The Terms of Surrender

MacGonigal bit the end off a cigar, bit it viciously, as if he were annoyed at it. Then he struck a match by drawing it sharply along the side of his leg, and lit the cigar; but not another word did he utter until a thunder of hoofs disturbed the hot silence of the afternoon.

“Guess that’s some of the boys comin’ from the depot,” whispered Mac. “They’ll not suspicion you’re here, Derry, an’ I’ll soon have a stampede by tellin’ ’em the doc is loose among the bottles.”

True to his promise, he got rid of the thirsty ones quickly; for this smaller batch had not even awaited the departure of the train.

“Air you awake, Derry?” he inquired, when he had crept back softly to his chair.

“Yes.”

“What’s this yarn about One-thumb Jake shootin’ a rattler?”

“I – don’t know. He didn’t shoot me, Mac. I got slammed on a rock, good and hard.”

“I on’y axed because I’m nearly fed up with Jake an’ his gun-play.”

“Ah, quit it, you sleuth. Jake wouldn’t pull his gun on me, not even at Marten’s bidding.”

“He kin be the biggest damn fool in Bison when he’s loaded. Anyhow, I’ll take your say-so.”

There was another period of quietude, when brooding thought sat heavy on MacGonigal, and pain gnawed Power with its sharpest tooth. Then came the sound of galloping horses again, and Benson appeared, guiding a big man who rolled in his walk; for the fast canter had stirred many varieties of alcohol in an overburdened system. The private secretary’s voice was raised in order that the others might hear.

“I would advise you to bandage the limb sufficiently to give Mr. Power some sort of ease until Dr. Stearn comes from Denver,” he was urging. “I am sure that Mr. Marten would wish this case to be attended by his own doctor, and I know that Dr. Stearn attends him.”

“Stearn! What does that old mutt know about surgery?” shouted Peters. “I could set a compound fracture while he was searching around for his eyeglasses… Hullo, Mac! You’re always the right man in the right place. Bring me a highball, to clear the dust out of the pipes.”

“You jest fix Derry first, Peters, an’ you kin hev two highballs.”

The red-whiskered man, whose medical degree was a blend of sheer impudence and a good deal of rough-and-ready experience, knew MacGonigal so well that he did not attempt to argue.

“Very well,” he said sulkily. “Break up an egg box, and saw it into eighteen-inch lengths, four inches wide. You have a roll of lint and scissors? I’ll rip up his trousers, and have a look at the place.”

His actions were decided, but somewhat awkward. When Power winced because of a careless handling of the injured limb, he only guffawed.

“Nips you a bit!” he grunted. “Of course it does. I’d like to know what you expected. Did you fancy you could flop over the Gulch like a crow?.. Oh, here we are! Just an ordinary smash. Hurry up with those splints, Mac. Now, just set your teeth and grin hard while I pull… There! Did you hear it? I’ll not hurt you more than I can help while I do the dressing. Got any bromide in that den of yours, Mac? Well, give him a ten-grain dose every three hours till he sleeps. Get the rest of his clothes off, keep him in bed for three weeks, and the rest may be left safely to Nature. Gee whizz! I’m chewing mud. Where in hell do you keep your whisky?”

“Doctor” Peters had a professional manner which did not inspire confidence; but he seemed to understand what he was about, and Benson, when he could be of no further service, went to the reduction mill, where he had business which detained him until a late hour. Next morning, on his way to Denver, he called at the store, and visited Power, who was feeling a great deal better, and was confident that the damaged limb would soon be as sound as ever.

“I hope you won’t think it necessary to trouble Mr. Marten with any report of my accident,” went on the invalid. “You see, in a sort of a way, it happened in connection with his marriage, as I was watching the festivities when it happened – had my eyes anywhere but where they ought to be, I suppose – and if his wife came to hear of it she might take it to heart. Sometimes a woman has odd notions about such things occurring on her wedding day.”

“Right you are,” agreed Benson cheerfully.

A remark dropped by the manager of the mill had supplied a reason for the young engineer’s interest in the marriage, and he had come to the conclusion that the sooner the whole affair was forgotten the better it would be for all parties.

“I’ll be in Denver till September or thereabouts; but I’ll be seeing you long before then,” he continued. “What about squaring your account? I think I have all the details in the office.”

“Pay what is coming to me by check to Smith & Moffat’s bank,” said Power. “They’ll let me know when they get the money, and you can mail a receipt here for my signature. By the way, I wish to resign my position on Marten’s staff as from yesterday.”

“Sorry to hear that. Do you really mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll put that through, also. Goodby, old chap, and good luck. You’ll be well looked after, I suppose?”

“I couldn’t be in better hands than Mac’s. If he didn’t own a hard head, his big heart would have ruined him long ago.”

“An unusual combination,” laughed Benson, and his eyes met Power’s quizzically. “Well, so long! Let me know if I can do anything.”

Beyond the purely business formalities connected with the payment of Power’s salary and the acceptance of his resignation, Benson heard little of him until ten days later, when a telegram reached him in the early morning. It was from MacGonigal, and read:

“Don’t like the look of Power’s leg. Send doctor.”

That afternoon Benson brought Dr. Stearn to the store, and MacGonigal explained that from some remark grunted by Peters when quite sober, and from personal observation, he was not satisfied with the appearance of Power’s injured limb. The doctor, a fully qualified medical man, was very wroth with Peters when he had made a brief examination of the patient.

“This is the work of an incompetent quack,” he said angrily. “Whoever the man may be, he is the worst sort of idiot – the sort that knows a little of what he is doing. The splints and bandaging have served their purpose only too well, because callous is forming already. Unless you wish to have one leg half an inch shorter than the other during the rest of your life, Mr. Power, you must let me put you under ether.”

“Why?” came the calm-voiced question.

“To put it plainly, your leg should be broken again, and properly set.”

“What is wrong with it?”

“You know you have two bones in that part of the leg which is below the knee, the tibia and the fibula? Well, they were broken – by a blow, was it? No, a fall – well, they practically amount to the same thing, though there are indications that this injury was caused by a blow – ”

“He fell off one rock onto another, doctor,” put in Benson.

“Ah, yes! That accounts for it. As I was saying, they were broken slantwise, and now, instead of being in correct apposition, the upper parts override the lower ones. Do you follow?”

“Suppose they are not interfered with, will they heal all right?” said Power.

“Y-yes,” came the grudging admission; “but you’ll walk with a limp.”

“Bar that, the left leg will be as strong as the right one?”

“Stronger, in that particular place. Nature does some first-rate grafting, when the stock is young and exceptionally healthy.”

Power smiled, almost with the compelling good-humor of other days. “Then I’ll limp along, Doctor,” he said. “I have things to do, and this enforced waste of time is the worst feature of the whole business. It is very good of you to come out here, and more than kind of Mr. Benson to accompany you; but I won’t, if I can avoid it, endure another ten days like the sample I have just passed through.”

“You’ll regret your decision later. There’s no means of adding that half inch afterward, you know.”

“I quite understand, Doctor. It’s a limp for life.”

Dr. Stearn felt the calf muscles and tendons again, and pressed the region of the fracture with skilled gentleness.

“It’s a pity,” he growled. “You’ve made a wonderful recovery. If, when you are able to hobble about, you meet this rascal, Peters, and shoot him, call me as a witness in your behalf. It would be a clear case of justifiable homicide!”

So that is how John Darien Power acquired the somewhat jerky movement which characterizes his walk today; though the cause of it is blurred by the mists of a quarter of a century. The red-whiskered Peters was shot long ago, not by Power, but by an infuriated miner from whose jaw he had wrenched two sound teeth before discovering the decayed stump which led to this display of misplaced energy. It was well that such impostors should be swept out of the townlets of Colorado, even if the means adopted for their suppression were drastic. They wrought untold mischief by their pretensions, and brought hundreds of men and women to needless death. They did some little good, perhaps, in communities where physicians and surgeons were few and far between; but their rough and partly successful carpentry of the human frame did not atone for the misery they inflicted in cases which demanded a delicately exact and scientific diagnosis. At any rate, they have gone, never to be seen again in Colorado, and the precise manner of their departure, whether by rum, or lead, or wise and far-reaching laws, does not concern this narrative.

What does concern it most intimately is the first use Power made of his limping steps; for upon their direction and daily increasing number depended the whole of his subsequent history. Life still held for him certain rare and noteworthy phases – developments which, when viewed through the vista of many years, seemed as inevitable and preordained as the ordered sequence of a Greek tragedy. Yet, on the day he hobbled out into the sunshine again, it was just the spin of a coin whether he rode to the Dolores ranch or took train for Denver, and it is safe to say that had he done the one thing instead of the other his future career must have been drawn into an entirely different channel.