“What’s that? You really mean that, doctor? Will have to give up his duties—— Won’t——”
Dick left the sentence incompleted as he turned beseechingly to the physician.
“No, he’ll never be able to resume his duties,” Brady answered gravely.
“But why?” argued Sandy. “You just said that he’d recover, would get well again. You said——”
“But I never said that he’d ever walk again,” the doctor reminded him. “His feet—terrible! Frozen, bruised and cut. I may possibly have to amputate them. Even if I don’t, they’ll never be right again. But,” and the doctor looked from one grave face to the other, “we can be mighty thankful that his life has been spared, that with proper care and attention, he’ll soon recover his full mental and physical powers.”
Dick turned his head to hide the tears that had come unbidden to his eyes. Sandy kicked disconsolately into a drift of snow, his gaze searching the ground. Both boys left immediately to take their places within the line of waiting teams and sledges.
“I still insist that we ought to go back and string up that Indian who stole Corporal Rand’s boots,” Sandy declared savagely as he and Dick parted, the former to go to the invalid’s side, the latter to the mail sledge. “The way I feel now, I could gladly tear that sneaking thief limb from limb.”
“Mush! Mush!” The words floated down along the waiting line. “Mush, boys, mush!”
A creaking of sledges, the cracking of whips, a shout here and there—and they were away, an orderly column which, after the first forty or fifty yards, gathered momentum until it had gained its maximum of speed, then settled down to a steady, unchanging pace.
Whatever enjoyment the others might have had at the commencement of that exhilarating ride, it was not shared by Dick. For him the day, which had begun so propitiously, was entirely spoiled. Dr. Brady’s assertion had wrung his heart. Time and time again, he turned his head and glanced back at Sandy’s sledge to the helpless form lying there, and sighed bitterly.