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He was slender, a cat in the strength of his muscles, and he walked as Linday had seen no man walk, effortlessly, with all his body, seeming to lift the legs with supple muscles clear to the shoulders. But it was without heaviness, so easy that it invested him with a peculiar grace, so easy that to the eye the speed was deceptive. It was the killing pace of which Tom Daw had complained.

"Sorry you had your trip for nothing. Better stop over for the night." "Nope. We'll be pullin' out in ten minutes." "What makes you so cocksure?" Linday demanded testily. Then it was that Tom Daw made the speech of his life. "Because he's just goin' on livin' till you get there, if it takes you a week to make up your mind.

But he was not interested in them. He went directly to the bunk where lay the injured man. The latter was lying on his back, with eyes closed, and Linday noted the slender stencilling of the brows and the kinky silkiness of the brown hair. Thin and wan, the face seemed too small for the muscular neck, yet the delicate features, despite their waste, were firmly moulded.

"What dressings have you been using?" Linday asked of the woman. "Corrosive, sublimate, regular solution," came the answer. He glanced quickly at her, shot an even quicker glance at the face of the injured man, and stood erect. She breathed sharply, abruptly biting off the respiration with an effort of will. Linday turned to the men. "You clear out chop wood or something. Clear out."

Another time, when Strang's condition seemed more promising, the brother said: "Doc, you're a wonder, and all this time I've forgotten to ask your name." "None of your damn business. Don't bother me. Get out." The mangled right arm ceased from its healing, burst open again in a frightful wound. "Necrosis," said Linday. "That does settle it," groaned the brother. "Shut up!" Linday snarled.

He used the last of his chloroform and achieved the bone-graft living bone to living bone, living man and living rabbit immovable and indissolubly bandaged and bound together, their mutual processes uniting and reconstructing a perfect arm. And through the whole trying period, especially as Strang mended, occurred passages of talk between Linday and Madge. Nor was he kind, nor she rebellious.

Linday was indefatigable, cruelly efficient, audacious and fortunate, daring hazard after hazard and winning. He was not content to make the man live. He devoted himself to the intricate and perilous problem of making him whole and strong again. "He will be a cripple?" Madge queried. "He will not merely walk and talk and be a limping caricature of his former self," Linday told her.

I got a team of dawgs down the bank. You ought to allow to start in ten minutes, an' we ought to make it back in less'n three days because the trail's broke. I'm goin' down to the dawgs now, an' I'll look for you in ten minutes." Tom Daw pulled down his earflaps, drew on his mittens, and passed out. "Damn him!" Linday cried, glaring vindictively at the closed door.

A wind, strong and warm, a balmy gale, drove past them, flinging a rocket-shower of sparks from the fire. The dogs, aroused, sat on their haunches, bleak noses pointed upward, and raised the long wolf howl. "It's the Chinook," Daw said. "It means the river trail, I suppose?" "Sure thing. And ten miles of it is easier than one over the tops." Daw surveyed Linday for a long, considering minute.

They's a man up the Little Peco that's had a ruction with a panther, an' the way he's clawed is something scand'lous." "How far up?" Doctor Linday demanded. "A matter of a hundred miles." "How long since?" "I've ben three days comin' down." "Bad?" "Shoulder dislocated. Some ribs broke for sure. Right arm broke. An' clawed clean to the bone most all over but the face.