He tried to draw me up, but I was too heavy a weight for a single arm. He was half over the gulf himself, but his left arm was wound like a cable around the rock. His face was red as a beet and his breath was short, but he showed no inclination to let go. "You can't do it, colonel," I gasped. "Save yourself! No need for both of us to drop." "What sort of a man do you take me to be?" he asked, indignantly. He breathed hard and made a great effort to pull me up. A flake of blood appeared on his temple. I was raised up about a foot and got a new grip on some of the shrubs, but there I stopped. I could not lift myself up any farther, nor could the colonel lift me. I could hear men plunging through the snow in their haste; so my shouts had been heard by more than the colonel. I put my voice to its best uses again. The colonel said nothing, but how he hung on to that old army overcoat! The men had begun to shout, and I never ceased, wanting them to make sure of the direction. Weather-seamed faces looked over the brink. Two or three pairs of hands grasped the overcoat and pulled me up. Somebody else seized the colonel, and I have but a hazy idea of the next five minutes. A man who has been hanging at the verge of death gets tired in both brain and muscle, and I needed rest. When things came around all right again, I was sitting up on the snow and drinking out of a brown bottle. The colonel was lying on that blessed overcoat, his head in his daughter's lap and his face quite pale. They were binding a white cloth around his temples. "What's the matter?" I asked, weakly. "An old wound on his head has broken," replied one of the men, in a low voice. "I'm afraid he's in a pretty bad way." I put down the brown bottle which had comforted me, and I saw that the colonel in fact was in a bad way. He was unconscious, and his breathing was weak. He seemed to have collapsed after a season of fever and excitement followed by the great physical strain put upon him by the attempted rescue of me. I was struck with remorse. My arrival at Fort Defiance had caused all this trouble. Yet my going there was an accident, not a matter that I could have helped. I sent one of the men after Dr. Ambrose, pointing out the direction in which he had gone, and urging the man to make all haste. Then we lifted the colonel and carried him to the hut, where with overcoats and blankets we fixed up a warm bed for him and did what else we could until the doctor came, which was not till late. "He has about an even chance, Miss Hetherill," said the doctor, after he had made his examination. "The odds might be his if I had here all that I need, but this is no hospital. I think it is best to tell you the exact truth."