May-may-gwan now held the cedar board, with its pad, against the inside of the leg.  Sam bound the thin end of the wedge-shaped blanket to the knee.  Thus the thick end of the pad pressed against the calf just above the ankle, leaving the foot and the injured bone free of the board.  Sam passed a broad buckskin thong about the ankle and foot in such a manner as to hold the foot from again turning out.  Thus the fracture was fixed in place.  The bandages were wound smoothly to hold everything secure.

The two then, with the utmost precaution, carried their patient up the bank to a level space suitable for a camp, where he was laid as flat as possible.  The main business was done, although still there remained certain cuts and contusions, especially that on the forehead, which had stunned him.

After the reduction of the fracture,—­which was actually consummated before Dick regained his consciousness,—­and the carrying of the young man to the upper flat, Sam curtly instructed May-may-gwan to gather balsam for the dressing of the various severer bruises.  She obtained the gum, a little at a time, from a number of trees.  Here and there, where the bark had cracked or been abraded, hard-skinned blisters had exuded.  These, when pricked, yielded a liquid gum, potent in healing.  While she was collecting this in a quickly fashioned birch-bark receptacle, Sam made camp.

He realised fully that the affair was one of many weeks, if not of months.  On the flat tongue overlooking the river he cleared a wide space, and with the back of his axe he knocked the hummocks flat.  A score or so of sapling poles he trimmed.  Three he tied together tripod-wise, using for the purpose a strip of the inner bark of cedar.  The rest he leaned against these three.  He postponed, until later, the stripping of birch-bark to cover this frame, and gave his attention to laying a soft couch for Dick’s convalescence.  The foundation he made of caribou-moss, gathered dry from the heights; the top of balsam boughs cleverly thatched so that the ends curved down and in, away from the recumbent body.  Over all he laid what remained of his own half blanket.  Above the bed he made a framework from which a sling would be hung to suspend the injured leg.

All this consumed not over twenty minutes.  At the end of that time he glanced up to meet Dick’s eyes.

“Leg broke,” he answered the inquiry in them.  “That’s all.”

“That girl—­,” began Dick.

“Shut up!” said Sam.

He moved here and there, constructing, by means of flat stones, a trough to be used as a cooking-range.  At the edge of the clearing he met the Indian girl returning with her little birch-bark saucer.

“Little Sister,” said he.

She raised her eyes to him.

“I want the truth.”

“What truth, Little Father?”

He looked searchingly into her eyes.

“It does not matter; I have it,” he replied.