N account of what a German grenade had done to Jack's right arm they amputated the arm at the elbow, and the clean Canadian blood caused the wound to heal rapidly. The big, blue-eyed boy took it all good-naturedly enough: he was in better case than a lot of the fellows; his legs were all right, and some of the lads had no legs at all. He still had his left arm, too; it is wonderful how thankful a man can be for one good arm. It is wonderful how a man can joke about some things when he is young and has plenty of health left.
"What worries me," said Jacky, sitting in the sun before the tea tent in the convalescent camp somewhere in Kent, "is how I'm going to manicure the finger-nails on the left hand I left over there in Belgium."
The surgeon grinned.
"You feel 'em growing?"
"And sometimes the palm of the hand I kissed good-by in the trenches, itches something rare!" said Jacky. "A bit of the odd, that—what?"
It was odd. It was weird to feel the tickling of a palm you no longer had at the end of your arm, as if a fly were walking across it, as you might say.
"The ends of the nerve," said the surgeon, although Jacky knew that well enough already. "Stupid beggars, those nerves. It takes them a couple of years sometimes to learn they don't have to worry about fingers and hands that are gone."
"I can feel every finger on that right hand," said Jackey.
"No uncommon thing," agreed the surgeon. "Don't you fret. That will wear away."
HERE are some thousands over yonder like Jacky. Missing hands that will not admit yet that they are gone, supply a good bit of ghastly humor. There is a glass on a table, and the stump of an arm readies out for it with phantom fingers that are only the lingering ghosts of fingers a man will never use again. It is weeks before a chap like Jacky remembers not to stick out his stump of a right arm to do a hand-shake with whomever holds out a hand to be shaken. A lost hand "goes to sleep" as convincingly as if it still existed, and it is enough to make a man grin when he wants to rub the dumb member and has to think twice before he remembers it is the end of the stump he must rub. There was Carter, whose right leg was off halfway up the thigh, and whose greatest worldly trouble was that he could feel a grain of sand between his big toe and the next one, and couldn't brush it away because he had no toes.
"Aw, tut, now!" Jacky said a hundred times as he forgot and tried to take his pipe in those phantom fingers, or raised the stump of an arm to rub his head with the hand that was not there.
So, then,—which is the story,—they shipped him back to Canada. Phantom fingers, however real-seeming, cannot pull a trigger.
ACKY was glad enough to be back. They landed him at Quebec, and he had a rousing welcome, for it was a gallant company the ship brought over.
This was all good enough—a man likes to be a hero for a day or two; but what he wants most is a sight of the Girl again. The Girl up there in the Northwest wheat country, you understand. Mary, if you want to know her name.
Now, it was the right arm Jack had put around her when be said farewell at her shack door, and it was the right hand that had held her hand lingeringly. It was with the right hand he had shaken the hand of old Boswell, her father.
In Quebec they handed Jacky a letter from Mary telling Jack he would never shake old Boswell's hand again: the old man was dead. There was other news: Jack's mother had gone to Calgary; Jack's father was alone on the farm. There was other news: "And I love you and love you and love you! x x x x x x x (Kisses)." Stale news, but good news still. I'll give you three guesses whether Jack was eager to get back to the Northwest wheat country.
At the Junction you change cars (that being what junctions are for), and Jacky threw his luggage to the platform with his left hand (after trying to pick it up with that same right he had left in Belgium) and walked across the platform to the bay-window where the agent was working the telegraph. The through train shook the frame station as it rolled onward toward the Pacific.
"And when do I get a train up the branch?" asked Jack.
"Well, you great big horse-thief, hello!" cried the agent, reaching a hand through the open window. "How are you, Jack? How's the trenches?"
"Lie down now!" said Jack, slapping at his stump of a right arm, which reached out impulsively for the handshake. "I can't get the beggar trained, Joe. He thinks he's all there still. The trenches are rotten, if you ask me. I'm one that's glad to be back. When do I get a train north?"
"Eight hours. I heard you lost an arm. Hard luck, Jack!"