He dropped his burden, and the last of his words were twisted by a fresh blast of the storm.  But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and Jolly Roger saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not understand in that howling of the wind.  But a thing like cold steel sank into his heart, and he knew it was not Nada he had found this night on the Barren.  He placed the unconscious man on the sledge, believing he was dead.  The girl was crying out something to him, unintelligible in the storm, and one of the men shouted in a thick throaty voice which he could not understand.  Jolly Roger felt the weight of him as he staggered in the wind, fighting to keep his feet, and he knew he was ready to drop down in the snow and die.

“It’s only a step,” he shouted.  “Can you make it?”

His words reached the ears of the others.  The girl swayed through the darkness and gripped his arm.  The two men began to tug at the sledge, and Jolly Roger seized the rope between them, wondering why there were no dogs, and faced the driving of the storm.  It seemed an interminable time before he saw the faint glow of the alcohol lamp.  The last fifty feet was like struggling against an irresistible hail from machine-guns.  Then came the shelter of the dune.

One at a time McKay helped to drag them through the hole which he used for a door.  For a space his vision was blurred, and he saw through the hazy film of storm-blindness the gray faces and heavily coated forms of those he had rescued.  The man he had found in the snow he placed on his blankets, and the girl fell down upon her knees beside him.  It was then Jolly Roger began to see more clearly.  And in that same instant came a shock as unexpected as the smash of dynamite under his feet.

The girl had thrown back her parkee, and was sobbing over the man on the blankets, and calling him father.  She was not like Nada.  Her hair was in thick, dark coils, and she was older.  She was not pretty—­now.  Her face was twisted by the brutal beating of the storm, and her eyes were nearly closed.  But it was the man Jolly Roger stared at, while his heart choked inside him.  He was grizzled and gray-bearded, with military mustaches and a bald head.  He was not dead.  His eyes were open, and his blue lips were struggling to speak to the girl whose blindness kept her from seeing that he was alive.  And the coat which he wore was the regulation service garment of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!

Slowly McKay turned, wiping the film of snow-sweat from his eyes, and stared at the other two.  One of them had sunk down with his back to the snow wall.  He was a much younger man, possibly not over thirty, and his face was ghastly.  The third lay where he had fallen from exhaustion after crawling through the hole.  Both wore service coats, with holsters at their sides.

The man against the snow-wall was making an effort to rise.  He sagged back, and grinned up apologetically at McKay.