Outside the house the doctor found Paulina sitting in the snow with Kalman’s head in her lap, swaying to and fro muttering and groaning.  Beside her stood Irma and Elizabeth Ketzel weeping wildly.  The doctor raised the boy gently.

“Get into the cutter,” he said to Paulina.  Irma translated.  The woman ran without a word, seated herself in the cutter and held out her arms for the boy.

“That will do,” said the doctor, laying Kalman in her arms.  “Now get some shawls, quilts or something for your mother and yourself, or you’ll freeze to death, and come along.”

The girl rushed away and returned in a few moments with a bundle of shawls.

“Get in,” said the doctor, “and be quick.”

The men were crowding about.

“Now, Jacob,” said the doctor, turning to Wassyl, who stood near, “you get me those names and we’ll get after that man, you bet! or I’m a Turk.  This boy is going to die, sure.”

As he spoke, he sprang into his cutter and sent his horse off at a gallop, for by the boy’s breathing he felt that the chances of life were slipping swiftly away.

CHAPTER X

JACK FRENCH OF THE NIGHT HAWK RANCH

A map of Western Canada showing the physical features of the country lying between the mountains on the one side and the Bay and the Lakes on the other, presents the appearance of a vast rolling plain scarred and seamed and pitted like an ancient face.  These scars and seams and pits are great lazy rivers, meandering streams, lakes, sleughs and marshes which form one vast system of waters that wind and curve through the rolls of the prairie and nestle in its sunlit hollows, laving, draining, blessing where they go and where they stay.

By these, the countless herds of buffalo and deer quenched their thirst in the days when they, with their rival claimants for the land, the Black Feet and the Crees, roamed undisturbed over these mighty plains.  These waterways in later days when The Honourable the Hudson’s Bay Company ruled the West, formed the great highways of barter.  By these teeming lakes and sleughs and marshes hunted and trapped Indians and half-breeds.  Down these streams and rivers floated the great fur brigades in canoe and Hudson’s Bay pointer with priceless bales of pelts to the Bay in the north or the Lakes in the south, on their way to that centre of the world’s trade, old London.  And up these streams and rivers went the great loads of supplies and merchandise for the far-away posts that were at once the seats of government and the emporiums of trade in this wide land.

Following the canoe and Hudson’s Bay boat, came the river barge and side-wheeler, and with these, competing for trade, the overland freighter with ox train and pack pony, with Red River cart and shagginappi.