Bill Mather thrust in between them and dropped on his knee beside the old man. He was in his sock feet. His black hair stood in a tangle. His dark face was alight with troubled inquiry. And he spoke to the unconscious man, as if he expected, indeed, as if he demanded, an answer: “How’d you get here, dad? What’s happened?” “He’s out, Bill. No use askin’ yet. You know him?” “’S my old man,” young Bill muttered. “I wonder what’s up?” “Let’s get him over to the tent,” Charlie suggested. “An’ bring him to an’ get him warmed an’ fed. Then he’ll tell us. He said he’s been out in this since last night. So I guess the old boy had a license to fade away.” The three picked the man up as if he had been a sack of oats. Bill Mather strode sock-footed, in his underclothes, through the trampled snow between the two tents. Charlie’s quick mind took stock of the elements. Three feet of snow in a mid-May night, a lost old man, and an agitated cow-puncher who looked at the elderly whiskered one with an agony of apprehension in his eyes. It never rained but it poured. Charlie dragged his rolled bed close to the stove, in which a few coals still glowed. “Hop into your pants, Sam,” he ordered the cook, lifting an inquiring eye above his own blankets in one corner. “Make some coffee. We got a half-froze gent on our hands.” They laid their burden on Charlie’s bed, listened for a moment to his breathing. Bill stripped off his father’s sodden foot gear. Bud stoked the fire. Sam Barnes shuffled into his clothes. They were all sympathy, commiseration. That dead faint troubled them, too. They chafed the cold hands and icy feet. In the end, as the kettle began to steam, the old man sat up. A lantern, slung over the stove, shed a dull light on his unkempt features. Something flickered in his old eyes at sight of Bill. The boy himself didn’t speak, at first, only stared. The old man’s teeth set up a sudden chatter. “Here, throw this hot coffee into you.” Charlie passed him the cup. He gulped it in two swallows. “Thank you all,” he said. “That sure tasted good.” “You’re all wet,” Bill said. “Drink some more coffee an’ peel off your clothes. I’ll rustle you dry ones outa my war bag.” He went off to the bed tent. In a minute, when the old man had finished his second cup of coffee and accepted the makings of a cigarette, and the cook was setting out food for him, Charlie and Bud withdrew. They found Mather in the glow of the burning root, digging clothes out of his bag. He stamped his feet into boots, and went back to the chuck tent with an armful of clothes. “That kid’s the original clam,” Bud Cole remarked. “He don’t never say nothin’. He’s worried. I wonder what that old hombre’s hoofin’ it forty miles from nowhere in a snowstorm for?” “I ain’t no clairvoyant,” Charlie answered. After a few minutes Bill joined them. He squatted on his heels, rolled a smoke, silent. “How’s the old man?” Charlie asked.