University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
DOCTORS DISAGREE.

“Well, doctor, what do you think about
him?” asked Zilpah impatiently, as the doctor
finished the ample dinner with which the
housekeeper had hospitably provided him
before she asked any questions.

“Well, ma'am, if you want my candid, outright,
and downright opinion about Mr.
Brent—”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Well, ma'am, it is that he is a dead man!”
And the doctor, adjusting his spectacles to his
nose, tilted his chair against the wall, thrust
his hands in his pockets, and steadily regard
ed the little junta composed of Zilpah, Richard,
Paul Freeman, and Ruth, who breathlessly
waited for his words.

As they met her ear, Ruth turned, and hiding
her face upon Zilpah's bosom, burst into
hysterical sobs; and the old woman, with
tears streaming down her withered cheeks,
found no word of comfort to whisper to her.
Paul Freeman turned miserably toward the
open door, yet lingered, hoping for some alleviating
word to this terrible sentence; and
Richard pursed up his lips as if to whistle;
then glanced uneasily at the women, and
doubtfully at the doctor, while he slowly
said:

“Sho! it a'n't so bad as all that, I guess.”

“It couldn't well be worse,” replied the
doctor dogmatically. “The man is injured
very bad inwardly, and there's no way of getting
at an inward wound to see what it is.
There's a couple of ribs broken, too, but
they'll heal of themselves in a week or so. It
was walking with them ribs playing against
the vital organs inside of him that did the
mischief, I expect. They sort of tore him all
to pieces, and I don't see how he's going to
get mended.”

“You can't do any thing more about it?”
asked Richard, still whistling softly as he
eyed the doctor with increasing disfavor.

“I don't see as I can, young man, really. I
have no objection to coming into the woods

again—say day after to-morrow; but its pretty
hard on a horse, and I really don't see what
I can do.”

“Well, now, doctor, I'm an ignorant sort
of man alongside of you; but it's my opinion
that the boss is going to get over it, and I'll
tell you what he'd ought to take to help him
over.”

“Well, sir, what?” asked the doctor, much
in the tone ordinarily assumed by the master
of the ring toward the clown at a circus.

“French brandy and loaf-sugar,” replied
Richard undauntedly, and meeting the doctor's
sneering laugh with good-humored indifference.

“Well, that's a new cure for broken bones,”
said the man of science at last.

“It a'n't broken bones—you said they'd
heal of themselves in a week or two,” replied
Richard sententiously.

“Well, what's your brandy and loaf-sugar
going to do anyhow?”

“Why, the brandy keeps the blood a-circulating
lively, so that the bruised parts won't
die before they heal, and the loaf-sugar makes
'em heal.”

“Sugar's dreadful healing, every body
knows,” said Zilpah corroboratively.

“Now, doctor, you think I'm a fool, but
you just hear what I've seen in my day,” pursued
Richard, rising and marhing up and
down the room, pausing now and then to
confront the doctor with some sentence more
emphatic than the rest, and speaking with
the eloquence of conviction, and an earnest
purpose.

“Three years ago, I was on a job with a
man named Sparks. It was down in the State
of Maine, where the lumbering is carried on a
little different from what it is here, but is full
as dangerous. This man was a great fellow
for taking hold of every thing himself, though
he was the boss; and in the spring, when it
came to rafting the lumber down the river, he
was here, there, and everywhere. The end
of it was that, one day, there was a jam just
above the rapids, and not a fellow on hand
man enough to go out on the raft and break
the lock, till Sparks himself seized up an axe,
tossed off his jacket and boots, and just waiting
to have a rope tied round his waist, sprung
out on the logs that were bobbing up and
down, piling one over another, and grinding
away like as they were alive, and in a hurry
to chaw him all up. Out he went, found the
lock, hit right and left, knocked out the key-log,
and then sprung for it like a man that feels
the devil close on his heels, and the church-door
open all ready for him. We fellers hurrahed
and cheered him on, and pulled away
at the line, keeping it just taut and not pulling
a bit; and well was it for him that we
did, for, just at the church-door as it were, the
devil caught up with him, and over he went,
down among the dead men, we all thought
and said; but while there's life there's hope,
and we hauled away at the line, and after five
minutes or so, up he came, looking more like
the pieces of a man than a whole one, and
hanging to the end of the rope with no more
force about him than a dish-cloth.

“We got him ashore, and carried him up to
the shanty, which wasn't far from the river.
The only one to take care of him was an old
Indian squaw we had picked up to help cook
and wash for us while we stayed in that camp,
and with her we left him, while we went back
to the logs; for the man we worked for
wouldn't have thought it much of an excuse
if we'd let all his lumber slide just because
one man got killed.

“When we got home at night, the first
thing we said was:

“ `Is the boss gone under?' and the old
squaw up and made answer:

“ `He no go under, never; me makey well.'
And sure enough, there was Sparks lying on
his bed, as happy as a lord, and alongside of
him a cupful of white sugar just wet with
brandy, while he had a bottle of it for medicine,
though it hadn't never been opened till
that day, and the white sugar he'd fetched up
when the man that owned the job came to
spend a day or two on it.

“Well, where that old woman got her idee, or
how she knew the brandy and sugar was in
the shanty, is more than I can tell; but she
seemed so sartain sure she was right that we
just let her go ahead, and when the brandy
was gone, one of us fellers went all the way
to Bangor to get some more.

“Well, sir, that was all there was to it.
The cup of brandy and sugar didn't never get
empty; and about once in five minutes, either
Sparks for himself, or some body else for him,
would tuck a spoonful into his mouth. It
kept him about half drunk, I do suppose, and
he slept right straight along, day and night,
most all the time. When he got a little better,
we used to carry him out on a sort of bed

we made for him, and set him in the sun a
little while; and when it came midsummer,
we laid him where he'd get the good smell of
the spruces and fir-balsams. Then we fed
him on thin slices of raw pork, sprinkled with
red pepper; and the amount of it was that by
early fall he was a well man, and it was
brandy and sugar that cured him.”

“Brandy and sugar, and the smell of pine-woods,
and raw pork and red pepper!” repeated
the doctor contemptuously. “Well, young
man, if you think you're competent to manage
this case on those principles, I am quite ready
to leave it in your hands, for I confess that I
don't understand that style of treatment.”

“Nor no other that'll haul Brent through,
do you?” asked Richard, much in the same
tone.

“No, I can't say I do. A man that's injured
as he's injured had ought to die, and I don't
doubt he will die,” said the doctor, allowing
his chair to resume its quadrupedal position,
while rising to his own feet, he buttoned his
coat, finished packing and strapping his saddle-bags,
and showed symptoms of a dignified
departure.

“All right, doctor. You say he'll die, and
you can't help it, and I say he shan't die, not
if we can hender it; shall he, Ma'am Zilpah?”

“No, Richard, he shan't; and I don't doubt
but what we can hender it, if all you say is
true,” replied the old woman, jerking her
chin into the air, with a defiant glance at the
doctor.

“Very well, then, I leave the case in your
hands—only mind and don't you blame me
when the man dies,” said that worthy practitioner,
putting on his hat and approaching
the door.

“No, we won't; but maybe you'll tell me
if you've got any first-rate French brandy
among your physic down to the Ford?” said
Richard, accompanyng him.

“Yes, I've got some worth eighteen dollars
a gallon, if that is good enough,” said the doctor
with a grim smile.

“Who cares for the price if the stuff is
first-rate! I'll buy a bottle anyhow out of my
own pocket.”

“And I'll go down with the doctor and
bring it back,” said Paul eagerly, looking
toward Ruth for approval; but she was whispering
to Zilpah:

“Let us go back to Mr. Brent now.”

“You go, and I'll come as soon as I put
these dishes together,” said the old woman
kindly; and the girl, waiting for no further
permission, flew back to the post beside Marston's
pillow, which she had unwillingly
quitted half an hour before, at Zilpah's call.