"There's a gully yonder, but if we worked back round the hillside I don't quite see how we're coming down," he said.

"No," said Alton dryly. "I'm not good at flying. Well, you had better start in and carry me."

Seaforth stooped and grasped his comrade round the thighs, which were lashed together with deerhide with a stiff strip of cedar-bark outside them. Okanagan passed his arms about his shoulders, and they rose with a jerk and stood swaying unevenly for a moment, while Seaforth wondered with a curious feeling of helplessness whether they would ever accomplish the journey to the canoe. It would have tested the agility of an unencumbered man, while he was almost worn out, and Alton cruelly heavy.

"Heave him up a trifle," said Okanagan. "Now then!"

Seaforth gasped, and floundered forward through a foot of snow that hid the holes he sank into and slipped away beneath him as he clawed for a footing on the boulders, but with strenuous toil they made a hundred yards or so, and then laying down their burden stood still, panting.

Alton lay silent, with half-closed eyes and the soft flakes settling on his grey face, in the snow, while Seaforth gazed about him despairingly. There was rock and shadowy forest behind them, and in front the smoking rush of the river, while though it was but afternoon the light was failing.

"Get hold again, Tom. It's not good to wait here," he said with a shiver.

This time with infinite difficulty they made fifty yards, and Alton's face showed what his silence had cost him when they set him down again.

Seaforth stooped and drew the blanket about him with a great gentleness.

"We did our best. I'd change places with you, Harry, if I could," he said.

Alton smiled a little, but said nothing, and in five minutes they went on again, Seaforth gasping from exhaustion, with a horrible pain in his side and his feet slipping from under him as they struggled up a sloping face of rock, but they had won forty yards when Tom went down and Alton, who fell heavily upon him, rolled over. Seaforth held his breath a moment until he heard the voice of the injured man.

"I wouldn't worry about my head. It would take an axe to hurt me there," he said. "Look at the lashings."

The lashings, however, had not slackened, the cedar-bark was intact, and once more they took up their burden, while Seaforth could not remember how often they had rested when at last they came out upon a smooth strip of sloping rock close to the last of the portage. He was dragging a clogging weight of snow with him, and the white flakes were in his eyes, while now and then his breath failed him and he heard Okanagan growling hoarse and half-articulate expletives.

"You have got to hold out, Charley. There's the canoe below you," he said.

Seaforth braced himself for a last effort, and was never sure whether he or Okanagan stumbled first, but his feet slipped from under him and he fell upon Alton as Tom went down. Then the three slid together down the slope of rock, and fell heavily over the edge of it. Seaforth was partly dazed when Okanagan dragged him to his feet, but, he could see that Alton lay very still with his face awry and that there was consternation in the eyes of his comrade.

"Have we hurt you, Harry?" he said hoarsely.

Alton groaned a little, and his lips moved once or twice before Seaforth caught any audible answer.

"I don't know that you did it, but I think that bone has gone," he said.

Okanagan, saying nothing, dropped on hands and knees, and while Alton groaned drew the bands tighter about the shattered cedar-bark. Then he rose up and looked at Seaforth, and the two stood silent for almost a minute with the snow whirling about them. There was something very like despair in Seaforth's eyes, and at last his comrade solemnly shook his fist at the forest.

"We have got to get him home straight off," he said. Seaforth did not ask how it was to be done when they had the range to cross, but as one dreaming laid hold of his comrade again, and floundered towards the canoe, which lay close by them now. He was still partly dazed when he took up the paddle and dimly saw the white pines sliding past through a haze of snow. Nor did he remember whether he or Okanagan set the tent up when they reached the island near the canon, but he was sitting inside it holding out a smoking can of tea to Alton when some time after darkness had closed down Tom came in. The snow had ceased in the meanwhile and a biting frost descended upon the valley through which the roar of the canon pulsed in long reverberations. Okanagan dropped the rifle he carried.

"I might have left the thing. The horse is dead," he said.

"Dead?" said Seaforth vacantly.

Okanagan nodded. "Yes," he said. "Somebody has saved me the trouble.

Two bullets in him."

Seaforth was almost past anger now, but the tea splashed from the can he still held as he realized the thoroughness of the work of their enemy.

"Then how are you going to pack Harry and the other things over the range?" he said.

Okanagan's face was almost expressionless. "We're not going to. It can't be done."

Seaforth said nothing. The last fall had shaken him severely, and he had realized since they started that the task before them was almost beyond the power of any two men, but had refused to contemplate what must happen if they failed in it. Now he could see that it was impossible, but dazed with utter weariness as he was he could not think consecutively, and only felt a numbing dismay that in some strange fashion softened the blow, while in place of considering the future his memory reverted without his will to the incidents of that strange journey. They rose blurred before him as the creations of an evil dream, the wild descent of a rapid, the desperate effort of the portage, the long hours of toil at the paddle, and endless unrolling of whitened pines that crawled by them through the snow. Now at least, when he could do no more, that stupendous toil was finished. Turning, he glanced at Alton, who had with apparent difficulty swallowed a little of the tea. He lay amidst the blankets with eyes closed, breathing unevenly.

"Then you'll go on to Somasco, Tom, and send back the boys for us.

They may be in time," he said.

Okanagan strode softly to the entrance of the tent and drew the canvas back. A moon hung red with frost in the pitiless heavens, the stars shone steelily, and it was evident that the cold of the icy North was laying its grip upon the valley.

"Harry wouldn't have much use for them when they came. There's an ice fringe round the boulders now," he said.

Seaforth stared out into the glittering night, and groaned, for he knew what happened to wounded men unsheltered from the frost. His voice was low and harsh as he asked, "Then what is to be done?"

Okanagan replaced the canvas before he answered quietly, "There's the canon."

"Yes," said Seaforth. "Still, no man has ever gone down it."

"No. But the water's lowest in winter, and a canoe once came through.

I can't see why another shouldn't do as well with men in it. It's easy getting in, anyway."

Seaforth laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, yes. The question is, will any of us come out again alive?"

As he spoke the sound of the river's turmoil swelled in a great pulsation about the tent, and Seaforth involuntarily drew in his breath. The curious glow he had seen there before, however, grew a trifle brighter in his companion's eyes.

"That," he said solemnly, "only the Almighty knows, but if we stop here there'll be an end of Harry. Now, there are some folks in the old country who'd be sorry if you don't come back?"

Seaforth smiled a trifle bitterly. "I don't think there are. They had an opportunity of showing their affection before I came out to Canada, and didn't take it. I found the best friend I ever had in this country--and as there seems no other way we'll try the canon."

Okanagan sat down again, and hacked away with Alton's knife at a piece of redwood he was fashioning into a paddle. Both of them knew that the effort they were to make on their friend's behalf might well cost their life, but big, untaught bushman and once gently-nurtured Briton were in one respect at least alike, and that was a fact which would never again be mentioned between them.

It was an hour or thereabouts later when Alton opened his eyes.

"I don't know that I asked you, though I meant to, but you and Tom staked two more claims off?" he said.

Okanagan appeared a trifle embarrassed, but Seaforth laughed. "I'm afraid we didn't. You see, we started in a hurry, and I forgot."

Alton stared at him a moment in bewilderment, and then through the pain that distorted it a curious look crept into his face.

"I figure you're lying, Charley, and you don't do it well," he said.

"Folks don't usually forget when they leave a fortune behind them."

Seaforth smiled a little. "Well, I may have been, but a fortune didn't seem very likely to be much use to me then or now," he said.

Alton gravely shook his head, but the two men's eyes met for a moment, and Seaforth felt embarrassed as he turned his aside. There was no need to tell the injured man that his welfare had appeared of more importance to his comrades than any profit that might accrue to them from the silver mine.

"Well," he said simply, "you or Tom should get through to Somasco."

"I hope so," said Seaforth, as Okanagan signed to him. "You see, we are all going there together by the shortest way, down the canon."

Alton stared at him a moment. "Now I had----" he commenced, and then stopped abruptly.