A Man: His Mark. A Romance / Second Edition

by W. C. Morrow

At the wreck he found his axe and cleared away more branches. Only a very faint suggestion of the dead white face peering up at him came through the twilight; and there was work to be done in that quarter to-morrow, however much snow might be lodged and packed in the branches. Soon he found two large and heavy travelling bags, one larger than the other; this, he reasoned, must be the woman’s; his strength to carry both to the hut was inadequate now, and he needed all possible steadiness of nerve for the task ahead. A laborious climb brought him back to the hut with the bag and his axe. By the light of a candle he anxiously read the name on a silver tag attached to the handle of the bag. It was,—“Laura Andros, San Francisco.”

It was with awe and reverence that he opened the bag and in a gingerly fashion drew forth its contents and carefully laid them aside. He had already noted in a vague way that his guest was a woman of wealth and elegance, and he now observed that, although the articles he disclosed were intended in large part for vigorous mountain use, an unmistakable stamp of daintiness and refinement was upon them all.

Having now found garments in which he could make her comfortable after his surgical work was done, he proceeded with the stupendous task that awaited him. He wondered how much precious time he had lost, if any, through sheer dread of his duty. But whatever the delay, and whatever its causes, it had been useful in preparing him for the ordeal. Up to this moment an unaccountable and distressing trembling of all his members at frequent intervals had alarmed him, but strength and steadiness came with his nearer approach to the task.

Commanding his soul to meet the need of the hour, he went sturdily about his work. He knew how desperately painful were operations for the setting of fractured bones, and how great was the skill required for the administering of an anæsthetic. He had never known even a skilled surgeon to undertake alone what he must now do without either skill or assistance. It would not be sufficient should he do his best: his best must be perfectly done.

He produced his store of splints, bandages, stimulants, and anaesthetics, and arranged them conveniently to hand, as he had seen Dr. Malbone do. He examined his patient’s pulse; it was too quick and weak to give him high confidence. He made a good fire, for the night was cold; and he called heavily upon his store of candles to furnish as much light as possible.

His bed, upon which she lay, was a most crude and inadequate affair. It was of his own construction, and had been intended to serve its part in the life of severe austerity that he had made for himself in the mountains. It was made of rough boards nailed to wooden posts. To serve for mattress, fragrant pine-needles filled it. Upon this were spread sheets and blankets. The pillow also was made of pine-needles. Thus, without springs, the bed was hard and unfit for a daintily reared woman; more so because of the illness that she would suffer and the great length of time that she would be confined to the bed; but it was the best he had. As the hut was very small and had but one room, this bed had been fitted snugly into a corner. Wilder moved it out, that he might be able to work freely on both sides of it. This cramped the hut all the more.

The examination that he had made in the road was for the purpose of discovering broken bones. There he had found the bone of the left thigh broken at some undetermined point between the knee and the hip. But broken bones are not all the hurts that one may receive in such an accident,—cuts and contusions might prove equally dangerous if overlooked.

With exquisite care he prepared her for the work that he must do. As she was fully dressed, this required patience from his unskilled hands. Finally, this part of the task, inexpressibly hard for a man of his delicacy of feeling, was accomplished. What anguish he suffered on his own account and in foreseeing her confusion and possible resentment upon realizing that he, an utter stranger, and not a physician, had done all this for her, it were idle to set forth here.

To his great relief he found that the bone of the left thigh was, so far as he could judge, the only one that had suffered fracture; but a careful inspection revealed several bruises; and at last, in searching for the source of the blood that had covered her face when he drew her from the débris, he found a cut in her crown. His first work must be there.

Covering her comfortably, he washed the blood from her hair and face, and, bearing in mind the pride that she must have cherished for her glorious hair, he quickly shaved as small a space on her crown as possible. He first tried adhesive plaster to bring the edges of the cut together; but the water and his handling of the wound started the hemorrhage afresh, and this compelled him to close the wound with ligatures.