Slippy McGee | Page 8

injured and we had some strenuous days
and nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at
the knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in the
hands of any physician less skilled and determined than Westmoreland
he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw set, followed
his code and fenced with death for this apparently worthless and
forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to outwit the great Enemy;
in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's chance that we were
astonished when he turned the corner--very, very feebly--and we didn't
have to place another pine box in the potter's field, alongside other
unmarked mounds whose occupants were other unknown men, grim
causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.
The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan
curiosity, then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return
the greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his lips--a
scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild beast. He
began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself. Clélie, clapping
her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from fiends. Indeed, never
before nor since have I heard such a frightful, inhuman power of
profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When breath failed him he

lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and falling to his choking
gasps.
"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I said
a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had helped
Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had sat long
hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a soul.
He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make
me sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
creature.
It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an inherent
unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked out
faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the fine
shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful, springy, slim
in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms unusually long,
giving him a terrible reach, the head round, well-shaped, covered with
thick reddish hair; cold, light, and intelligent eyes, full of animosity and
suspicion, reminding you unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary,
deadly, and ready to strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled.
His lips shut upon each other formidably and without softness, and the
jaws thrust forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was
slightly larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon
the lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and

throat lent a more sinister note.
We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had
yet encountered.
For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed only
such nursing as he was sure to get.
"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it, come
what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
shadow in his kind gray eyes.