DAY had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the
man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high
earth-bank, where a dim and little traveled trail led eastward
through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he
paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by
looking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor
hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a
clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of
things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to
the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to
the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he
knew that a few more-days must pass before that cheerful orb, due
south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from
view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay
a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice
were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in
gentle, undulations where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed.
North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken
white, save for a dark hairline that curved and twisted from around
the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted
away into the north, where it disappeared behind another
spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail--the main
trail--that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass,
Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson,
and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally
to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand
more.
But all this--the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail. the
absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the
strangeness and weirdness of it all--made no impression on the man.
It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer! in
the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble
with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and
alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the
significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of
frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and
that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as
a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able
only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and
from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of
immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below
zero stood forte bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded
against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick
socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty
degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than
that was a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp,
explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in
the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He
knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this
spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than
fifty below--how much colder he did not know. But the temperature
did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of
Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over
across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come
the roundabout way to take; a look at the possibilities of getting
out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be
in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the
boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would
be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding
bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in
a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only
way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to
himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped
in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried
bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A
foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he
was glad he was without a sled, traveling light. In fact, he
carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was
surprised, however, at the cold. It certainly was cold, he
concluded as he rubbed his numb nose and cheek-bones with his
mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his
face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager nose that
thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper
wolfdog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental
difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was
depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for
traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the
man by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder
than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than
seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing
point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and
seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything
about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp
consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the
man's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a
vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink
along at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every
unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp
or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had
learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the
snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.
The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a
fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and
eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard
and mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit
taking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist
breath he exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and the
muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to
clear his chin when he expelled the juice. The result was that a
crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasing
its length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself,
like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did not mind the
appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that
country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps. They had
not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer
at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and
at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles,
crossed a wide flat of rigger-heads, and dropped down a bank to
the frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and
he knew he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch.
It was ten o'clock. He was making four miles an hour, and he
calculated that he would arrive at the forks at half-past twelve.
He decided to celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping
discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The furrow
of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of
snow covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had
come up or down that silent creek. The man held steadily on. He
was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had
nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at-the forks
and that at six o'clock he would be in camp with the boys. There
was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would have
been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So he
continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length
of his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very
cold and that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked
along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his
mittened hand. He did this automatically, now and again changing
hands. But rub as he would, the instant he stopped his
cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of his
nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that,
and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a
nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap
passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them. But it didn't
matter much, after all. What were frosted cheeks? A bit painful,
that was all; they were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant,
and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and
timber jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his
feet. Once coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a
startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been
walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. The
creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom,--no creek could
contain water in that arctic winter,--but he knew also that there
were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along
under the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the
coldest snaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewise
their danger. They were traps. They hid pools of water under the
snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a
skin of ice. half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was
covered by the snow Sometimes there were alternate layers of
water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on
breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the
waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give
under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin.
And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and
danger. At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced
to stop and build a fire, and under its protection to bare his
feet while he dried his socks and moccasins. He stood and studied
the creek-bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water
came from the right. He reflected a while, rubbing his nose and
cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing
the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took a
fresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.
In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar
traps. Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken,
candied appearance that advertised the danger. Once again,
however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he
compelled the dog to go on in front. The dog did not want to go.
It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went
quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it broke
through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.
It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the
water that clung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to
lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow and
began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. l his
was a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean
sore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious
prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But the
man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he
removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the
ice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute,
and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It
certainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the
hand savagely across his chest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was
too; far south an its winter journey to clear the horizon. The
bulge of the earth intervened between it arid Henderson Creek,
where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no
shadow. At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the
forks of the creek. He was. pleased at the speed he had made. If
he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six. He
unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. The
action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that
brief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He
did not put the mitten on, but, instead struck the fingers a
dozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a
snow-covered log to eat. The sting that followed upon the
striking of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he
was startled. He had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit. He
struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten,
baring the other hand for the purpose of eating, He tried to take
a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to
build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as
he chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed
fingers. Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to
his toes when he sat down was already passing away. He wandered
whether the toes were warm or numb. He moved them inside the
moccasins and decided that they were numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit
frightened. He stamped up and down until the stinging returned
into the feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man
from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it
sometimes got in the country. And he had laughed at him at the
time! That showed one must not be too sure of things. There was
no mistake about it, it was cold. He strode up and down,
stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the
returning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a
fire. From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous
spring had lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his
firewood. Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had a
roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in
the protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment the
cold space was outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the fire,
stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away to
escape being singed.
When the man had finished, be filled his pipe and took his
comfortable time over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens,
settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and took
the creek trail up the left fork. The dog was disappointed and
yearned back toward the fire. This man did not know cold.
Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of
cold of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below
freezing point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it
had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to
walk abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in
a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn
across the face of outer space whence this cold came. On the
other hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and the
man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only
caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whiplash
and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the
whiplash. So, the dog made no effort to communicate its
apprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare of
the man, it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the
fire. But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of
whiplashes and the dog swung in at the man's heel and followed
after.
The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber
beard. Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white his
mustache, eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so many
springs on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour
the man saw no signs of any. And then it happened. At a place
where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed
to advertise solidity beneath, tee man broke through. It was not
deep. He wet himself halfway to the knees before he floundered
out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into
camp with the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an
hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his
foot-gear. This was imperative at that low temperature--he knew
that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On
top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several small
spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry firewood--sticks
and twigs, principally, but also larger portions of seasoned
branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw down
several large pieces on top of the snow. This served for a
foundation and prevented the young flame from drowning itself in
the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a
match to a small shred of birch bark that he took from his
pocket. This burned even more readily than paper. Placing it on
the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass
and with the tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger.
Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of
the twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling
the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding
directly to the flame. He knew there must be no failure. When it
is seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail in his first
attempt to build a fire--that is, if his feet are wet. If his
feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a
mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet and
freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is
seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will
freeze the harder.
All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told
him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the
advice. Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build
the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the
fingers had quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had
kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to
all the extremities. But the instant he stopped, the action of
the pump eased down. The cold of space smote the unprotected tip
of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received
the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before
it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted
to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long
as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood,
willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down
into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to
feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed
fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to
freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of
all his body chilled as it lost its blood.
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched
by the frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength.
He was feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In another
minute he would be able to feed it with branches the size of his
wrier, and then he could remove his wet toot-gear, and, while it
dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing
them at first, of course, with snow. The fire was a success. He
was safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer on Sulphur
Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying
down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after
fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was
alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather
womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to
keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could
travel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his
cheeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingers
could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were, for he
could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they
seemed remote from his body and from him. When he touched a twig,
he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it. The
wires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.
All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping and
crackling and promising life with every dancing flame. He started
to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick
German socks were like sheaths of iron halfway to the knees; and
the moccasin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and
knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his
numb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his
sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own
fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire
under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But
it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them
directly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this
carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for
weeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had
pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the
tree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but
an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up in
the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on the
boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading
out and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and
it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the
fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh
and disordered snow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own
sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot
where the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the
old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had a
trail-mate he would have been in no danger now. The trail-mate
could have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to build the
fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure.
Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes His
feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time
before the second fire Was ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was
busy all the time they were passing through his mind. He made a
new foundation for a fire, this time in the open, where no
treacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses
and tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring
his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather
them by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs and
bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he
could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of
the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered
strength. And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a
certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him
as the fire-provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second
piece of birch bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he
could not feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisp
rustling as he fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could not
clutch hold of it. And all the time in his consciousness, was the
knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing. This thought
tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept
calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and threshed his
arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against
his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it;
and all the while the do,g sat in the snow, its wolf-brush of a
tail curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears
pricked forward intently as it watched the man And the man, as he
beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of
envy as he regarded the creature that was warm ant secure in its
natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of
sensation in his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger
till it evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but
which the man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten
from his right hand and fetched forth the birch bark. The exposed
fingers were quickly going numb again. Next he brought out his
bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous cold had already
driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate one
match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried
to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers could
neither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove the
thought of his freezing feet, and nose, and cheeks, out of his
mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches. He watched, using
the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he saw
his fingers on each side the bunch, he dosed them--that is, he
willed to close them, for the wires were down, and the fingers
did not obey. He pulled the mitten on the right hand and beat it
fiercely against his knee. Then. with both mittened hands, he
scooped the bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap.
Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the
heels of his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his
mouth. The ice crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he
opened his mouth. He drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip
out of the way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in
order to separate a match. He succeeded in getting one, which he
dropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick it
up. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth and
scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratched before he
succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed he held it with his teeth
to the birch bark. But the burning brimstone went up his nostrils
and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically. The
match fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer an Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the
moment of controlled despair that ensued after fifty below, a
man should travel with a partner. He beat his hands, but failed
in exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands, removing
the mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole bunch between the
heels of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen enabled him
to press the hand-heels tightly against the matches. Then he
scratched the bunch along his leg It flared into flame, seventy
sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow them out He
kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and
held the blazing bunch to the birth bark. As he so held it, he
became aware of sensation in his hand. His flesh was burning. He
could smell it. Deep down below the surface he could feel it. The
sensation developed into pain that grew acute. And still he
endured, it holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark
that would not light readily because his own burning hands were
in the way, absorbing most of the flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart.
The blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch
bark was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest
twigs on the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had to
lift the fuel between the heels of his hands. Small pieces of
rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit them
off as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flame
carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish.
The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him
begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of green
moss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it out
with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far
and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning
grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried to
poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the
effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were
hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went
out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically
about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the ruins
of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching
movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other,
shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistful
eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered
the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and
crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the
dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went
out of them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to the
dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of
fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man to
speak in such way before. Something was the matter, and its
suspicious nature sensed danger--it knew not what danger, but
somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the
man. It flattened its ears down at the sound of the man's voice,
and its restless, hunching movements and the liftings and
shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced; but it would
not come to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled
toward the dog. This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and
the animal sidled mincingly away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for
calmness. Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth,
and got upon his feet. He glanced down at first in order to
assure himself that he was really standing up, for the absence of
sensation in his feet left him unrelated to the earth. His erect
position in itself started to drive the webs of suspicion from
the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of
whiplashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary
allegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance,
the man lost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he
experienced genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands
could not clutch, that there was neither bend nor feeling in the
fingers. He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen
and that they were freezing more and more. All this happened
quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its
body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion
held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms
and sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There
was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither
draw nor hold his sheath knife nor throttle the animal. He
released it, and it plunged wildly away, with tail between its
legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away and surveyed
him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward. The man looked
down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging
on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one should
have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were.
He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened
hands against his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently,
and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop
to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He
had an impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his
arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not
find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This
fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer
a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his
hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with
the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he
turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog
joined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly, without
intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.
Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began to
see things again, the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams,
the leafless aspens, and the sky. The running made him feel
better. He did not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would
thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp
and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some fingers and toes
and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, and
save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time
there was another thought in his mind that said he would never
get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away,
that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would
soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the background
and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and
demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think
of other things.
It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so
frozen that he could not feel them when they struck the earth and
took the weigh. of his body. He seemed to himself to skim along
above the surface, and to have no connection with the earth.
Somewhere he had once seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered if
Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the earth.
His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one
flaw in it: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled,
and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to
rise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he decided, and next time
he would merely walk and keep on going. As he sat and regained
his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and
comfortable He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm
glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when he touched
his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would not
thaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then the
thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must be
extending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to
think of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that
it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thought
asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his
body totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wild
run along the trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but the
thought of the freezing extending itself made him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell
down a second time, it curled its tad! over its forefeet and sat
in front of him, facing him, curiously eager and intent The
warmth and security of the animal angered him, and he cursed it
till it flattened down its ears appealingly. This time the
shivering came more quickly upon the man. He was losing in his
battle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from all
sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a
hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his
last panic. When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat
up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death
with dignity. However, the conception did not come to him in such
terms. His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of
himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut
off--such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was bound
to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. With
this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of
drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It
was like salting an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as
people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.
He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he found
himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for
himself. And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail
and found himself lying in the snow. He did not belong with
himself any more, for even then he was out of himself, standing
with the boys and looking at himself in the snow. It certainly
was cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States he
could tell the folks what real cold was He drifted on from this
to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek He could see him
quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to
the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most
comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat
facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long,
slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and,
besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit
like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on,
its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great
lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then
flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the
man. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly.
And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of
death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little
longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced
and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up
the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the
other food-providers and fire-providers.
B&L Associates, Renton, Washington, U.S.A.