The poor fellow must be suffering and his arm needs looking after. I’ll get a fire going while you get dressed.”
It only took Tom a few minutes to get into his clothes, but by the time he was dressed Bob had a fire roaring in the stove.
“So ye’ve been tryin’ some more of yer dirty work, hey,” Tom said sternly, as he stepped close to the Frenchman who was standing near the stove.
“Non, non, I——” he began, but Tom stopped him.
“Sure and ye might as well save yer breath cause I wouldn’t belave yer on a stack o’ Bibles.” But although he spoke roughly, the kind-hearted Irishman was as gentle as a woman as he set about his work. It was not a bad break, he assured the man after a careful examination.
Setting a broken arm was nothing new to Tom, and, as Bob had declared, he could do it as well as a doctor. In the lumber camps of the Big Maine woods, broken arms and legs are common and in many cases it would be a long time before a doctor could be reached. So Tom had learned how to do the work, and in his years of lumbering had had considerable practice.
The Frenchman stood the operation with a sullen stoicism, although the pain must have been severe.
“Thar, begorra, thot’s as good a job as iny doc’d do,” Tom declared, as he finished binding the arm to a strip of board. “Ye’ll have as good a flipper as ever in three or four weeks, but if ye want to enjoy good health it’s meself as advises ye ter give us a wide berth.”