brain were clear. He felt no pain, and only at infrequent
intervals was his temperature above normal. His voice was
particularly calm and natural.

At first he had smiled incredulously when Cardigan broke the news.
That the bullet which a drunken half-breed had sent into his chest
two weeks before had nicked the arch of the aorta, thus forming an
aneurism, was a statement by Cardigan which did not sound
especially wicked or convincing to him. "Aorta" and "aneurism"
held about as much significance for him as his perichondrium or
the process of his stylomastoid. But Kent possessed an unswerving
passion to grip at facts in detail, a characteristic that had
largely helped him to earn the reputation of being the best man-
hunter in all the northland service. So he had insisted, and his
surgeon friend had explained.

The aorta, he found, was the main blood-vessel arching over and
leading from the heart, and in nicking it the bullet had so
weakened its outer wall that it bulged out in the form of a sack,
just as the inner tube of an automobile tire bulges through the
outer casing when there is a blowout.

"And when that sack gives way inside you," Cardigan had explained,
"you'll go like that!" He snapped a forefinger and thumb to drive
the fact home.

After that it was merely a matter of common sense to believe, and
now, sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting
in the full health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the
paralyzing shock he was contributing as a final legacy to the