Reaching down, he grabbed the stranger under the armpits. The man was heavy, a dead weight of muscle and frozen leather, but Elias hauled him over the threshold with a strength born of desperation. He kicked the door shut against the howling dark and threw the bar.
Elias took the tin cup from the table, dipped it into the melted snow-bucket by the fire, and held it to the man’s cracked lips. The stranger drank greedily, coughing and choking, the water running clear through his beard. 8. When We Are in Need
The stranger gave a slow, barely perceptible nod. He hadn't come to be saved. He had been trying to reach the cabin because he knew people were in it. He was a trapper who knew the valley, who knew what the first winter did to greenhorns, and he had come through the blizzard to bring the only thing that mattered. Reaching down, he grabbed the stranger under the armpits
“Rest,” he said. His own voice sounded foreign to him—low and gravelly, stripped of its music by weeks of silence and salt meat. “The fever’s just high tonight. It’ll break by dawn.” Elias took the tin cup from the table,