The man lying in the snow looked like a primitive who had been unearthed from a block of ice. Bright red hands were twisted into claws at his chest. Denim-covered legs were bent at the knees and appeared frozen in that position. His face was splashed with rain that froze instantly to his cheeks. Ice had sealed his eyelids closed and his beard was a frozen clump.

He lay in the snow with his ankles resting on the railroad tracks at the Lewiston end of the train trestle. He was partially propped up against a backpack, and a New England Patriots cap was on his head.

When I first saw him, I thought he was dead and getting a jump on rigor mortis. I figured morticians would need heat lamps and chisels to prepare him for burial.

He was alive, as it turned out, but the fellow had picked the worst night for a snow nap. The wind was fierce and it was blowing a nasty mix of rain and snow. The temperature had dipped into the teens and not much was moving in the cold, white night.

Fortunately for the Iceman, not everyone had chosen to stay home during the meanest storm of March.

The hero’s name was Dan and he was just getting off work around 7 p.m. Dan knows he’s not supposed to cross the train trestle between Lewiston and Auburn, but this night was too ferocious to take the long route. He had just begun the trip across the river when he saw the dark lump in the snow.

“I started shaking him and yelling. He wasn’t moving at all. A night like this, no way he was going to last long out there.”

Not long, indeed. The Iceman looked like he was already in the cool clutch of hypothermia. His muscles were stiffening. He was as unresponsive as a corpse. He had stopped shivering, and that usually indicates that hypothermia has reached a critical phase.

Battered by shrieking winds and driving snow, Dan ran to a restaurant two blocks away to call for help. The police were on the way, but nothing was moving quickly that night.

When I got there, Dan was pacing in the snow. He hailed me over and each of us put our coats over the freezing man. Dan poked and shook the man some more and tried to rouse him from his frosty slumber.

“Come on, man. Wake up. We gotta get you on your feet.”

The Iceman would have none of it. His head lolled from side to side, but the eyes did not flutter open. There was no moaning or thrashing. He looked like he was ready to give in to the chilling death of winter.

A police officer arrived and stomped through the snow to the end of the trestle. In shined his flashlight in the victim’s face. He tried shouting, cajoling, reassuring the downed man in an attempt to rouse him.

“Come on, buddy. You’re not in any trouble. We just gotta get you someplace warm.”

More officers arrived. More shaking and yelling commenced. It was clear that the Iceman was not going to walk out of there on his own. The officers hauled him away from the railroad tracks to a snow-filled parking lot. An ambulance arrived moments later.

“If you hadn’t found him,” a cop said to Dan, “we would have found him frozen to death with his legs cut off.”

That’s a fact. I don’t know why it is, but a good percentage of the people who fall into a stupor outside do so around railroad tracks. They take power naps with fingers or limbs poking out onto the tracks. A train comes by and the amputation is swift but not neat. There are a few people walking around the Twin Cities today with missing fingers from trains that interrupted their alcoholic naps.

The Iceman was spared a future of living without the lower parts of his legs. He was spared the fate of dying the lonely death of snow and cold. He was spared because a stranger had chosen to walk the same path on one of the most extreme nights of the year.

I try not to spend much time predicting the nature of people. It’s a habit I haven’t been able to quit. I like to think that if 10 different people had come across the Iceman that night, at least nine of them would have stopped to help. Some people believe my estimates are too generous. Maybe only five would stop. Maybe less than that. After all, there are dates to get to, addictions to nurture and trouble to flee.

When Dan stopped to check on the man in the snow, he knew there would be cop involvement. He’s had scrapes with the law in the past, and a few additional reasons to try to steer away from the gaze of police.

“It crossed my mind,” he said. “But what was I going to do? Leave this guy out there? No way I could do that. No way.”

Nine out of 10? Five out of 10? No way of making a really educated guess.

The Iceman is 50 years old and considered a transient in Lewiston. When I called to check on him the night after his snow snooze, he was still at the hospital, recovering nicely. I wonder if he’s doing the same math in his head. I wonder if he realizes his life was saved by a stranger who weighed the consequences before he stopped.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.