“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