Okanagan glanced at him severely. "I guess you'll lie right where you are and keep very still, or I'll make a hole through the other leg," he said.
Alton appeared to chuckle, but his arm slipped from under him, and he dropped back heavily amidst the blankets with eyes closed while Seaforth bent over him.
"That's all right," said Okanagan. "You needn't worry. I was kind of hoping he would do it because I was anxious about the bleeding. Now we'll get everything fixed up before he comes round again."
Seaforth did what he was bidden, and nothing more, for he had been reared in England, and not amidst the firs and snows of Northern Canada where misadventures are many and doctors very few, but he envied the big bushman his skill that day, and Okanagan may have guessed it, for he once smiled a little as he said:
"There are lots of things I can't do, and it's not your fault that you were raised back in the old country, where you have other folks to put the patches on to you."
"No," said Seaforth, smiling. "Still, he is my partner, you see. Now
I want to know what we are going to do with him."
Okanagan's smile was just perceptible as he held up a ragged piece of lead, but Seaforth saw that he understood all the speech implied, though he made no reference to it,
"There's half the trouble gone," he said. "The rest of it went straight through the bone, and I kind of fancy smashed it up considerable."
"Will the pieces knit as they were before?" said Seaforth very anxiously, and for a moment or two Okanagan did not answer him.
"That," he said very slowly, "is what I don't quite know. One of them bones is a rocker, and she swings on the other. That one's cut, but I don't think it's smashed right through. Now if it goes as well as the other, it's quite possible Harry will limp ever after."