Probably he had been fished out of the river by this woodsman and brought here.

He felt his head.

The wound was fresh and very sore.

He had played for death, with an insulting disdain, yet here he was alive.
Certainly he was not intended to be drowned or knifed--he remembered the knives he saw unsheathed--or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter.
It was about ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"-- he affected a smile, yet somehow he did not smile easily--it must be now about five, for here was the morning creeping in behind the deer-skin blind at the window.
Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was as clean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not very doubtful brandy at the Cote Dorion.

No fever in his hands, no headache, only the sore skull, so well and tightly bandaged but a wonderful thirst, and an intolerable hunger.