The owner of the Circle Four, who professed to have a slight knowledge of physical ailments, went over the injured flyer carefully.
“He’ll probably be on the shelf a few months,” he said when he had completed his examination, “but I think he’ll pull through all right.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Tim.
“Looks to me like a considerable number of broken ribs, and a good hard crack on the head that might be a slight fracture, and exposure, of which the exposure is about as bad as any.”
The cowboys built a roaring fire that cast eerie shadows on the wreckage of the mail and then proceeded to loosen the injured flyer’s clothes. Lewis’ body was thoroughly warmed and the circulation restored to his arms and feet before they bundled him up for the trip down the mountain.
It was eight o’clock before they were ready to start the descent. The hours had been spent in cutting a plentiful supply of pine knots which would serve as torches and in fashioning a stretcher on which to carry the injured flyer.
According to the plan outlined by the ranchman, four of them would carry the stretcher while the fifth would go ahead, lighting the trail with one of the pine knots.
The mail flyer was still unconscious when they placed him on the makeshift stretcher but he was made comfortable with an abundance of blankets.
Tim took one of the forward handles of the stretcher, Cummins took the other and Boots and Jim undertook to carry the back end. Curly, his arms loaded with the pine fagots, went ahead to light the way.
The stretcher was heavy and bundlesome and even the short distance to the crest of the mountain was a cruel struggle. They were almost exhausted when they reached the top and put down the stretcher. However, the rest of the journey to the plane would be down hill.