The days grew shorter and shorter, and November's cold gripped the earth tighter and tighter, like locking fetters of steel. And still the spark smoldered in the stricken man's body. There came a night at last when Dexter, stooping to force a spoonful of broth between his patient's teeth, was suddenly aware that the sunken eyes had opened to look at him with a feeble light of intelligence.
"Hello, colonel!" he ejaculated.
"Not yet, David?" A whimsical smile flickered upon Devreaux's lips. "Tough on you. Old ram too stubborn to quit. How long now?"
"About a month."
"You looking after me all that time. Thanks." Devreaux surveyed his companion with misty gaze. "You all right?"
"Fine."
"Pull me through if you can," said the colonel with failing breath. "I'd like to last now to—to meet the man who—shot—" his voice faltered, faded away, his eyelids closed, and he slipped back gently into oblivion. But this time his unconsciousness was not like a stupor. He was asleep.
November passed, and December came in with snow and more snow, with a frigid breath that froze the surface crust as hard and solid as stone. Devreaux slumbered on with only brief and fitful awakenings, day after day, and night after night: his body and spirit wearied to utter exhaustion, needing the recuperating balm of sleep. And while he slept the beat of his pulse slowly strengthened, and his breathing gradually lost its wheezing sound. He had weathered the crisis, and by almost imperceptible degrees the throb of life was renewing. Dexter hovered over him constantly, watching and hoping, with the grateful, awed feeling of a man who has been permitted to help work a miracle.
The colonel was on the road of convalescence, but otherwise life was not pleasant for the tenants of the bear den under Saddle Mountain. The fearful storms of the holiday season swept down upon them in howling fury. Dexter had kept track of the days with charcoal marks on the cavern wall. Christmas was only a week away. His gaunt, frost-bitten features twisted into a grin as he thought of Christmas. Their salt, pepper, baking powder and tea had been used up weeks ago; the flour was out long since, likewise the bacon and sugar; his stock of matches was running low. Hares were becoming scarce, and wary, and there hadn't been a ptarmigan around that direction in a month. As for bear meat, he felt certain that the very next rich, black, savory bear steak he tried to eat surely would choke him.
Thanks to a habit of absent-mindedness, he still had plenty of tobacco. Usually when it occurred to him that it was time to smoke, he would find his pipe bowl filled with the tobacco that he had forgotten to light the last time; and when he started to reach for an ember from the fire, as likely as not he would get to thinking about something else and shove the pipe heedlessly back into his pocket again. It was a satisfaction to know that his pouch still held a winter's supply of tobacco; but his craving for a change from bear diet was becoming an obsession that gave him no rest. Finally, one day, he left Devreaux asleep and snowshoed several miles farther up the valley looking for anything he could find, except grizzlies. And to his intense joy he stumbled upon a winter deer yard.