“For the love of Pete!” Bud said. “The old boy’s certainly all in. Now what in blazes——”
“Pack him over to the chuck tent an’ get some dry clothes on him, an’ throw some hot coffee into him,” Charlie answered, with the practical wisdom born of experience.
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.