It was evident that the half-breed did not understand, and the doctor added a few explanatory words in French.  The man on the floor groaned and struggled until he was red in the face.

“Easy, easy,” soothed the doctor.  “I appreciate the fact that it is pretty tough luck, Dobson, but you’ll have to take your medicine.  Falkner, if you’ll lend a hand in getting me off I won’t lose much time in starting for Fort Smith.”

It was a strange-looking outfit that set out from Pierre Thoreau’s cabin half an hour later.  Ahead of the team which had come that morning walked the breed, his left arm bound to his side with a babiche thong.  On the sledge behind him lay an inanimate and blanket-wrapped bundle, which was Dobson; and close at the rear of the sledge, stripped of his greatcoat and more than ever like a diminutive drum-major, followed Dudley McGill, professor of neurology and diseases of the brain, with a bulldog revolver in his mittened hand.

From the door Falkner watched them go.

Six hours later Philip returned from the east.  Falkner saw him coming up from the creek and went to meet him.

“I found the cabin, but no one was there,” said Philip.  “It has been deserted for a long time.  No tracks in the snow, everything inside frozen stiff, and what signs I did find were of a woman!”

The muscles of Falkner’s face gave a sudden twitch.  “A woman!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, a woman,” repeated Philip, “and there was a photograph of her on a table in the bedroom.  Did this Dobson have a wife?”

Falkner had fallen a step behind him as they entered the cabin.

“A long time ago—­a woman was there,” he said.  “She was a young woman, and—­and almost beautiful.  But she wasn’t his wife.”

“She was pretty,” replied Philip, “so pretty that I brought her picture along for my collection at home.”  He looked about for McGill.  “Where’s the doctor?”

Falkner’s face was very white as he explained what had happened during the other’s absence.

“He said that he would camp early this afternoon so that you could overtake them,” he finished after he had described the capture and the doctor’s departure.  “The doctor thought you would want to lose no time in getting the prisoners to Fort Smith, and that he could get a good start before night.  To-morrow or the next day I am going to follow with the other team.  I’d go with you if he hadn’t commanded me to remain here and nurse my head for another twenty-four hours.”

Philip shrugged his shoulders, and the two had little to say as they ate their dinners.  After an hour’s rest he prepared a light pack and took up the doctor’s trail.  Inwardly he rankled at the unusual hand which the little professor was playing in leaving Pierre’s cabin with the prisoners, and yet he was confident that McGill would wait for him.  Mile after mile he traveled down the creek.  At dusk there was no sign of his new friend.  Just before dark he climbed a dead stub at the summit of a high ridge and half a dozen miles of the unbroken barren stretched out before his eyes.