|
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
|
-1- |
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
|
-2- |
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
|
-3- |
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
|
-4- |
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
|
-5- |
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
|
-6- |
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
|
-7- |
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
|
-8- |
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
|
-9- |
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
|
-10- |
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. |
-11- |
