ONE CHRISTMAS
DAY.
Told by Edward Burton and Set Down by H. H Powell
From The Wide World Magazine, 1908. Vol. xx.—49.
MORE QUEER FIXES. column
So
popular were the series of “Queer Fixes” which we recently published, detailing
out-of-the-ordinary happenings and remarkable predicaments, that we have
decided to continue them. Below will be found the second instalment of a
fascinating collection of narratives.
I AM hardly likely to forget my
first Christmas in Canada; it came so perilously near being my last upon this
terrestrial sphere that the memory of my thrilling experience is still
responsible for my nastiest form of nightmare.
Fresh out from the old country in
the previous spring, with all the average emigrant young Englishman’s
enthusiasm for an open-air life, spiced with the prospect of a little sport and
adventure, I had gladly jumped at a job as chainman on a railroad survey
party—one of those hardy little bands of nomadic tent-dwellers, continually engaged
in extending the civilizing influence of the steel highway ever farther into
the wilds of the Dominion. And a pleasant life it proved in many ways, though
very far from the easy-going semi-picnic I had innocently imagined.
It was not till the snow came to
stay in late November, and the mercury evinced an unpleasant disposition to
drop daily farther below zero, that I began to favourably compare the joys of
civilization with the various discomforts of life under canvas, but unexpected
promotion to the post of rodman more than determined me not to funk the severities
of the winter.
After several months in the bush we
had approached a comparatively settled neighbourhood, and much to the general
satisfaction were enabled to shift camp again just before Christmas and pitch
our weather-beaten tents in the wind-screened shelter of a pine-clump not more
than a dozen miles from the rail. All the boys had been eagerly calculating
upon this move to enable them to take advantage of the two consecutive days’ holiday
occasioned by the twenty-fifth falling upon a Saturday. By quitting work a
little earlier than usual on the Friday there would be time to board either the
east or west bound cars, pay a flying visit home, and be back to a latish
breakfast on Monday. Even our ambitiously energetic chief, who grudged every
minute of the working hours, was favourable to the scheme, to which it seemed
there was only one awkward drawback. Someone of responsibility must remain in
charge of the camp, for, in addition to stores and personal effects, there were
all the valuable professional instruments and the whole result of many months
of labour in the shape of plans and notes representing an expenditure of many
thousand dollars.
“How about old Jim?” suggested the leveller, when
the question was first seriously discussed. “I hear he means staying in camp,
anyway.”
“Daren’t trust him, worse luck,”
said the chief,
decidedly. “Heaven
only knows what the drunken old sweep would be up to. If he wasn’t such a dandy
cook I’d have fired him months ago.”
“We’ll have to draw lots for it, I
reckon,” put in Laurie, the transit man. “If my luck’s anything like what it’s
been at poker the last month, the job’s a cinch (certainty) for me.”
But here I came to the rescue and
dispelled the dawning apprehension depicted in half-a-dozen faces by
volunteering for the task myself, a very minor sacrifice considering that I had
no friends within reach, and little inclination to spend the festive season in
a strange hotel. My offer was gratefully accepted, and thus it came about that
Christmas Eve saw the whole party, barring Jim and me, sleighing gaily off to
the station, shouting “Merry Christmas” at us
until the rig was out of hearing. They meant well, no doubt, but I couldn’t
help feeling the irony of the familiar words as l gazed over the lonely expanse
of snow whitened landscape before turning back into my deserted tent.
Old Jim, however, did his best to
rise to the occasion. We had mince-pies for supper, and I was actually promised
goose and plum-pudding on the morrow. It was perishingly cold outside, but over
a red-hot stove we made ourselves pretty snug while my companion yarned of the
days when he cooked for a big lumber-camp far north up the French River —a job,
as I happened to know, from which he had been finally “fired” for “runningamuck”
armed with a meat-chopper, during one of his periodical bouts of hard drinking.
At breakfast next morning Jim announced
his intention of “slipping over to the village for a flash of rye.”
It wasn’t above four miles, he said,
and he’d be there and back in no time on snow-shoes;
anyway, he must have “a finger
or two” to make it feel like Christmas. Knowing his reputation, I was not
without misgivings as to the results of an expedition it would have been futile
to remonstrate
against, and they changed to
conviction as hour after hour went by and he did not reappear. Well, I was
certainly not going to cook goose and pudding for myself, and so the promised
Christmas banquet resolved itself into a handful of soda crackers and a cup of
cocoa. All the dull grey afternoon I read and smoked; evening came, but no Jim,
and being by this time pretty peckish, and feeling it was useless to wait
longer, I went across to the cook-tent to fry a slice or two of pork for
supper.
It was while splitting kindling for
the stove that the catastrophe happened. The heavy, keen-edged axe-blade
glanced off a frosted notch in the log and gashed me deeply between the toes of
the left foot, slicing through my thin deer-hide moccasin like paper.
Sick with pain, I rapidly pulled off
my instantly-ensanguined footwear, and saw at a glance that the injury was a
most serious one. By the horrible way in which the blood gushed out I knew that
I had severed an important artery, and though it flowed less rapidly after I
had bound my handkerchief about the wound and drawn a moccasin lace tightly
around the ankle, I felt only too sure that, without speedy surgical
assistance, I must inevitably bleed to death.
And I candidly confess that it was with
a sinking heart that I realized how well-nigh hopeless were the prospects of
help of any sort. Jim’s return was, of course, a broken reed to trust to;
four miles of deep snow lay between me and the village where he was doubtless carousing; and dark and
late as it was not a soul was likely to pass within shouting distance of our isolated
camp.
Every moment the situation grew more
desperate. A frightful feeling of faintness was gradually creeping over me,
and, though I strove hard to collect my thoughts and hit upon some feasible
means of attracting attention, I racked my fast-clouding brain in vain. Once a
desperate hope crossed my mind that I might possibly win as far as the
concession road, that lay about a mile or so distant, and take the chance of
being picked up there. But the mere effort of limping a few yards brought on
the haemorrhage so profusely that I was forced to abandon the idea.
I had become so weak and giddy that
I doubt if I could have staggered even a hundred yards.
And yet it was horrible to lie there
absolutely helpless in that silent solitude with one’s life-blood fast ebbing
away, and with no hope, no remote possibility of rescue.
More than once I made clumsy
attempts to bind the wound to greater advantage, but all I could do seemed of
little avail to stanch its persistent flow. Twice at least I fancy I must have
lapsed into a semi-swoon; at any rate, I seemed to lose count of time for a
space, only to wake again to all the horrors of the situation. I was getting a
little light-headed, too; I actually caught myself laughing hysterically at a
grotesque shadow cast upon the canvas by something in the tent.
Pulling myself together, I looked
round to try to discover the object, and it was in doing so that the gleam of
the coal-oil can attracted my attention, and Heaven sent me inspiration reply
to my prayers. A mad, wild scheme seemed at the time, but, desperate as my
plight was, I felt it the only chance of salvation.
With an infinitely painful effort—so
weak had I become by this time—I dragged the heavy can across the tent,
saturated with paraffin the foot-deep layer of straw upon which Jim and his
mate spread their blankets, and, after searching vainly for a match, knocked
off the lamp-glass and flung the blazing wick into the centre of the
inflammable pile. It was my final effort. All I remember after that was a
leaping sheet of flame, that singed my hair and enveloped everything within
reach in its fiery embrace, while I somehow stumbled into the open and
collapsed upon an adjacent snow-drift within dangerous distance of the
wind-fanned flames.
It was, I learnt afterwards, an
elderly settler sleighing home with his wife from a Christmas gathering who
first noticed the conflagration. “Jee!” he
exclaimed; “them surveyor fellers up yonder must have set their camp afire somehow,
or else some prowling hobo’s done it for ’em. Best drive over and see if we can
lend a hand.” And so they found me, apparently lifeless, upon a blood-stained
snow-bank, still licked by a hundred fiery tongues. Quickly they put me aboard
the sleigh and galloped to the abode of a young surgeon who had recently set up
practice in the neighbourhood.
“A miracle—nothing short of a
miracle he hasn’t bled to death,” was the medico’s verdict. “Another ten
minutes, and I could have done nothing for him. As it is, I doubt very much if
he’ll pull through.”
But I did, you see, though only after a
long, long struggle, complicated by an attack of brain fever, in which I raved
deliriously of my awful experience. The boys behaved like bricks when they came
back, and even the autocratic company treated me as well as I could expect—thankful, perhaps, for the
comparatively unimportant nature of the damage. Whatever suspicions were
entertained by the officials at head-quarters, I was never called upon to
explain exactly how I came to fire the tents. They contented themselves with “firing” me.
“I just like to play,” he said. “I
like to feel the ball on my foot.”
The third floor has reconditioned pianos and offices and the
fourth houses the service department of the company.
THE DARK SPOT (In Canada known as 
Gideon McElheren, gaunt and
cowardly.
But here I came to the rescue and
dispelled the dawning apprehension depicted in half-a-dozen faces by
volunteering for the task myself, a very minor sacrifice considering that I had
no friends within reach, and little inclination to spend the festive season in
a strange hotel. My offer was gratefully accepted, and thus it came about that
Christmas Eve saw the whole party, barring Jim and me, sleighing gaily off to
the station, shouting “Merry Christmas” at us
until the rig was out of hearing. They meant well, no doubt, but I couldn’t
help feeling the irony of the familiar words as l gazed over the lonely expanse
of snow whitened landscape before turning back into my deserted tent.
With an infinitely painful effort—so
weak had I become by this time—I dragged the heavy can across the tent,
saturated with paraffin the foot-deep layer of straw upon which Jim and his
mate spread their blankets, and, after searching vainly for a match, knocked
off the lamp-glass and flung the blazing wick into the centre of the
inflammable pile. It was my final effort. All I remember after that was a
leaping sheet of flame, that singed my hair and enveloped everything within
reach in its fiery embrace, while I somehow stumbled into the open and
collapsed upon an adjacent snow-drift within dangerous distance of the
wind-fanned flames.
