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Updated: June 30, 2025
The rest of you will stop right here and help Okanagan to pick up his trail." There was a hurried saddling of horses, four mounted men went crashing through the undergrowth downhill at the risk of neck and limbs, and an hour later Seaforth and Okanagan stopped a few moments breathless beside a frothing stream. "He'll have gone this way for the river, sure," said the latter.
Okanagan helped him to carry Alton ashore, and then stood still looking at the fir, which was of a girth seldom seen in any other country. "She's lying right across, and we've got to chop our way through," he said. "You'll fix the tent and make supper while I take first turn." He came back dripping presently, and Seaforth was waist-deep in icy water when he reached the tree.
Okanagan also remembered that though it had been necessary to lift her down when twice they stopped to change the team at a lonely ranch, she rose smiling with blue lips when it was time to go on again. "Yes, sir," he afterwards said to Seaforth, "there wasn't any weakening down in either of them, and the girl's a daisy."
Seaforth and Okanagan bent over it together, their faces showing intent in the light of the fire, while Alton laughed softly as he watched them. "What do you make of that?" he said. Seaforth glanced round sharply. "It's a trifle curious. That hide's thick, and yet the beast has evidently broken it, but it pulled up the peg."
There was a rustle of branches, and Tom of Okanagan rose out of the thicket the fugitive had almost gained, with a rifle in his hand. He laughed somewhat grimly as he said, "Stop right where you are." Then there was for a space a somewhat impressive tableau, that had in it humorous as well as tragic possibilities.
Such enterprise has never been exceeded, seldom or never equalled. The outfit is now sent out from England by Cape Horn, to Fort Vancouver, thence it is conveyed in boats to Okanagan, then transported on horses' backs to Alexandria, the lower post of the district, whence it is conveyed in boats to Fort St. James.
"I don't know that you did it, but I think that bone has gone," he said. Okanagan, saying nothing, dropped on hands and knees, and while Alton groaned drew the bands tighter about the shattered cedar-bark. Then he rose up and looked at Seaforth, and the two stood silent for almost a minute with the snow whirling about them.
Tom of Okanagan smiled in a curious fashion while Alton reached out and laid his finger on the hide. "One can't be sure of anything," he said. "Still, one could fancy that had felt the knife before it snapped." There was silence for almost a minute, and the shadows of the great firs seemed to close in upon the camp. Then Alton rose up and stretched his limbs wearily.
The Okanagan Valley, in the Province of British Columbia, is bounded on the north by the mosquitoes at Sicamous, and on the south by the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, which is the United States; and to one who is accustomed to the sand and the sage, the general aspect throughout gives a most pleasing rest to the eye.
Miss Deringham was justified, for a few days later Seaforth stood waiting in the snow with a pack-horse's bridle in his hand, and several brawny men with heavy packs slung about them close by, when Tom of Okanagan drove into the clearing as fast as his smoking team could haul the jolting wagon. "You can sling all those things down again," he said.
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