was shot like a dog. A score had been so executed already.

And, under a strain which had broken so many younger men, Old
Tarwater began to break. His cough had become terrible, and had
not his exhausted comrades slept like the dead, he would have kept
them awake nights. Also, he began to take chills, so that he
dressed up to go to bed. When he had finished so dressing, not a
rag of garment remained in his clothes bag. All he possessed was
on his back and swathed around his gaunt old form.

"Gee!" said Big Bill. "If he puts all he's got on now, when it
ain't lower than twenty above, what'll he do later on when it goes
down to fifty and sixty below?"

They lined the rough-made boat down the mountain torrent, nearly
losing it a dozen times, and rowed across the south end of Lake
Linderman in the thick of a fall blizzard. Next morning they
planned to load and start, squarely into the teeth of the north, on
their perilous traverse of half a thousand miles of lakes and
rapids and box canyons. But before he went to bed that night,
Young Liverpool was out over the camp. He returned to find his
whole party asleep. Rousing Tarwater, he talked with him in low
tones.

"Listen, dad," he said.--"You've got a passage in our boat, and if
ever a man earned a passage you have. But you know yourself you're
pretty well along in years, and your health right now ain't
exciting. If you go on with us you'll croak surer'n hell.--Now
wait till I finish, dad. The price for a passage has jumped to
five hundred dollars. I've been throwing my feet and I've hustled