“Good,” he said, coughing again. The rasping in his throat was rougher than it had been in the evening. I got up and poured him the last of the spruce tea, serving it in the one tin cup that had survived our capsizing. He thanked me and sipped at it, thinking all the while.

“I am depending on you,” he said, looking at me. “Your brother is a good woodsman, but there is too much for him to learn so fast. You must remember what I say and remind him.”

My heart sank. He seemed to be telling me goodbye. I said quickly, “Yes, and we will both do what you tell us. If your fever is better, we’ll be on our way in the morning, and in two days we will find a road and no matter what road it is, Tim will walk out for help while I stay with you.”

He didn’t answer, because another coughing fit took him and when it was over he lay back, weak and pale.

During the night, as I feared, his fever did rise until it burned my hand to press it against his forehead. He was swearing, and tried to throw off the blankets, but I was wary of the chill air and of cooling him too rapidly. We applied wet rags to his head and neck, which seemed to soothe him. He spoke, often, to my mother, dead so long ago, and I had to give Tim a hard kick in the ribs because he had started to cry and I didn’t want my father to hear him.

Dawn came none too soon for me, for it seemed as if the night had gone on for years. We had one of the remaining partridges, and I brewed some more spruce tea, which we tried to get my father to eat. But he was not interested in food, though he sipped some of the tea. He didn’t speak. I saw there was no hope of our trying to go downstream today, either. His eyes were listless and dull, and once I saw a tear there, too, and it almost dissolved me into a spell of weeping myself. But I sternly reminded myself that I could not show fear or uncertainty to my father, for he needed all the confidence he could muster.

Tim hunted all day and came back with two more birds and some eggs he had robbed from a nest. We scrambled the eggs and fried them in a bit of porcupine fat, and my father was able to choke down a few mouthfuls. As evening came on, Tim said thoughtlessly: “Are you going to tell us some stories tonight, Dad?” My father tried, but it was painful for him to speak. He had been coughing up white sputum flecked with rusty spots, and had a rag pressed against his mouth most of the time.