He polished a place on the window-pane with his elbow and watched Burt’s struggle with the cold and wind and snow begin.
“Pure grit, that feller,” when, working like a snowplow, Bruce had disappeared. “He’s man all through.” The old voice trembled. “Say!” He turned ferociously. “Git up and eat!”
Uncle Bill grew older, grayer, grimmer in the days of waiting, days which he spent principally moving between window and door, watching, listening, saying to himself monotonously: It can’t storm forever; some time it’s got to stop.
But in this he seemed mistaken, for the snow fell with only brief cessation, and in such intervals the curious fog hung over the silent mountains with the malignant persistency of an evil spirit.
He scraped the snow away from beside the cabin, and Sprudell helped him bury Slim. Then, against the day of their going, he fashioned crude snow-shoes of material he found about the cabin and built a rough hand sled.
“If only ’twould thaw a little, and come a crust, he’d stand a whole lot better show of gittin’ down.” Uncle Bill scanned the sky regularly for a break somewhere each noon.
“Lord, yes, if it only would!” Sprudell always answered fretfully. “There are business reasons why I ought to be at home.”
The day came when the old man calculated that even with the utmost economy Bruce must have been two days without food. He looked pinched and shrivelled as he stared vacantly at the mouth of the cañon into which Bruce had disappeared.
“He might kill somethin’, if ’twould lift a little, but there’s nothin’ stirrin’ in such a storm as this. I feel like a murderer settin’ here.”