Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/154

 hoping the little Englishman would succeed in making a start at it, anyway.

"They will not, then," Ryan replied.

Dr. Hall was hanging up his long black coat, having paid his social obligations, and preparing for more serious work. There was a new case, brought in only that evening from the west, a young man with a mangled foot which required an operation. Hall dreaded an amputation. He knew too well the terrible fear a laborer on trackwork had of becoming a maimed man. The doctor would have to bear not only the reproaches of his patient, but the censure, the suspicious distrust thereafter, of nearly every man on the train. A man's capital was taken from him, viewed from the point of an untrained laborer, and rightly viewed, when a hand or foot was taken off. He was a pauper from that day.

It was Hall's hope that the patient would recoup strength during the night to be sent in the morning, with one of his comrades of the gang as nurse on the way, according to the usage, to the hospital at Topeka. But it was a long journey for a case so grave, and all this noise and hilarity was not conducive to the patient's rest.

Coat and vest off, white shirt gleaming in the light of the two guiding lanterns at his door, hung there each evening with religious punctuality by Ryan, Dr. Hall started to the hospital car to see what more he might do to relieve the young jerry's pain. Jack Ryan slewed his knees out of the doorway to let him pass.

"Will you hang around here, Jack, and keep an eye on things?" the doctor requested. "Some of the town boys are sneaking around here to-night."

"I will do that," Jack assented heartily. "Poor young