What a fool he was to try and make himself heard above the roaring in his head!  His words seemed to him whispers coming across a great space.  And the bundle on his shoulders was like a crushing weight bearing him down!  The voice at his side was growing fainter.  It was saying things which afterward he could not remember, but he knew that it was talking about the woman he had said was her mother, and that he was answering it while weights of lead were dragging at his feet.  Then suddenly, he had stepped over the edge of the world and was floating in that vast, black chaos again.  The voice did not leave him.  He could hear it sobbing, entreating him, urging him to do something which he could not understand; and when at last he did begin to comprehend it he knew also that he was no longer walking with weights at his feet and a burden on his shoulders, but was on the ground.  His head was on her breast, and she was no longer speaking to him, but was crying like a child with a heart utterly broken.  The deathly sickness was gone as quickly as it had stricken him, and he struggled upward, with her arms helping him.

“You are hurt—­hurt—­” he heard her moaning.  “If I can only get you on Tara, Sakewawin, on Tara’s back—­there—­a step....” and he knew that was what she had been saying over and over again, urging him to help himself if he could, so that she could get him to Tara.  He reached out his hand and buried it in the thick hair of the grizzly, and he tried to speak laughingly so that she would not know his fears.

“One is often dizzy—­like that—­after a blow,” he said, “I guess—­I can walk now.”

“No, no, you must ride Tara,” she insisted.  “You are hurt—­and you must ride Tara, Sakewawin.  You must!”

She was lifting at his arms with all her strength, her breath hot and panting in his face, and Tara stood without moving a muscle of his giant body, as if he, too, were urging upon him in this dumb manner the necessity of obeying his mistress.  Even then David would have remonstrated but he felt once more that appalling sickness creeping over him, and he raised himself slowly astride the grizzly’s broad back.  The Girl picked up the bundle and rifle and Tara followed her through the darkness.  To David the beast’s great back seemed a wonderfully safe and comfortable place, and he leaned forward with his fingers clutched deeply in the long hair of the ruff about the bear’s bulking shoulders.

The Girl called back to him softly: 

“You are all right, Sakewawin?”

“Yes, it is so comfortable that I feel I may fall asleep,” he replied.