The Silver Canyon Read online

  He seemed so calm and content that in those moments of emergency Bart almost shrank from speaking, knowing, as he did, how terrible would be the effect of his words.

  Just then the Doctor looked up, saw his strange gaze, and dropping the fragments, he leaped to his feet.

  “What is it?” he cried; “what is wrong?” and as he spoke the lock of his double rifle gave forth two ominous clicks twice over.

  “They have come round while we have been away,” whispered Bart hoarsely.

  “They? Who? Our men?”

  “No,” panted Bart; “the camp is surrounded by Indians.”

  * * *

  Chapter Six.

  A Surgical Operation.

  Dr Lascelles’ first movement was to run forward to the help of his child, Bart being close behind.

  Then with the knowledge that where there is terrible odds against which to fight, guile and skill are necessary, he paused for a moment, with the intention of trying to find cover from whence he could make deadly use of his rifle. But with the knowledge that Maude must be in the hands of the Indians, whose savage nature he too well knew, his fatherly instinct admitted of no pause for strategy, and dashing forward, he ran swiftly towards the waggon, with Bart close upon his heels.

  The full extent of their peril was at once apparent, no less than twelve mounted Indians being at the head of the little valley in a group, every man in full war-paint, and with his rifle across his knees as he sat upon his sturdy Indian pony.

  Facing them were Maude, Joses, Juan, and the other two men, who had apparently been taken by surprise, and who, rifle in hand, seemed to be parleying with the enemy.

  The sight of the reinforcement in the shape of Bart, and Dr Lascelles made the Indians utter a loud “Ugh!” and for a moment they seemed disposed to assume the offensive, but to Bart’s surprise they only urged their ponies forward a few yards, and then stopped.

  “Get behind the waggon, quick, my child,” panted the Doctor, as Bart rushed up to his old companion’s side.

  “They came down upon us all at once, master,” said Joses. “They didn’t come along the trail.”

  “Show a bold front,” exclaimed the Doctor; “we may beat them off.”

  To his surprise, however, the Indians did not seem to mean fighting, one of them, who appeared to be the chief, riding forward a few yards, and saying something in his own language.

  “What does he say?” said the Doctor, impatiently.

  “I can’t make him out,” replied Joses. “His is a strange tongue to me.”

  “He is hurt,” exclaimed Bart. “He is wounded in the arm. I think he is asking for something.”

  It certainly had that appearance, for the Indian was holding rifle and reins in his left hand, while the right arm hung helplessly by his side.

  It was like weakening his own little force to do such a thing, knowing as he did how treacherous the Indian could be, but this was no time for hesitating, and as it seemed to be as Bart had intimated, the Doctor risked this being a manoeuvre on the part of the Indian chief, and holding his rifle ready, he stepped boldly forward to where the dusky warrior sat calm and motionless upon his horse.

  Upon going close up there was no longer any room for doubt. The chief’s arm was roughly bandaged, and the coarse cloth seemed to be eating into the terribly swollen flesh.

  That was enough. All the Doctor’s old instincts came at once to the front, and he took the injured limb in his hand.

  He must have caused the Indian intense pain, but the fine bronzed-looking fellow, who had features of a keen aquiline type, did not move a muscle, while, as the Doctor laid his rifle up against a rock, the little mounted band uttered in chorus a sort of grunt of approval.

  “It is peace, Bart,” said the Doctor. “Maude, my child, get a bowl of clean water, towels, and some bandages. Bart, get out my surgical case.”

  As he spoke, he motioned to the chief to dismount, which he did, throwing himself lightly from his pony, not, as a European would, on the left side of the horse, but on the right, the well-trained animal standing motionless, and bending down its head to crop the nearest herbage.

  “Throw a blanket down upon that sage-brush, Joses,” continued the Doctor; and this being done, the latter pointed to it, making signs that the chief should sit down.

  He did not stir for a few moments, but gazed searchingly round at the group, till he saw Maude come forward with a tin bowl of clean water and the bandages, followed by Bart, who had in his hand a little surgical case. Then he took a few steps forward, and seated himself, laying his rifle down amongst the short shrubby growth, while Juan, Sam, and Harry on the one side, the mounted Indians upon the other, looked curiously on.

  Once there was a low murmur among the latter, as the Doctor drew a keen, long knife from its sheath at his belt; but the chief did not wince, and all were once more still.

  “He has been badly hurt in a fight,” said the Doctor, “and the rough surgery of his tribe or his medicine-man does not act.”

  “That’s it, master,” said Joses, who was standing close by with rifle ready in case of treachery. “His medicine-man couldn’t tackle that, and they think all white men are good doctors. It means peace, master.”

  He pointed behind the Doctor as he spoke, and it was plain enough that at all events for the present the Indians meant no harm, for two trotted back, one to turn up a narrow rift that the little exploring party had passed unnoticed in the night, the other to go right on towards the entrance of the rough Horse-shoe.

  “That means scouting, does it not?” said Bart.

  “I think so,” replied the Doctor. “Yes; these Indians are friendly, but we must be on our guard. Don’t show that we are suspicious though. Help me as I dress this arm. Maude, my child, you had better go into the waggon.”

  “I am not afraid, father,” she said, quietly.

  “Stay, then,” he said. “You can be of use, perhaps.”

  He spoke like this, for, in their rough frontier life, the girl had had more than one experience of surgery. Men had been wounded in fights with the Indians; others had suffered from falls and tramplings from horses, while on more than one occasion the Doctor had had to deal with terrible injuries, the results of gorings from fierce bulls. For it is a strange but well-known fact in those parts, that the domestic cattle that run wild from the various corrals or enclosures, and take to the plains, are ten times more dangerous than the fiercest bison or buffalo, as they are commonly called, that roam the wilds.

  Meanwhile the rest of the band leaped lightly down from their ponies, and paying not the slightest heed to the white party, proceeded to gather wood and brush to make themselves a fire, some unpacking buffalo meat, and one bringing forward a portion of a prong-horn antelope.

  The Doctor was now busily examining his patient’s arm, cutting away the rough bandages, and laying bare a terrible injury.

  He was not long in seeing its extent, and he knew that if some necessary steps were not taken at once, mortification of the limb would set in, and the result would be death.

  The Indian’s eyes glittered as he keenly watched the Doctor’s face. He evidently knew the worst, and it was this which had made him seek white help, though of course he was not aware how fortunate he had been in his haphazard choice. He must have been suffering intense pain, but not a nerve quivered, not a muscle moved, while, deeply interested, Joses came closer, rested his arms upon the top of his rifle, and looked down.

  “Why, he’s got an arrow run right up his arm all along by the bone, master,” exclaimed the frontier man; “and he has been trying to pull it out, and it’s broken in.”

  “Right, Joses,” said the Doctor, quietly; “and worse than that, the head of the arrow is fixed in the bone.”

  “Ah, I couldn’t tell that,” said Joses, coolly.

  “I wish I could speak his dialect,” continued the Doctor. “I shall have to operate severely if his arm is to be saved, and I don’t want him or his men to pay me
my fee with a crack from a tomahawk.”

  “Don’t you be afraid of that, master. He won’t wince, nor say a word. You may do what you like with him. Injuns is a bad lot, but they’ve got wonderful pluck over pain.”

  “This fellow has, at all events,” said the Doctor. “Maude, my child, I think you had better go.”

  “If you wish it, father, I will,” she replied simply; “but I could help you, and I should not be in the least afraid.”

  “Good,” said the Doctor, laconically, as he lowered the injured arm after bathing it free from the macerated leaves and bark with which it had been bound up. Then with the Indian’s glittering eyes following every movement, he took from his leather case of surgical instruments, all still wonderfully bright and kept in a most perfect state, a curious-looking pair of forceps with rough handles, and a couple of short-bladed, very keen knives.

  “Hah!” said Joses, with a loud expiration of his breath, “them’s like the pinchers a doctor chap once used to pull out a big aching tooth of mine, and he nearly pulled my head off as well.”

  “No; they were different to these, Joses,” said the Doctor, quietly, as he took up a knife. “Feel faint, Bart?”

  The lad blushed now. He had been turning pale.

  “Well, I did feel a little sick, sir. It was the sight of that knife. It has all gone now.”

  “That’s right, my boy. Always try and master such feelings as these. Now I must try and make him understand what I want to do. Give me that piece of stick, Bart, it will do to imitate the arrow.”

  Bart handed the piece of wood, which the Doctor shortened, and then, suiting the action to his words, he spoke to the chief:

  “The arrow entered here,” he said, pointing to a wound a little above the Indian’s wrist, “and pierced right up through the muscles, to bury itself in the bone just here.”

  As he spoke, he pushed the stick up outside the arm along the course that the arrow had taken, and holding the end about where he considered the head of the arrow to be.

  For answer the Indian gave two sharp nods, and said something in his own tongue which no one understood.

  “Then,” continued the Doctor, “you, or somebody else, in trying to extract the arrow, have broken it off, and it is here in the arm, at least six inches and the head.”

  As he spoke, he now broke the stick in two, throwing away part, and holding the remainder up against the Indian’s wounded arm.

  Again the chief nodded, and this time he smiled.

  “Well, we understand one another so far,” said the Doctor, “and he sees that I know what’s the matter. Now then, am I to try and cure it? What would you like me to do?”

  He pointed to the arm as he spoke, and then to himself, and the Indian took the Doctor’s hand, directed it to the knife, and then, pointing to his arm, drew a line from the mouth of the wound right up to his elbow, making signs that the Doctor should make one great gash, and take the arrow out.

  “All right, my friend, but that is not quite the right way,” said the Doctor. “You trust me then to do my best for you?”

  He took up one of the short-bladed knives as he spoke, and pointed to the arm.

  The Indian smiled and nodded, his face the next moment becoming stern and fixed as if he were in terrible pain, and needed all his fortitude to bear it.

  “Going to cut it out, master?” said Joses, roughly.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s give the poor beggar a comforter then,” continued Joses. “If he scalps us afterwards along with his copper crew, why, he does, but let’s show him white men are gentlemen.”

  “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?

  I think I will go on, for there should be nothing objectionable in a few words describing the work of a man connected with one of the noblest professions under the sun.

  There was no hesitation. With one quick, firm cut, the Doctor divided the flesh, piercing deep down, and as he cut his knife gave a sharp grate.

  “Right on the arrowhead, Bart,” he said quietly; and, withdrawing his knife, he thrust a pair of sharp forceps into the wound, and seemed as if he were going to drag out the arrow, but it was only to divide the shaft. This he seized with the other forceps, and drew out of the bleeding opening—a piece nearly five inches long, which came away easily enough.

  Then, without a moment’s hesitation, he sponged the cut for a while, and directly after, guiding them with the index finger of his left hand, he thrust the forceps once more into the wound.

  There was a slight grating noise once again, a noise that Bart, as he manfully held the arm, seemed to feel go right through every nerve with a peculiar thrill. Then it was evident that the Doctor had fast hold of the arrowhead and he drew hard to take it out.

  “I thought so,” he said, “it is driven firmly into the bone.”

  As he spoke, he worked his forceps slightly to and fro, to loosen the arrowhead, and then, bearing firmly upon it, drew it out—an ugly, keen piece of nastily barbed iron, with a scrap of the shaft and some deer sinew attached.

  The Doctor examined it attentively to see that everything had come away, and uttered a sigh of satisfaction, while the only sign the Indian gave was to draw a long, deep breath.

  “There, Mr Tomahawk,” said the Doctor, smiling, as he held the arm over the bowl, and bathed the injury tenderly with fresh relays of water, till it nearly ceased bleeding; “that’s better than making a cut all along your arm, and I’ll be bound to say it feels easier already.”

  The Indian did not move or speak, but sat there smoking patiently till the deep cut was sewn up, padded with lint, and bound, and the wound above the wrist, where the arrow had entered, was also dressed and bound up carefully.

  “There: now your arm will heal,” said the Doctor, as he contrived a sling, and placed the injured limb at rest. “A man with such a fine healthy physique will not suffer much, I’ll be bound. Hah, it’s quite a treat to do some of the old work again.”

  The chief waited patiently until the Doctor had finished. Then rising, he stood for a few moments with kni
tted brows, perfectly motionless; and the frontier man, seeing what was the matter, seemed to be about to proffer his arm, but the Indian paid no heed to him, merely gazing straight before him till the feeling of faintness had passed away, when he stooped and picked up the piece of arrow shaft and the head, walked with them to where his followers were sitting, and held them out for them to see. Then they were passed round with a series of grunts, duly examined, and finally found a resting-place in a little beaver-skin bag at the chiefs girdle, along with his paints and one or two pieces of so-called “medicine” or charms.

  Meanwhile the Doctor was busy putting away his instruments, feeling greatly relieved that the encounter with the Indians had been of so friendly a nature.

  At the end of a few minutes the chief came back with the large buffalo robe that had been strapped to the back of his pony, spread it before the Doctor, placed on it his rifle, tomahawk, knife, and pouch, and signed to him that they were his as a present.

  “He means that it is all he has to give you, sir,” said Bart, who seemed to understand the chief’s ways quicker than his guardian, and who eagerly set himself to interpret.

  “Yes, that seems to be his meaning,” replied the Doctor. “Well, let’s see if we can’t make him our friend.”

  Saying which the Doctor stooped down, picked up the knife and hatchet and placed them in the chiefs belt, his rifle in the hollow of his arm, and finally his buffalo robe over his shoulders, ending by giving him his hand smilingly, and saying the one word friend, friend, two or three times over.

  The chief made no reply, but gravely stalked back to his followers, as if affronted at the refusal of his gift, and the day passed with him lying down quietly smoking in the sage-brush, while the occupants of the Doctor’s little camp went uneasily about their various tasks, ending by dividing the night into watches, lest their savage neighbours should take it into their heads to depart suddenly with the white man’s horses—a favourite practice with Indians, and one that in this case would have been destructive of the expedition.