proceeded to
obey him. How long I took to cover the distance we could not afterward
agree, but once I lay prone for minutes together, with both arms buried in
the treacherous snow, which was slipping under me, and the end of the
lariat a foot or two away. Then with a snake-like wriggle I grasped it,
and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around
Ormond's shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use
ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival
was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of
under the jutting shelf from which we had fallen.

Then the end came down again, and with it fast about my shoulders I went
back for the rifle, after which they hauled me up, filling my neck and
both sleeves with snow in the process. Though Harry laughed, his voice
trembled when, as I gained the platform, he exclaimed:

"Well done, partner! You fought gamely, and if you had eaten another bear
we should never have landed you."

Harry, I think, had been at one time a trout fisher. Ormond, however,
after making an effort to rise, lay limply in the snow.

"I'm very sorry to trouble you, but I can't get up," he said. "Something
gone wrong internally and my leg's broken. I'm much afraid you will have
to carry me."

It was an arduous undertaking, and even before starting it was necessary
to lash his limbs together with a rifle between them by way of splint.
After this we spent two hours traversing the next mile or so, and my
shoulders ached when with intense satisfaction we found firm earth beneath
our feet once more. Ormond was distinctly heavy, and that region is
sufficiently difficult to traverse even by a wholly unburdened man, while,
hampered by his weight, the two days' march to the crossing might be
lengthened indefinitely. Still, we could not leave him there, and, framing
two spruce poles with branches between them into a litter, we struggled
forward under our burden. We were five partly fed and worn-out men in all,
and we carried the litter alternately by twos and fours, finding the task
a trying one either way. Probably we could never have accomplished it
except under pressure of necessity.

The bronze already had faded in the sufferer's face, his cheeks had fallen
in, but though the jolting must have caused him severe pain at times he
rarely complained. Instead, he would smile at us encouragingly, or make
some pitiful attempt at a