"The whole affair, from the first shooting of the cub to the appearance and disappearance of the parent bear, had not taken five minutes, and when the half-breed, who had heard the shooting and the growls, reached the place, it was all over. The hunter, dazed and scarcely conscious, was lying beside a stone with the dead cub a few feet behind him and the dead mother a few feet in front of him. Apparently the man had not moved since the bear died, and probably was not aware of his escape, but was lying there, awaiting death in a most horrible form, not realizing that his foe had passed beyond revenge." "But how did he get to you?" asked the boy. "The half-breed brought him, as I told you. In some unexplained way he lifted him to the saddle, and had the good judgment to let him fall forward on the neck of the horse, thereby closing the wounds in the neck and shoulder, which were the worst of all. But the hunter was terribly lacerated, for the claws of a bear rip right to the bone, sinews, tendons, veins, everything being shorn clean through. "I doctored up his wounds as well as I could, but he did not regain consciousness all night, and I thought he would never pull through. But just as he had shown plenty of pluck in his fight with the bear, so he also showed a good deal of vitality in his fight with death. Though time was very precious to us, we stayed there three days to give him a chance, and then we sent him down to Rampart." "I should have thought that the ride would kill him," said the boy. "There was certainly a chance that it would," replied the topographer. "But he could not have gone down the Kanuti River with us, and he could not stay up there alone with the half-breed. Then I thought there was less danger of some blood poisoning or infection setting in if he was somewhere that he could be watched by a doctor, and the journey was worth the risk." "Did you ever hear of him afterwards?" "Oh, yes. He is recovering, though, of course, he will never be the same man again." "That," mumbled Roger, his voice thick with sleep, "was a close shave," and a moment later his heavy breathing told the topographer that his audience was asleep. "He's a plucky little customer himself," he commented, as he left the tent. CHAPTER XVIII FIGHTING FIRE IN THE TUNDRA The next day, June 12th, with Roger at the bow and Harry at the stern of the leading canoe, they started down the Kanuti River. The stream was swift, shallow, and full of boulders, and for the first couple of days more of the work was done wading in the stream than by paddling. The second day, particularly, it seemed to the boy that he had not been out of the water at all during the fourteen hours of the march, except for the brief halt at noon.