Fastening the mink in his belt he hurried on to his camp as fast as he could under his heavy load, for his wounded arm had begun to swell and was causing him intense pain. His stoical Indian nature would have caused him to withstand the pain with indifference, but when he remembered how the wolf, maddened by his capture, had wrought himself up into such a frenzy that his mouth was all foaming with madness when he made that last desperate spring and succeeded in fastening his fangs in his arm, he feared that perhaps some of the froth might have got into his arm, and unless some remedies were quickly obtained, madness might come to him, to be followed by a most dreadful death. But what could he do? He was several days' journey from his own village, and many miles from any hunter of his acquaintance. He had, in his vanity, come alone on this hunting expedition, and now alone in the woods, far away from his friends, here he is in his little hunting lodge, a dangerously wounded man. Fortunately he had taken the precaution of sucking as many of the wounds as he could reach with his mouth, and then had bound a deerskin thong on his arm above the wound as tightly as he could draw it. Very few, comparatively, were the diseases among the aboriginal tribes of America before the advent of the white man. Their vocation as hunters, however, rendered them liable to many accidents. Possessing no firearms, and thus necessarily obliged to come in close contact with the savage beasts in their conflict with them, they were often severely wounded. Fortunate was it for the injured one if he had companions near when the bone was fractured or the flesh torn. If, when accidents occur, the injuries are not considered very desperate, a little camp is improvised and with a day or two of rest, with some simple remedies from nature's great storehouse--the forest--a cure is quickly effected. If a leg or arm is broken, a stretcher of young saplings is skillfully prepared, interwoven with broad bands of soft bark, and on this elastic, easy couch the wounded man is rapidly carried to his distant wigwam by his companions. When there are but two persons, and an accident happens to one of them, two young trees that are tough and elastic are used. Then tops of small branches are allowed to remain, and very much diminish the jolting caused by the inequalities of the ground. No carriage spring ever more successfully accomplished its purpose. A couple of cross bars preserve the saplings in position, and the bark of some varieties of shrubs or trees cut into bands and joined to either side forms a comfortable couch. In this way an injured man has often been dragged many miles by his companion, and in some instances it has been found on his arrival at his forest home that the fractured bones were uniting, and soon the limb was whole again.