“None this side of the end of the track.”

“Can’t we do something?”

“We can give Dan a note to ‘Happy Tom’ in the morning and have whatever you want sent up.  Tom will be there, and perhaps if you ask him he’ll despatch a man on foot at once.”

Seizing pen and paper from the table, Eliza wrote a note, which she read aloud: 

“Dear uncle Tom,—­There is a sick Indian here.  Won’t you please send up an opiate by special messenger, and receive the blessing of, Your affectionate, Eliza.”

“Better change the word ‘opiate,’” O’Neil advised.  “I don’t think Tom is equal to that; he might send overalls!” So Eliza substituted “something to put him to sleep.”  This message Dan promised faithfully to deliver.

Murray had expected to begin the return journey within twenty-four hours after his arrival; but his injury mended slowly, and when the time came he was still unable to stand.  This interval the girls spent in watching the glaciers, of which they never seemed to tire, and in spoiling many films.

It was late on the second day when a tired and sodden messenger bearing the marks of heavy travel appeared at O’Neil’s tent and inquired for Miss Appleton.  To her he handed a three-foot bundle and a note from Tom Slater which read: 

Dear madam,—­Here is the best thing I know of to put an Indian to sleep.  THOS.  Slater.

“There’s some mistake, surely,” said the girl, as she unrolled the odd-looking package; then she cried out angrily, and O’Neil burst into laughter.  For inside the many wrappings was a pick-handle.

Eliza’s resentment at “Happy Tom’s” unsympathetic sense of humor was tempered in a measure by the fact that the patient had taken a turn for the better and really needed no further medical attention.  But she was not accustomed to practical jokes, and she vowed to make Tom’s life miserable if ever the occasion offered.

As the days wore on and Murray remained helpless his impatience became acute, and on the fourth morning he determined to leave, at whatever cost in pain or danger to the injury.  He gave orders, therefore, to have a boat prepared, and allowed himself to be carried to it.  The foreman of the bridge crew he delegated to guide the girls down across the moraine, where he promised to pick them up.  The men who had come with him he sent on to the cataract where Dan had been.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” asked Natalie, when they found him seated in the skiff with an oarsman.

“It’s rough going.  I’d have to be carried, so I prefer this,” he told them.

“Then we’ll go with you,” Eliza promptly declared.

Natalie paled and shook her dark head.  “Is it safe?” she ventured.

“No, it isn’t!  Run along now!  I’ll be down there waiting, when you arrive.”

“If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for us,” said Eliza.  Climbing into the boat, she plumped herself down with a look which seemed to defy any power to remove her.  Her blue eyes met O’Neil’s gray ones with an expression he had never seen in them until this moment.