"No, Serg., me man got me." The response was in a voice weak from suffering.
They carried him into the house, sleeping bag and all. Before attempting the painful ordeal of extracting the broken, unset limb from the fur-lined sack, they fed him the breast of one of the fool hens that had been left from the interrupted feast. At Seymour's request, the two women went into the kitchen to prepare hot water for the impending operation and a strong broth of which the constable would be in need afterward.
As every missionary in the North is something of a surgeon as well as a lay physician, Luke Morrow hurried to Mission House for his kit. The while, Avic sat on the hearth, contentedly munching a chunk of bannock which no one had the heart to take away from him.
When the room was cleared, Sergeant Seymour leaned over his constable for a low-voiced question. "Is Avic under arrest?"
"I—I hadn't the heart, after all he's done for me," said the injured mountie. "He brought me along willingly enough. Didn't seem the least afraid about coming back to the post. Go easy on him, sergeant. I'd have been wolf food if it hadn't been for him."
The arrest had to be made quickly, before Moira chanced back into the room if their kind-hearted plot was to be sustained. Seymour got the Eskimo's attention, reminded him that he understood English, and went through the formal lines of arrest and warning, with the addition that it was "for the murder of Oliver O'Malley."
"Sure," said the native, who had learned some of his English from American whalers at Herschel Island. "I savey. What do? When we go?"
Seymour did not understand the significance of this last question, but hadn't the time to inquire into it. Leading Avic to the guard room, he turned him in to make friends with Olespe or not, as Eskimo etiquette might decree.
As he was locking the door of the cell room, Moira came from the kitchen with improvised splints and a roll of bandages. She told him quietly of her service in France with a Red Cross unit and asked permission to help with the operation.
"If I can handle the ether or anything——"