Old Arch staggered again. To my grandfather he said, "Could--could you carry my pack?"
My grandfather took it and they went on, stumbling blindly through knee-deep drifts, getting more and more chilled and less and less comfortable, 'til they came to a small clump of trees with a solidly frozen creek running through it.
Here Old Arch made a lean-to shelter of windfallen limbs. Annie and my grandfather helped as soon as they understood the design. Arch spread part of his bed over the lean-to, breaking the force of the wind, and put the rest inside. Just outside, on a place scraped bare of snow, he built the first wood fire my grandfather and Annie had ever seen.
He chipped ice from the creek and put it in his billy can and hung the can by its bail over the fire, and in due course they had a little hot tea.
The youngsters felt cold but happy. The old man shivered and coughed.
He'd kept moving till the tea was made. He sat still to drink it, and couldn't get up.
"Go to bed," Annie told him. "Ham will get on one side of you and I'll get on the other. We'll keep you warm."
Old Arch tried to protest but was almost beyond speech. The youngsters didn't know enough to brush the snow off him or themselves. They helped him roll up in his bedding and crawled under the lean-to after him. There they all lay in a heap, getting colder and damper and more miserable, till finally my grandfather couldn't stand it any more.
He got up and looked around. The inverted cup of visibility was smaller. Darkness fell like a dye-stuff, turning the white snow to gray, to black.
It was a bitter night. The first he'd ever had outdoors. It was the first Annie'd ever had. The first either had ever spent at the futile task of holding off death.
They knew Old Arch was dying. As the night wore on he sank into semi-consciousness. They hugged him and rubbed his lean old limbs.
Just before morning the snow stopped. The old man roused a little, became gradually aware of his surroundings.
"Go look at the sun," he murmured. "Go see the sunrise."
They went out to look. Neither had ever seen a sunrise before. It was mauve first, then red, then gold, then blue. Venus led the way, and the sun followed. The moon, deep in the west, was like a tombstone to the dead night.