It was after dark when he stirred and sat up. This time it took him several minutes to come into wakefulness and realize where he was. He was still but half awake and more than half dead. At first he had thought he was in the hole back under the snow and he listened for the winds. Then he reached around him to examine the things. On seeing the open door, the bedding, the river bottom down the hill, he knew where he was and he wondered where Kate was. He sat a few minutes, feeling more than thinking, and trying to believe that he was still alive. After a while he became aware of the bag of meat and the knife, and of the indescribable sensations of emptiness and pain in his stomach and bowels. He began to tell himself in a dim feeble way that he would find matches and build a fire and cook a feast; but when he tried to rise he seemed unable to. And so he sat, trying to think. Realization came slowly, filling him with a kind of wonder and gladness; and at last with a cry he told himself over and over that he had escaped, like Job he had endured, and here he was, alive, whole, and ready for breakfast or supper. And for vengeance, but that didn’t seem so important now. What was important was that he seemed unable to move his legs, to bend his fingers, to focus his gaze; but he was alive, and with superhuman effort he struggled to his feet. Then he stood, trembling all over, and tried to imagine that he was Don Giovanni about to sing, with magnificent brio and power, to a lovely servant maid. What he did, while conjuring images of beautiful girls, was to topple and fall face downward on the pile of bedding. With both hands he reached round him and pulled bedding over him; and he was about to sink again into sleep when he began to shake with rage against himself, and again forced himself to rise.
He felt pretty weak and foolish as he steadied himself against a wall and looked out at the world. He could see or hear no sign of Kate; he hoped he had not put her to flight. By God, he had better stop acting like a sick old man, he had better get some breakfast on and be the man around the house. How long had he slept, anyway? He was not sure that he had not been asleep for a week. Where was Kate? "Kate!" he called in his weak voice. "Where are you?" He felt horrible weakness and nausea; what he wanted to do was to sink again into slumber but he forced himself to clasp the doorjamb with both hands and look out.
It was not morning, it was night, and there was Kate, the poor gray old thing, sitting between the graves with robes over her. Sam stepped outside, and moving like a feeble old man, he made his way over to her and around to face her; and in a voice that was not at all like his normal voice he told her that the Almighty had walked with him all the way from the Blackfeet camp to the Musselshell; and in more days than he could remember he had had nothing to eat; but now he was going to get up a breakfast, or supper or whatever it would be—venison steaks, roasted grouse, hot biscuits, wild honey, coffee—Did she have any baccy around?
Kate seemed to pay no attention to him. Unable to tell if she was unaware of him or was ignoring him, he told her that he would not be with her long; as soon as he got some rest and some food in his belly, and had brought in some good meat for her, he would be gone. Could she tell him where the matches were? Only a part of her face was showing; a wrinkled hand clasped the edge of the robe under her chin. Sam looked up at the sky and around at the lonely white world; and over at the cairn with its deep cloak of snow; and he wondered if he was alive after all, or if he and the woman were only ghosts, here in the winter. Turning away from her, he felt numbed with cold, half dead with fatigue, drowsy, nausea-sick, and rather mindless and weightless; but so abounding was his health and vitality that he made his way inside the shack, and sitting by the bag of venison, began to eat. Afraid that he would vomit, he put in his mouth only a thin shaving and he chewed it thoroughly before he dared swallow it; and then sat a few moments studying the sensations in his stomach before chewing again. The shavings tasted more of frost than of meat, but after he had swallowed seven or eight thin slices he felt a little better and believed he could keep them down. Looking round him in the gloom, he wondered where the matches were, the flour, the coffee. Of course she had no tobacco. When he thought of tobacco and the loss of the lock of hair, and his fine rifle and revolvers and pipes, his bitterness toward the Blackfeet came boiling up in him with such passion that he exploded and emptied his stomach. What a fool he was to act this way! But they had stolen Mick’s fine horse! Oh, they would pay for it, they would pay for it! He stood up, in a childish tantrum of rage—a man only feebly in possession of his senses; and glowered round him and then went outside to look with hate at the gray wintry Blackfeet wilderness out of which he had come. He looked south, thinking of the distance between him and his nearest friend. In a few days he would head up the Musselshell to find Bill or Hank or Abner but now he had work to do.
His stomach had puked forth its shavings of meat and frost and was now growling in its pain. He thought it would be best to get a fire going and make a pot of coffee. That might settle his stomach. It might shoot warmth and aroma all through him. At the pile of wood in the southeast corner he made shavings; he dug into the stuff by the north wall and found matches, coffee, and an old coffeepot; and with a tin pail he went to the river. There he stood a few moments, surveying the scene and looking for sign of duck, goose, or anything a man could eat. Going up the hill with the water, he told himself that Kate must have gone over this path two or three times every day since the first snows, for it was firmly packed. While the coffee was steaming he found the flour, and dipping a shaving of meat into cold flour, he thrust it into his mouth. He ground a coffee bean between his teeth. That seemed to allay his nausea; he ate a half dozen and then searched for tin cups; and when the coffee was hot and fragrant he took a cup to Kate, and knelt, offering it to her. It was hot coffee, he said; she ought to drink it. He wanted to clasp her shoulders to see how thin she was, for she looked like nothing but hide and bone. He did not know that he himself was thirty pounds lighter than he had been when he walked around the two bull elk. The past week seemed to be only nightmare: had he actually killed a man and waded up a river and fought with a grizzly and crossed a hundred and fifty miles of frozen desolation in wild winds? Had he actually lain on his belly in the night and paddled across the black cold waters? He was like a man coming out of ether; he moved more by beast instinct than by human will. But his belly was mellowing in the hot coffee and his wits were clearing. "Please drink it," he said. What were the words in Job at which his father’s finger had pointed so gravely? "Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living." The temperature, he thought, was still fifteen below zero; the winds were still shrieking up the river and Canada was getting ready to dump more cyclones upon its neighbor; but Sam was warmed with hot coffee and filled with the light of the living, and neither wind nor cold could faze him now.
"All right, if you won’t drink it I’ll drink it."
He was astonished, as he had been in previous visits, to see how little this woman had eaten. It looked as if she lived on flour and raisins. She had never touched the woodpile. Removing all the bedding from the doorway, Sam laid a part of the fire there, to warm the earth; but at once with a sharp rebuke to himself he took the fire away. How stupid it would be to warm the earth deep, so that her bed would be cozy, and then go away and leave her to freeze to death! There wasn’t much a man could do with such a woman, except leave her to God. He had learned in the past few minutes that fire wasn’t good for him either; he had become so inured to cold that fire heat on his flesh was like a scalding liniment, like sunburn on his forehead and eyes. The fire was not good for the shack’s cold timbers; in the heat they began to snap and complain, and moisture came out of the logs and out of the air, and stood in big drops. Smoke and heat went all through the cabin; and smoke poured out through the cracks in the walls and the doorway and the hole in the roof. With the axe he sliced off the venison and laid the meat by the fire. Finding no grease or salt, he decided not to make biscuits until he had fresh game. While the meat was thawing he took a second cup of coffee to Kate, hoping she would drink it, and with surprise saw that she had covered her head. Again he knelt before her and told her, briefly, of his capture, escape, and long flight, but he doubted that she listened or understood. Lifting the robe from her gray head, he saw that her face was ghastly thin, drawn, haggard, immobile. Her eyes seemed to see and yet not to see. What had God done with this woman or for this woman? During her long winters here she had never had a fire or hot food but had been only a she-beast that had crawled over to eat flour and raisins, and then into her pile of dirty bedding to wait for another morning. It was the moon she waited for but the men who knew her would never know that.