He had a heavy stocking cap pulled well down over his forehead, and large mittens on his hands; in each hand he clutched a staff… To the boys, it looked as though the man were sitting there resting while he waited for better skiing…
…His face was ashen and drawn. His eyes were set toward the west. (2.4.9.2-3)
The final lines of Giants in the Earth describe Per Hansa, who has frozen to death while searching for a minister (or doctor) for his dying friend Hans. There's been so much snow through the winter that it's taken months for it to thaw and to uncover Hansa's frozen body.
Hansa has died because his wife Beret ordered him to find a minister to give the last rites to his buddy Hans. But when the passage tells us that Per Hansa's eyes are turned toward the west, we realize that, even in his final moments, Per Hansa was thinking about settling more land and pushing farther westward.
The west, remember, was always the direction of the American frontier. If Hansa had been looking east, it might have meant that he regretted his life choices and wished he'd gone home. But that's not where he's looking. The fact that his eyes "were set toward the west" only drives home the point that nothing in the world was ever going to stop Hansa's obsession with owning and settling more land—nothing except death, that is.