“About you, Howard,” Steve asked, “what are your chances?”

The wind was rising to a high moaning around the ledges of the granite dike and the vein was already invisible under the snow.

“It doesn’t look like they’re very good,” he answered. “You’ll probably be leader when you come back next spring⁠—I told the council I wanted that if anything happened to me. Keep things going the way I would have. Now⁠—I’ll have to hurry to get the monument built in time.”

“All right,” Schroeder said. “So long, Howard⁠ ⁠… good luck.”

He climbed to the top of the hill and saw boulders there he could use to build the monument. They were large⁠—he might crush Tip against his chest in picking them up⁠—and he took off his jacket, to wrap it around Tip and leave him lying on the ground.

He worked until he was panting for breath, the wind driving the snow harder and harder against him until the cold seemed to have penetrated to the bone. He worked until the monument was too high for his numb hands to lift any more boulders to its top. By then it was tall enough that it should serve its purpose.

He went back to look for Tip, the ground already four inches deep in snow and the darkness almost complete.

“Tip,” he called. “Tip⁠—Tip⁠—” He walked back and forth across the hillside in the area where he thought he had left him, stumbling over rocks buried in the snow and invisible in the darkness, calling against the wind and thinking, I can’t leave him to die alone here.

Then, from a bulge he had not seen in the snow under him, there came a frightened, lonely wail:

“ Tip cold⁠—Tip cold⁠— ”