"What dressings have you been using?" Linday asked of the woman. "Corrosive, sublimate, regular solution," came the answer. He glanced quickly at her, shot an even quicker glance at the face of the injured man, and stood erect. She breathed sharply, abruptly biting off the respiration with an effort of will. Linday turned to the men. "You clear out--chop wood or something. Clear out." One of them demurred. "This is a serious case," Linday went on. "I want to talk to his wife." "I'm his brother," said the other. To him the woman looked, praying him with her eyes. He nodded reluctantly and turned toward the door. "Me, too?" Daw queried from the bench where he had flung himself down. "You, too." Linday busied himself with a superficial examination of the patient while the cabin was emptying. "So?" he said. "So that's your Rex Strang." She dropped her eyes to the man in the bunk as if to reassure herself of his identity, and then in silence returned Linday's gaze. "Why don't you speak?" She shrugged her shoulders. "What is the use? You know it is Rex Strang." "Thank you. Though I might remind you that it is the first time I have ever seen him. Sit down." He waved her to a stool, himself taking the bench. "I'm really about all in, you know. There's no turnpike from the Yukon here." He drew a penknife and began extracting a thorn from his thumb. "What are you going to do?" she asked, after a minute's wait. "Eat and rest up before I start back." "What are you going to do about...." She inclined her head toward the unconscious man. "Nothing." She went over to the bunk and rested her fingers lightly on the tight-curled hair. "You mean you will kill him," she said slowly. "Kill him by doing nothing, for you can save him if you will." "Take it that way." He considered a moment, and stated his thought with a harsh little laugh. "From time immemorial in this weary old world it has been a not uncommon custom so to dispose of wife-stealers." "You are unfair, Grant," she answered gently. "You forget that I was willing and that I desired. I was a free agent. Rex never stole me. It was you who lost me. I went with him, willing and eager, with song on my lips. As well accuse me of stealing him. We went together." "A good way of looking at it," Linday conceded. "I see you are as keen a thinker as ever, Madge. That must have bothered him." "A keen thinker can be a good lover--" "And not so foolish," he broke in. "Then you admit the wisdom of my course?" He threw up his hands. "That's the devil of it, talking with clever women. A man always forgets and traps himself. I wouldn't wonder if you won him with a syllogism." Her reply was the hint of a smile in her straight-looking blue eyes and a seeming emanation of sex pride from all the physical being of her.