"Thank you, Moira," the sergeant interrupted. "If Dr. Morrow can use you, I'll call."
The parson-surgeon returned with medicine and instrument cases. The sleeping bag was slit down its top-center, as the least painful way of removing the patient, and gently they carried him to an improvised operating table in Seymour's quarters.
Morrow proposed an anæsthetic. Even in the hands of a skilled surgeon, he declared, the bone-setting would be most painful; he was just a clumsy, well-intentioned amateur.
"Damme if I'll go out of my head for just a jab of pain," the doughty constable exclaimed.
"A whiff of ether will make it easier, Charlie," suggested his superior. "And I'll whisper a secret—Miss O'Malley is ready to administer it. She served with us in France."
La Marr's black eyes gleamed a second in appreciation. Then he shook his head decisively.
"Aye, and that wouldn't be so bad," he said. "But I've smelled the sweet stuff before. When I am coming out of it I tell all I know. We'll take no chances of ragging her with babbling about Oliver's murder." He turned to Morrow. "Let's go, parson, and do your darndest to make me a straight leg."
The operation took some time, the break being a compound requiring a preliminary reduction. In this Moira did help and perhaps her presence was as potent as anæsthesia. At any rate, not a cry escaped the lips of the broken Mountie.
When the splints finally were fastened and the patient refreshed with a cup of fool-hen broth, Seymour asked an account of the pursuit and accident.
"If you'll hand my jacket—wrote report when I thought we wouldn't pull through." He passed over his note book. "I want to sleep now."