He lifted himself and his burden out of the water to a resting-place on a shelf of rock. For a minute or two he sat looking up at the rock walls and the grey sky above them. He looked down at the water, at the spot where they had been spewed from death back into life. And then he leaped upright and laughed, laughed so that the rocks rang with it, laughed so that MacGregor’s senses cleared and he looked at his saviour in consternation. His laughter was the uncontrollable, heart-free laughter of the man who suddenly sees a great joke upon his enemy. He smote MacGregor between the shoulder-blades so he gasped and coughed. He tore the straps and harness from his arms, body and legs, tossed him up in the air, shook him and set him down on the rock. “I’ve got him!” he said at last. “Oh, Shanty Moir, what a surprise you have coming to your own black self!” MacGregor, with his senses cleared enough to realise that he was alive, and to remember how the miracle had come about, said quietly— “Man, that was the bravest thing I ever saw a man do.” “What?” “Diving into that hole after me.” “Oh, to —— with that! That’s past. The past doesn’t count—not when the very immediate future is so full of juice and interest as happens to be the case just now. I’ve got Shanty Moir, old-timer. Do you understand? He’s mine and all that he’s got is mine, and he’s going to be surprised. Oh, how surprised he’s going to be!” MacGregor looked down at the two yards of rushing water, up at the rock walls and then at the jubilant Reivers. “I dinna see it,” he said dryly. “Really?” Reivers suddenly became interested in him as if he presented a rare mental problem. “Can’t you make that simple mind of yours work out the simple solution of this problem?” MacGregor shook his head. “What I see is this: we’re alive, and that only for the present. We’re in a little hole in the Dead Lands. Happen we climb out of the hole, we have no dogs, food, or weapons. The nearest camp is two good days’ mushing, with good fresh dogs. Too far. If I could manage to stagger five miles I’d surprise myself. There is not so much as a dry match on us. No, I maun say, lad, my simple mind does not see the solution of the problem.” “Try again, Mac,” urged Reivers. “Make your mind work. What do we need to make our condition blessed among men; what do men need to be well-fitted on the Winter trail? You can make your mind do that sum, can’t you?” “We need,” replied MacGregor doggedly, “dogs, and food, and fire, and weapons.” “Correct. And now what’s the next thought that your grey matter produces after that masterpiece?” “That the nearest place where we may obtain these things is too far away for us to make, unless happen we meet some one on the trail, which is not likely.”