n they winded him. One look they
gave, and in a few moments they were miles away. That was the only time
I saw the Halfbreed put out. He fell on his face and lay there for a
long time.

Often we came to sloughs that we could not cross, and we had to go round
them. We tried to build rafts, but we were too weak to navigate them. We
were afraid we would roll off into the deep black water and drown
feebly. So we went round, which in one case meant ten miles. Once, over
a slough a few yards wide, the Halfbreed built a bridge of willows, and
we crawled on hands and knees to the other side.

From a certain point our trip seems like a nightmare to me. I can only
remember parts of it here and there. We reeled like drunken men. We
sobbed sometimes, and sometimes we prayed. There was no word from Jim
now, not even a whimper, as we half dragged, half carried him on. Our
eyes were large with fever, our hands were like claws. Long sickly
beards grew on our faces. Our clothes were rags, and vermin overran us.
We had lost all track of time. Latterly we had been travelling about
half a mile a day, and we must have been twenty days without proper
food.

The Halfbreed had crawled ahead a mile or so, and he came back to where
we lay. In a voice hoarse almost to a whisper he told us a bigger river
joined ours down there, and on the bar was an old Indian camp. Perhaps
in that place some one might find us. It seemed on the route of travel.
So we made a last despairing effort and reached it. Indians had visited
it quite recently. We foraged around and found some putrid fish bones,
with which we made soup.

There was a grave set high on stilts, and within it a body covered with
canvas. The Halfbreed wrenched the canvas from the body, and with it he
made a boat eight feet in length by six in breadth. It was too rotten to
hold him up, and he nearly drowned trying to float it, so he left it
lying on the edge of the bar. I remember this was a terrible
disappointment to us, and we wept bitterly. I think that about this time
we were all half-crazy. We lay on that bar like men already dead, with
no longer hope of deliverance.

* * * * *

Then Jim passed in his checks. In the night he called me.

"Boy," he whispered, "you an' I'se been good pals, ain't we?"

"Yes, old man."

"Boy, I'm in agony. I'm suffering untold pain. Get the gun, for God's
sake, an' put me out of my misery."

"There's no gun, Jim; we left