Connie reached the man's side and proceeded to scrape away the snow, while 'Merican Joe stood at a respectful distance, his rifle at full cock. "Come on Joe!" the boy called, at length. "Here's your tamahnawus—and it's going to take two of us to get him out."
When the snow had been removed both Connie and the Indian stared in surprise. There lay the man closely wrapped in his moose skin, fur side in, and the heavy hide frozen to the hardness of iron!
"I'm all cramped up," wailed the man. "I can't move."
The man was wrapped, head and all, in the frozen hide. Fortunately, he had left an air space but this had nearly sealed shut by the continued freezing of his breath about its edges.
Rolling him over the two grasped the edge of the heavy hide and endeavoured to unroll it, but they might as well have tried to unroll the iron sheathing of a boiler.
"We've got to build a fire and thaw him out," said Connie.
"Tak' um to de cabin," suggested the Indian. "Kin drag um all same toboggan."
The plan looked reasonable but they had no rope for a trace line. Connie overcame the difficulty by making a hole with his hand ax in a flap of the hide near the man's feet, and cutting a light spruce sapling which he hooked by means of a limb stub into the hole.
By using the sapling in the manner of a wagon tongue, they started for the cabin, keeping to the top of the ridge where the snow was shallow and wind-packed.
All went well until they reached the end of the ridge. A mile back, where they had ascended the slope, the pitch had not been great, but as they neared the river the sides grew steeper, until they were confronted by a three hundred foot slope with an extremely steep pitch. This slope was sparsely timbered, and great rocks protruded from the snow. Connie was for retracing the ridge to a point where the ascent was not so steep, but 'Merican Joe demurred.