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.

“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.