When he came to, he saw that he had managed to crawl a dozen feet closer to the Cadillac. The big car had rolled over completely at least once and come to rest on its side with the roof toward him. He didn’t see any way to get inside, but he kept dragging himself along, a foot at a time, until he spotted his sheepskin coat in the snow. He strained to reach it, got a thumb and forefinger on one sleeve, pulled it to him. It took several attempts, but he managed to sit up enough to get an arm through one sleeve and to pull the coat up over his injured left shoulder. When he tried to get his left arm into the sleeve, he nearly blacked out again. He gave up, left the coat draped over his injured shoulder, used his good hand to button it. Lying next to the coat in the snow was his figuring rope. He stuffed it into one of the pockets of the sheepskin jacket. Then he studied the Cadillac, trying to figure out what possible use he could make of the wrecked automobile. He had heard of men slitting the abdomen of a dead horse, pulling out the intestines, crawling inside for warmth or making a fire and eating the animal, but you could not eat a car. He was pondering the sheer, utter uselessness of an automobile for any purpose other than driving on a road when he remembered the two full, five-gallon cans of gasoline lashed to the trunk. He never went anywhere without the extra gasoline and two spare tires. The spare fuel was no use with a wrecked car, but it could be used to start a helluva blaze. He had no idea whether his thoughts were lucid, but the gas cans were his only hope. If he could find a way to set the car on fire, it might save him from freezing to death. If the explosion didn’t kill him, it was possible someone might see it or hear it. A forty-five-hundred-dollar bonfire.