d. Harry of all men
a cripple! Tom, you must do something."

Okanagan slowly shook his head. "I've done my best now," he said. "We
can get him down to Somasco and a live doctor up from Vancouver as soon
as we can, and that's about all. There's no time to lose. We'll start
to-morrow."

Seaforth cast one glance at the still figure and grey face amidst the
blankets, and then clenched his hands as he blundered out of the tent.
A white flake fell upon his face, another on his hands, and he shivered
again as he glanced at the forest. It was very evident that much
depended upon their speed, and down between the sombre pines came the
sliding snow.

CHAPTER XXI

OKANAGAN'S ROAD

The great cedar-boughs above the river bent beneath their load, and the
scanty light was dimmed by sliding snow, when Seaforth and his comrade
stood panting and white all over by the last portage. Okanagan by dint
of laborious searching had found the canoe jammed between two boulders
with her side crushed in, and had spent a day repairing her with a
flattened out meat-can and strips of deerskin. The craft had
notwithstanding this leaked considerably, but they made shift to
descend the river in her, and now if they could accomplish the last big
portage hoped by toiling strenuously to make the mouth of the canon by
nightfall.

What they would do when they reached it neither of them knew, but they
were too cold and jaded to concern themselves with more than the
question how they were to convey their comrade over the boulders and
through the thickets which divided them from the next stretch of
comparatively untroubled water just then. They had spent most of the
day dragging the canoe round the rapid which roared down the hollow in
a wild tumult of froth, lifting her with levers from rock to rock, and
now and then sliding with her down a declivity, but that was a mode of
progression clearly unsuited to an injured man.

Alton lay in the snow beneath a boulder that but indifferently
sheltered him, and there was a little grim smile in his face as he
looked up at his companions.

"Isn't it time you got hold of me? We can't stop here all day," he
said.

Okanagan turned, and stared sombrely at the wall of rock which dropped
to the river close behind him, and the strip of boulders and great
fallen fragments amidst which the undergrowth crept in and out between.

"There's a gully yonder, but if we worked back round the hillside I
don't