“I’m afraid the sight of me—­” Ambrose began.

“I don’t mean that you should go in,” said Colina.  “If you stand in the doorway he cannot see you the way he lies.”

Ambrose nodded and followed Giddings out.

“What is the wound?” he asked.

“Through the left lung.  He will not die of the shot.  I can’t tell yet what may develop.”

Ambrose halted at the open door of Gaviller’s room.  The windows looked out over the river, and the cooling northwest wind was wafted through.  The hospital-like bareness of the room evinced a simple taste in the owner.  The gimcracks he loved to make were all for the public rooms below.

The head of the bed was toward the door.  On the pillow Ambrose could see the gray head, a little bald on the crown.

Giddings, after feeling his patient’s pulse, sat down beside the bed with pad and pencil.

“I’m ready to take down what you say,” he said.

The wounded man said in a weak but surprisingly clear voice: 

“You understand this is not to be used unless the worst happens to me.”

Giddings nodded.

“You must give me your word that no proceedings will be taken against the man I name—­unless I die.  I will not die.  When I get up I will attend to him.”

“I promise,” said Giddings.

After a brief pause Gaviller said: 

“I was shot by the breed known as Sandy Selkirk.”

Ambrose sharply caught his breath.  A great light broke upon him.

Gaviller went on: 

“He caught a black fox last winter that he has persistently refused to give up to me.  Out of sheer obstinacy he preferred to starve his family.  Yesterday Strange told me he thought it likely Selkirk would try to dispose of the skin to Ambrose Doane, the free-trader who is hanging around the fort.”

Giddings sent a startled glance toward the door.

“Strange said perhaps news of it had been carried down the river, and that was what Doane had come for.  So I went to Selkirk’s shack last night to get it.  I consider it mine, because Selkirk already owes the company its value.  Any attempt to dispose of it elsewhere would be the same as robbing me.

“Selkirk refused to give it up, and I took it.  He shot me from behind.  There were no witnesses but his family.  That is all I want to say.”

“I have it,” murmured Giddings.

The gray head rolled impatiently on the pillow.  “Giddings, don’t let that skin get away.  I rely on you.  Be firm.  Be secret.”

“I’ll do my best,” said the doctor.

He came to the door, ostensibly to close it, showing a scared face.  “I didn’t know what was coming,” his lips shaped.

Ambrose nodded to him reassuringly, meaning to convey that nothing he had heard would influence his actions.

Giddings closed the door, and Ambrose returned down-stairs with a heart that sunk lower at each step.  What he had at first regarded calmly enough as Gaviller’s tragedy he now clearly saw was likely to prove tragic for himself.