SHEEP SURGERY 



of him. As quickly as possible I got to the sheep- 

 pen and looked over the little patient. He was ly- 

 ing down in a comfortable attitude, though it was 

 easy to see that his leg was broken below the knee, 

 as the crook in it was quite noticeable. He made 

 no objection to having me examine his leg, though 

 it must have hurt to have the broken bone han- 

 dled. What surprised me was that there was no evi- 

 dence of swelling, though the bone had been broken 

 for some hours. Another strange thing was that 

 the bones lay so loose. The parts barely touched 

 each other, though in cases of human fracture the 

 bones sometimes get drawn past. It was no com- 

 minuted fracture I had to deal with, but a very 

 simple case of simple fracture. Of course, the whole 

 family gathered around to make comments and give 

 advice, and I quickly found that I was expected to 

 play the surgeon and give Strafe a leg that would be 

 as good as new. Though surgery had never come 

 within my experience in the past, I felt that this 

 was no time for false modesty, and prepared for 

 action. 



While making inquiries among persons of experi- 

 ence as to the best way to proceed, I brought out 



95 



