Himselfe on a dapple-gray,

leg looked ghastly. Now he dropped on one knee and stooped low over it. "What a mess!" he murmured slowly. He looked up ov?r his shoulder. "We've gotta do something about that leg, boss, and we've no damned time to lose. This kid's a good candidate for the mortuary." "I know. We've got to save him, Dusty, we've just got to." All at once this had become terribly important to Mallory. He dropped down on his knees. "Let's have a look at him." Impatiently Miller waved him away. "Leave this to me, boss." There was a sureness, a sudden authority in his voice that held Mallory silent. "The medicine pack, quickand undo that tent." "You sure you can handle this?" God knew, Mallory thought, he didn't really doubt himhe was conscious only of gratitude, of a profound relief, but he felt he had to say something. "How are you going" "Look, boss," Miller said quietly. "All my life I've worked with just three thingsmines, tunnels and explosives. They're kinda tricky things, boss. I've seen hundreds of busted arms and legsand fixed most of them myself." He grinned wryly in the darkness. "I was boss myself, thenjust one of my privileges, I reckon." "Good enough!" Mallory clapped him on the shoulder. "He's all yours, Dusty. But the tent!" Involuntarily he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the cliff. "I mean" "You got me wrong, boss." Miller's hands, steady and precise with the delicate certainty of a man who has spent a lifetime with high explosives, were busy with a swab and disinfectant. "I wasn't fixin' on settin' up a base hospital. But we need tent-polessplints for his legs." "Of course, of course. The poles. Never occurred to me for splintsand rye been thinking of nothing else for" "They're not too important, boss." Miller had the medicine pack open now, rapidly selecting the items he wanted with the aid of a hooded torch. "Morphine that's the first thing, or this kid's goin' to die of shock. And then shelter, warmth, dry clothin'" "Warmth! Dry clothing!" Mallory interrupted incredulously. He looked down at the unconscious boy, remembering how Stevens had lost them the stove and all the fuel, and his mouth twisted in bitterness. His own executioner. . . . "Where in God's name are we going to find thorn?" "I don't know, boss," Miller said simply. "But we gotta find them. And not just to lessen shock. With a leg like this and soaked to the skin, he's bound to get pneumonia. And then as much sulfa as that bloody great hole in his leg will review 4 megapixel digital cameras takeone touch of sepsis in the state this kid's in. . ." His voice trailed away into silence. Mallory rose to his feet. "I reckon you're the boss." It was a very creditable imitation of the American's drawl, and Miller looked up quickly, surprise melting into a tired smile, then looked away again. Mallory could hear the chatter of his teeth as he bent over Stevens, and sensed rather than saw that he was shivering violently, continuously, but oblivious to it all in his complete concentration on the job in hand. Miller's clothes, Mallory remembered again, were completely saturated: not for the first time, Mallory wondered how he had managed to get himself into such a state with a waterproof covering him. "You fix him up. I'll find a place." Mallory wasn't as confident as he felt: still, on the scree-strewn, volcanic slopes of these hills behind, there ought to be a fair chance of finding a rock shelter, if not a cave. Or there would have been in daylight: as it was they would just have to trust to luck to stumble on one. . . . He saw that Casey Brown, grey-faced with exhaustion and illnessthe after-effects of carbon monoxide poisoning are slow to disappearhad risen unsteadily to his feet and was making for a gap between the rocks. "Where are you going, Chief?" "Back for the rest of the stuff, sir." "Are you sure you can manage?" Mallory peered at him closely. "You don't look any too fit to me." "I don't feel it either," Brown said frankly. He looked at Mallory. "But with all respects, sir, I don't think you've seen yourself recently." "You have a point," Mallory acknowledged. "All right then, come on. I'll go with you." For the next ten minutes there was silence in the tiny clearing, a silence broken only by the murmurs of Miller and Andrea working over the shattered leg, and the moans of the injured man as he twisted and struggled feebly in his dark abyss of pain: then gradually the morphine took effect and the struggling lessened and died away altogether, and Miller was able to work rapidly, without fear of interruption. Andrea had an oilskin outstretched above them. It served a double purposeit curtained off the sleet that swept rOund them from time to time and blanketed the pin-point light of the