'He's coming around,' Papa said.
I asked Papa if we could get him back to the gully where Old Dan was. I had noticed there was very little wind there and we could build a fire.
'That's the very place,' he said. 'We'll build a good fire and one of us can go for help.'
Papa and the judge made a seat by catching each other's wrists. They eased Grandpa between them.
By the time we reached the washout, Grandpa was fully conscious again, and was mumbling and grumbling. He couldn't see why they had to carry him like a baby.
After easing him over the bank and down into the gully, we built a large fire. Papa took his knife and cut the boot from Grandpa's swollen foot. Grandpa grunted and groaned from the pain. I felt sorry for him but there was nothing I could do but look on.
Papa examined the foot. Shaking his head, he said, 'Boy, that's a bad one. It's either broken or badly sprained. I'll go for some help.'
Grandpa said, 'Now wait just a minute. I'm not going to let you go out in that blizzard by yourself. What if something happens to you? No one would know.'
'What time is it?' he asked.
The judge looked at his watch. 'It's almost five o'clock,' he said.
'It's not long till daylight,' Grandpa said. 'Then if you want to go, you can see where you're going. Now help me get propped up against this bank. I'll be all right. It doesn't hurt any more. It's numb now.'
'He's right,' the judge said.
'Think you can stand it?' Papa asked.
Grandpa roared like a bear. 'Sure I can stand it. It's nothing but a sprained ankle. I'm not going to die. Build that fire up a little more.'
While Papa and the judge made Grandpa comfortable, I carried wood for the fire.
'There's no use standing around gawking at me,' Grandpa said. 'I'm all right. Get the coon out of that tree. That's what we came for, isn't it?'
Up until then, the coon-hunting had practically been forgotten.
The tree was about thirty feet from our fire. We walked over and took a good look at it for the first time. My dogs, seeing we were finally going to pay some attention to them, started bawling and running around the tree.
Papa said, 'It's not much of a tree, just an old box elder snag. There's not a limb on it.'
'I can't see any coon,' said the judge. 'It must be hollow.'
Papa beat on its side with the ax. It gave forth a loud booming sound. He said, 'It's hollow all right.'
He stepped back a few steps, scraped his feet on the slick ground for a good footing, and said, 'Stand back, and hold those hounds. I'm going to cut it down. We need some wood for our fire anyway.'
Squatting down between my dogs, I held onto their collars.
Papa notched the old snag so it would fall away from our fire. As the heavy ax chewed its way into the tree, it began to lean and crack. Papa stopped chopping. He said to the judge, 'Come on and help me. I think we can push it over now.'
After much grunting and pushing, snapping and popping, it fell.
I turned my dogs loose.
On hitting the ground, the snag split and broke up. Goggle-eyed, I stood rooted in my tracks and watched three big coons roll out of the busted old trunk.
One started up the washout, running between us and the fire. Old Dan caught him and the fight was on. The second coon headed down the washout. Little Ann caught him.
