The End Of The Story
by
I
The table was of hand-hewn spruce boards, and the men who played whist had frequent difficulties in drawing home their tricks across the uneven surface. Though they sat in their undershirts, the sweat noduled and oozed on their faces; yet their feet, heavily moccasined and woollen-socked, tingled with the bite of the frost. Such was the difference of temperature in the small cabin between the floor level and a yard or more above it. The sheet-iron Yukon Stove roared red-hot, yet, eight feet away, on the meat-shelf, placed low and beside the door, lay chunks of solidly frozen moose and bacon. The door, a third of the way up from the bottom, was a thick rime. In the chinking between the logs at the back of the bunks the frost showed white and glistening. A window of oiled paper furnished light. The lower portion of the paper, on the inside, was coated an inch deep with the frozen moisture of the men’s breath.
They played a momentous rubber of whist, for the pair that lost was to dig a fishing hole through the seven feet of ice and snow that covered the Yukon.
“It’s mighty unusual, a cold snap like this in March,” remarked the man who shuffled. “What would you call it, Bob?”
“Oh, fifty-five or sixty below–all of that. What do you make it, Doc?”
Doc turned his head and glanced at the lower part of the door with a measuring eye.
“Not a bit worse than fifty. If anything, slightly under–say forty-nine. See the ice on the door. It’s just about the fifty mark, but you’ll notice the upper edge is ragged. The time she went seventy the ice climbed a full four inches higher.” He picked up his hand, and without ceasing from sorting called “Come in,” to a knock on the door.
The man who entered was a big, broad-shouldered Swede, though his nationality was not discernible until he had removed his ear-flapped cap and thawed away the ice which had formed on beard and moustache and which served to mask his face. While engaged in this, the men at the table played out the hand.
“I hear one doctor faller stop this camp,” the Swede said inquiringly, looking anxiously from face to face, his own face haggard and drawn from severe and long endured pain. “I come long way. North fork of the Whyo.”
“I’m the doctor. What’s the matter?”
In response, the man held up his left hand, the second finger of which was monstrously swollen. At the same time he began a rambling, disjointed history of the coming and growth of his affliction.
“Let me look at it,” the doctor broke in impatiently. “Lay it on the table. There, like that.”
Tenderly, as if it were a great boil, the man obeyed.
“Humph,” the doctor grumbled. “A weeping sinew. And travelled a hundred miles to have it fixed. I’ll fix it in a jiffy. You watch me, and next time you can do it yourself.”
Without warning, squarely and at right angles, and savagely, the doctor brought the edge of his hand down on the swollen crooked finger. The man yelled with consternation and agony. It was more like the cry of a wild beast, and his face was a wild beast’s as he was about to spring on the man who had perpetrated the joke.
“That’s all right,” the doctor placated sharply and authoritatively. “How do you feel? Better, eh? Of course. Next time you can do it yourself–Go on and deal, Strothers. I think we’ve got you.”
Slow and ox-like, on the face of the Swede dawned relief and comprehension. The pang over, the finger felt better. The pain was gone. He examined the finger curiously, with wondering eyes, slowly crooking it back and forth. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold-sack.
“How much?”
The doctor shook his head impatiently. “Nothing. I’m not practising–Your play, Bob.”