"Nicked across with a hack saw or a file--and it's not all here," he said. "It strikes me the sooner we find the rest of it the better this weather."

Seaforth drew in his breath. A strip of lead torn off that bullet was rankling in his comrade's flesh, and during the night bitter frost had laid its grip upon the forest. Wounds, he knew, do not heal, but fester under such conditions.

"You can do it, Tom!" he said, and his voice was hoarse.

"I'll try--when he wakes," said Okanagan. "You'll find some flat stones by the river. I want one with an open grit that you could grind a knife down with."

It was long before Alton awakened, and then it became evident that he was not wholly sensible. Loss of blood, over-fatigue, exposure and hunger had left their mark on him, and while he rambled disjointedly a bitter wind sprang up. It raged down the valley, bringing with it the cold of the Pole, and while the pines raised their wild voices, the water congealed in the kettle, and in spite of the great fire built outside it the tent grew icy. At noon Tom of Okanagan glanced at his patient and shook his head, while Seaforth felt his misgivings confirmed as he saw his face.

"I guess we've got to wait for to-morrow. There'll be snow to-night,"

he said.

It was a long day to Seaforth. Alton moved restlessly in his sleep, or talked and laughed meaninglessly during most of it, while when his eyes closed Tom, who sat in a corner, laid the stone upon his lap and ground at his knife. He had already rubbed the blade down to half its width, but was apparently not contented, and Seaforth felt colder and set his lips each time the harsh grating of steel broke through the roaring of the pines that swelled in volume as the wind increased. It was seldom that either of them spoke, though the big axeman's face would soften momentarily when Alton moaned a little in his sleep. Then it grew sombre and impassive again save for the little gleam in the eyes, and Seaforth guessed what was in his companion's thoughts as the hard, gnarled fingers tightened viciously on the steel.

Somehow the day wore through, and the snow came with the night. It beat upon the canvas and fell hissing in the fire, which snapped and crackled the more fiercely, while acrid vapour crept into the tent, and now and then one of the men's eyes would close a moment. Seaforth had indeed roused himself several times with a jerk when Okanagan pointed to the roll of blankets and layer of springy twigs, and he saw that at last Alton was sleeping restfully. Five minutes later the roar of the branches seemed to sink into a musical lullaby, and the last thing he saw was the big, impassive bushman sitting as still as the motionless figure beneath him on the opposite side of the tent. Then he was wafted back to England on the wings of dreams.

It was broad daylight and warmer when he awakened. Outside the fire crackled noisily, and the great pines rose spires of sombre green against a field of white. Alton was also awake, and smiled at him, while Tom, who stood behind him, made a sign.

"It has got to be done right now before the frost comes back, but we're not going to hurt you, Harry," he said. "You'll walk down to the river and fill that kettle up, Charley."

Seaforth wondered a little, because the snow lay a foot deep in the bush and he could have filled the kettle beside the fire, but he floundered down to the river and felt a little more prepared to face what must be done when he returned. When he did so he found that Tom had rolled back Alton's jean trousers to the knee, and saw a red smear that broadened across the brawny limb. It pulsed over the swell of the corded muscles that showed through the clear, smooth skin, and then Seaforth shivered and turned his eyes away as they fell upon the welling depression with the discoloured edges. Alton noticed the movement, and glanced at him with a twinkle in his eyes. "It isn't pretty, but I don't think Tom will keep us long," he said.

Seaforth felt the blood surge into his face, for it seemed most unfitting that the wounded man should sympathize with him, but finding nothing apposite to say he kept silent, and Okanagan shook his head at them.

"Get hold of his hands, and keep hold. The quieter you are, Harry, the quicker I'll be," he said.

Alton smiled a little. "I don't think it's necessary," he said.

"Still, if it will please you, Tom."

Seaforth clutched the fingers held out to him, and felt suddenly chilly. He would have touched his lips with his tongue, for the blood seemed to have gone out of them, but that he felt Alton's eyes were upon him. Accordingly he turned his face, which he fancied was growing a trifle colourless, aside, and for a moment or two watched Okanagan, who was kneeling with one hand pressed upon the smeared whiteness of the uncovered limb. Seaforth could hear his own heart beating and the thud of snow shaken off a swinging branch upon the tent, and see the light the whiteness outside flung in glint upon the slender knife. He saw it move a little, and sternly repressed a shiver when the lean, hard fingers closed suddenly upon his own. A tremor ran through them, and then the pressure increased, until Seaforth was glad that it grew painful. He dare not glance at his comrade, he would not look at Tom, and sat very still in torment for a space, while he felt that Alton's arms had grown rigid by the cruel grip upon his hands.

Then the tension slackened, and the injured man drew in his breath with a gasp, while Okanagan rose to one knee with great drops of sweat upon his face.

"You got it?" said Alton in a low, strained voice, and nodded when the axeman answered him.

"No," he said, a trifle huskily. "I'm going to try again. Lift him over on his side, Charley."

Seaforth trembled a little as he did it, and glanced for just a moment at his comrade's face. It was set and grey, but it went suddenly awry into the grotesque semblance of a smile.

"Tom never was in a hurry. It's rough on you," he said. Still, Seaforth, who had once held his own with men and women in quick retort and graceful badinage in England, did not answer, but only pressed the hard fingers that now lay somewhat limply in his palm and wondered vaguely whether the ordeal would never be over. It was only then he realized to the full all that Alton had been to him since the day he limped, ragged and very hungry, into a little mining camp. His friends in the old country had turned their backs on him, and Seaforth, who had been hopeless and desperate then, knew that he owed a good deal more than material prosperity to Alton of Somasco.

"Tom," he said hoarsely, "I think we're ready."

Okanagan said nothing, but stooped again, and Seaforth tightening his grasp of the contracting fingers, heard the sound of uneven breathing through the thud of snow upon the tent. He was by this time a little more master of himself, and looked steadily down on the white face with the grimly-set lips. His own was distorted into what was not a sympathetic smile, but a grotesque grin, and there was every now and then a reflection of it in the one awry with pain which looked up at him. Then Alton drew in his breath with a little quivering sigh, and there was a rattle as Okanagan dropped the steel.

"I want that bandage--quick. We are through now," he said.

Seaforth had afterwards a hazy recollection of helping him to twist the strip of fabric about the firm white flesh, and that his hands made red smears on Alton's deerskin jacket when he stooped and lifted him a little. There was no bronze in his comrade's face, but in place of it a curious yellow tinge, through which the greyness showed in patches, and with fingers that were strangely clumsy he held a flask to Alton's lips.

The latter choked, and then his eyes opened wide again. "Pass it round. I'm figuring you're all wanting some," he said.

Seaforth to humour him touched the flask with his lips, and handed it to Tom, who did the same, and then screwing the top on it passed it back to Seaforth no emptier than when it reached him. Alton, however, raised his head a trifle further, and looked at both of them.

"You'll have to do it better. Let me see the thing," he said.

Okanagan glanced at him severely. "I guess you'll lie right where you are and keep very still, or I'll make a hole through the other leg," he said.

Alton appeared to chuckle, but his arm slipped from under him, and he dropped back heavily amidst the blankets with eyes closed while Seaforth bent over him.

"That's all right," said Okanagan. "You needn't worry. I was kind of hoping he would do it because I was anxious about the bleeding. Now we'll get everything fixed up before he comes round again."

Seaforth did what he was bidden, and nothing more, for he had been reared in England, and not amidst the firs and snows of Northern Canada where misadventures are many and doctors very few, but he envied the big bushman his skill that day, and Okanagan may have guessed it, for he once smiled a little as he said:

"There are lots of things I can't do, and it's not your fault that you were raised back in the old country, where you have other folks to put the patches on to you."

"No," said Seaforth, smiling. "Still, he is my partner, you see. Now I want to know what we are going to do with him."

Okanagan's smile was just perceptible as he held up a ragged piece of lead, but Seaforth saw that he understood all the speech implied, though he made no reference to it,

"There's half the trouble gone," he said. "The rest of it went straight through the bone, and I kind of fancy smashed it up considerable."

"Will the pieces knit as they were before?" said Seaforth very anxiously, and for a moment or two Okanagan did not answer him.

"That," he said very slowly, "is what I don't quite know. One of them bones is a rocker, and she swings on the other. That one's cut, but I don't think it's smashed right through. Now if it goes as well as the other, it's quite possible Harry will limp ever after."

Seaforth stood up with a little shiver. "Good Lord. Harry of all men a cripple! Tom, you must do something."

Okanagan slowly shook his head. "I've done my best now," he said. "We can get him down to Somasco and a live doctor up from Vancouver as soon as we can, and that's about all. There's no time to lose. We'll start to-morrow."

Seaforth cast one glance at the still figure and grey face amidst the blankets, and then clenched his hands as he blundered out of the tent.

A white flake fell upon his face, another on his hands, and he shivered again as he glanced at the forest. It was very evident that much depended upon their speed, and down between the sombre pines came the sliding snow.

CHAPTER XXI

OKANAGAN'S ROAD

The great cedar-boughs above the river bent beneath their load, and the scanty light was dimmed by sliding snow, when Seaforth and his comrade stood panting and white all over by the last portage. Okanagan by dint of laborious searching had found the canoe jammed between two boulders with her side crushed in, and had spent a day repairing her with a flattened out meat-can and strips of deerskin. The craft had notwithstanding this leaked considerably, but they made shift to descend the river in her, and now if they could accomplish the last big portage hoped by toiling strenuously to make the mouth of the canon by nightfall.

What they would do when they reached it neither of them knew, but they were too cold and jaded to concern themselves with more than the question how they were to convey their comrade over the boulders and through the thickets which divided them from the next stretch of comparatively untroubled water just then. They had spent most of the day dragging the canoe round the rapid which roared down the hollow in a wild tumult of froth, lifting her with levers from rock to rock, and now and then sliding with her down a declivity, but that was a mode of progression clearly unsuited to an injured man.

Alton lay in the snow beneath a boulder that but indifferently sheltered him, and there was a little grim smile in his face as he looked up at his companions.

"Isn't it time you got hold of me? We can't stop here all day," he said.

Okanagan turned, and stared sombrely at the wall of rock which dropped to the river close behind him, and the strip of boulders and great fallen fragments amidst which the undergrowth crept in and out between.