"If I can handle the ether or anything----"
"Thank you, Moira," the sergeant interrupted. "If Dr. Morrow can use you, I'll call."
The parson-surgeon returned with medicine and instrument cases. The sleeping bag was slit down its top-center, as the least painful way of removing the patient, and gently they carried him to an improvised operating table in Seymour's quarters.
Morrow proposed an anæsthetic. Even in the hands of a skilled surgeon, he declared, the bone-setting would be most painful; he was just a clumsy, well-intentioned amateur.
"Damme if I'll go out of my head for just a jab of pain," the doughty constable exclaimed.
"A whiff of ether will make it easier, Charlie," suggested his superior. "And I'll whisper a secret--Miss O'Malley is ready to administer it. She served with us in France."
La Marr's black eyes gleamed a second in appreciation. Then he shook his head decisively.
"Aye, and that wouldn't be so bad," he said. "But I've smelled the sweet stuff before. When I am coming out of it I tell all I know. We'll take no chances of ragging her with babbling about Oliver's murder." He turned to Morrow. "Let's go, parson, and do your darndest to make me a straight leg."
The operation took some time, the break being a compound requiring a preliminary reduction. In this Moira did help and perhaps her presence was as potent as anæsthesia. At any rate, not a cry escaped the lips of the broken Mountie.
When the splints finally were fastened and the patient refreshed with a cup of fool-hen broth, Seymour asked an account of the pursuit and accident.
"If you'll hand my jacket--wrote report when I thought we wouldn't pull through." He passed over his note book. "I want to sleep now."
In the living room, the sergeant bent over this blurred scrawl in pencil:
_Sert. Seymour, O.C. Armistice Detachment._
Followed fugitive from one camp to another, always a jump or two behind him. Seemed not to know where he was headed. Ate all my own supplies. Took to Eskimo grub. Not so worse after stomach gets used. Three days ago, crossing lake on gladed ice. Think it was Lake Blarney. Dogs sight a stray wolf. Run away. Sled swerves into fishing hole. Me thrown into water. Leg broken. Make edge of ice and crawl out. Can't go farther. Dogs catch, kill and eat wolf. Come back looking for me, but not near enough so I can swing on sled.