to do the surgery!"
"Well, he sure ain't going to do it now," said Measure.
The knife and the bone saw lay on the blanket.
"Pa," said Measure.
"Not me," said Pa.
"Ma," said Measure.
"I can't," Faith said.
"Well then," said Measure, "I reckon I just turned surgeon." He looked at Alvin.
The boy's face had a deathly pallor to it that was even worse than the ruddiness of the fever. But he managed a sort of smile, and whispered, "Reckon so."
"Ma, you're going to have to hold back that flap of skin."
She nodded.
Measure picked up the knife and brought the blade to rest against the bottom line.
"Measure," Al Junior whispered.
"Yes, Alvin?" Measure asked.
"I can stand the pain and hold right still, iffen you whistle."
"I can't keep no tune, if I'm trying to cut straight at the same time," said Measure.
"Don't want no tune," said Alvin.
Measure looked into the boy's eyes and had no choice but to do as he asked. It was Al's leg, after all, and if he wanted a whistling surgeon, he'd get one. Measure took a deep breath and started in whistling, no kind of tune at all, just notes. He put the knife on the black line again and began to cut. Shallow at first, cause he heard Al take a gasp of air.
"Keep whistling," Alvin whispered. "Right to the bone."
Measure whistled again, and this time he cut fast and deep. Right to the bone in the middle of the line. A deep slit up both sides. Then he worked the knife under the two corners and peeled the skin and muscle right back. At first it bled more than a little bit, but almost right away the bleeding stopped. Measure figured it must be something Alvin did inside himself, to stop the bleeding like that.
"Faith," said Pa.
Ma reached over and laid her hand on the bloody flap of skin. Al reached out a trembling hand and traced a wedge on the red-streaked bone of his own leg. Measure laid down the knife and picked up the saw. It made an awful, squeaky sound as he cut. But Measure just whistled and sawed, sawed and whistled. And pretty soon he had a wedge of bone in his hand. It didn't look no different from the rest of the bone.
"You sure that was the right place?" he asked.
Al nodded slowly.
"Did I get it all?" Measure asked.
Al sat for a few moments, then nodded again.
"You want Ma to sew this back up?" Measure asked.
Al didn't say a thing.
"He fainted," said Pa.
The blood started to flow again, just a little, seeping into the wound. Ma had a needle and thread on the pincushion she wore around her neck. In no time she had that flap of skin right back down, and she was stitching away at it, making a fine tight seam.
"You just keep on whistling, Measure," she said.
So he kept right on whistling and she kept right on sewing, till they had the wound all bandaged up and Alvin was laying back sleeping like a baby. They all three stood up to go. Pa laid a hand on the boy's forehead, as gentle as you please.
"I think his fever's gone," he said.
Measure's tune got downright jaunty as they slipped on out the door.
Chapter Fourteen - Chastisement
As soon as Elly saw him, she was sweet as could be, brushing snow off him, helping with his cloak, and never so much as whispering a question of how it happened.
Didn't make no difference how kindly she might be.
He was shamed afore his own wife, cause sooner or later she'd hear the tale from one of those children. Soon enough the tale would be all up and down the Wobbish. How Armor-of-God Weaver, storekeeper for the western country, future governor, got throwed right off a porch into the snow by his old father-in-law. They'd be laughing behind their hands, all right. They'd laugh him up and down. Never to his face, of course, cause there was hardly a soul between Lake Canada and the Noisy River who didn't owe him money or need his maps to prove their claims. Come the time when the Wobbish country was made a state, they'd tell that story at every polling place. They might like a man they laughed at, but they wouldn't respect him, and they wouldn't vote for him.
It was the death of his plans he was facing, and his wife just had too much of that Miller family look about her. She was pretty enough, for