For the time being, however, we were chiefly concerned to find out how badly Halstead was injured, with a view to getting him home.

His ankle was swollen, sore and painful; he could not touch the foot to the floor, and he howled when we tried to move it.
Evidently he had suffered a good deal, and pity prevented us from freeing our minds to him as fully as we should otherwise have done.

The main thing now was to get him home, where a doctor could attend him.
"We shall have to haul him on the hand sled," Addison said to me; and fortunately the sled that Alfred and he had taken was there at the camp.
But first we cooked a meal of some of the beef, corn meal and coffee they had taken from the old Squire's.
It was still raining; and on going out an hour later we found that the stream had risen so high that we could not cross it.

The afternoon, too, was waning; and, urgent as Halstead's case appeared, we had to give up the idea of starting that night.

During the rest of the afternoon we busied ourselves rigging a rude seat on the sled.
There were good dry bunks at the camp, but little sleep was in store for us.