Spicy And Short Stories Beautiful Spicy And Short Stories for Children, Horror, Humour, Religious, English Tales, Romance, Sci-Fi And Much More..

DAY had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when theman turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the highearth-bank, where a dim and little traveled trail led eastwardthrough the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and hepaused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself bylooking at his watch. It was nine o'clock. There was no sun norhint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was aclear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face ofthings, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due tothe absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used tothe lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and heknew that a few more-days must pass before that cheerful orb, duesouth, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately fromview.

The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon laya mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this icewere as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling ingentle, undulations where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed.North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbrokenwhite, save for a dark hairline that curved and twisted from aroundthe spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twistedaway into the north, where it disappeared behind anotherspruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail--the maintrail--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 finallyto St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousandmore.

But all this--the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail. theabsence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and thestrangeness 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! inthe land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The troublewith him was that he was without imagination. He was quick andalert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in thesignificances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees offrost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, andthat was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty asa creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, ableonly to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; andfrom there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field ofimmortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees belowzero stood forte bite of frost that hurt and that must be guardedagainst by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thicksocks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fiftydegrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it thanthat 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, inthe air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. Heknew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but thisspittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder thanfifty below--how much colder he did not know. But the temperaturedid not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork ofHenderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come overacross the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had comethe roundabout way to take; a look at the possibilities of gettingout logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would bein to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but theboys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper wouldbe ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protrudingbundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up ina handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the onlyway to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably tohimself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and soppedin bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of friedbacon.

He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. Afoot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and hewas glad he was without a sled, traveling light. In fact, hecarried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He wassurprised, however, at the cold. It certainly was cold, heconcluded as he rubbed his numb nose and cheek-bones with hismittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on hisface did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager nose thatthrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.

At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the properwolfdog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamentaldifference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal wasdepressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time fortraveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to theman by the man's judgment. In reality, it was not merely colderthan fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, thanseventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezingpoint is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred andseven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anythingabout thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharpconsciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in theman's brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced avague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slinkalong at the man's heels, and that made it question eagerly everyunwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into campor to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog hadlearned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under thesnow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in afine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, andeyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beardand mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposittaking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moistbreath he exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and themuzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable toclear his chin when he expelled the juice. The result was that acrystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasingits length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself,like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did not mind theappendage. It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in thatcountry, and he had been out before in two cold snaps. They hadnot been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometerat Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below andat 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 tothe frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, andhe 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 hecalculated 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 droopingdiscouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The furrowof the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches ofsnow covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man hadcome up or down that silent creek. The man held steadily on. Hewas not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he hadnothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at-the forksand that at six o'clock he would be in camp with the boys. Therewas nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would havebeen impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So hecontinued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the lengthof his amber beard.

Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was verycold and that he had never experienced such cold. As he walkedalong he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of hismittened hand. He did this automatically, now and again changinghands. But rub as he would, the instant he stopped hischeek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of hisnose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that,and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised anose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strappassed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them. But it didn'tmatter 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 andtimber jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed hisfeet. Once coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like astartled horse, curved away from the place where he had beenwalking, and retreated several paces back along the trail. Thecreek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom,--no creek couldcontain water in that arctic winter,--but he knew also that therewere springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran alongunder the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that thecoldest snaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewisetheir danger. They were traps. They hid pools of water under thesnow that might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes askin of ice. half an inch thick covered them, and in turn wascovered by the snow Sometimes there were alternate layers ofwater and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept onbreaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to thewaist.

That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the giveunder his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin.And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble anddanger. At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forcedto stop and build a fire, and under its protection to bare hisfeet while he dried his socks and moccasins. He stood and studiedthe creek-bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of watercame from the right. He reflected a while, rubbing his nose andcheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testingthe footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he took afresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.

In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similartraps. 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, hecompelled 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 wentquickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it brokethrough, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately thewater that clung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts tolick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow andbegan to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes. l hiswas a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would meansore feet. It did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysteriousprompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being. But theman knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and heremoved the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out theice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute,and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. Itcertainly was cold. He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat thehand savagely across his chest.

At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun wastoo; far south an its winter journey to clear the horizon. Thebulge of the earth intervened between it arid Henderson Creek,where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast noshadow. At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at theforks of the creek. He was. pleased at the speed he had made. Ifhe kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six. Heunbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch. Theaction consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in thatbrief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. Hedid not put the mitten on, but, instead struck the fingers adozen sharp smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on asnow-covered log to eat. The sting that followed upon thestriking of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that hewas startled. He had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit. Hestruck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten,baring the other hand for the purpose of eating, He tried to takea mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten tobuild a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and ashe chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposedfingers. Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come tohis toes when he sat down was already passing away. He wanderedwhether the toes were warm or numb. He moved them inside themoccasins and decided that they were numb.

He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bitfrightened. He stamped up and down until the stinging returnedinto the feet. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That manfrom Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold itsometimes got in the country. And he had laughed at him at thetime! That showed one must not be too sure of things. There wasno mistake about it, it was cold. He strode up and down,stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by thereturning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make afire. From the undergrowth, where high water of the previousspring had lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got hisfirewood. Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had aroaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and inthe protection of which he ate his biscuits. For the moment thecold space was outwitted. The dog took satisfaction in the fire,stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away toescape being singed.

When the man had finished, be filled his pipe and took hiscomfortable time over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens,settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and tookthe creek trail up the left fork. The dog was disappointed andyearned back toward the fire. This man did not know cold.Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant ofcold of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees belowfreezing point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and ithad inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good towalk abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug ina hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawnacross the face of outer space whence this cold came. On theother hand, there was no keen intimacy between the dog and theman. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the onlycaresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whiplashand of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened thewhiplash. So, the dog made no effort to communicate itsapprehension to the man. It was not concerned in the welfare ofthe man, it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward thefire. But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound ofwhiplashes and the dog swung in at the man's heel and followedafter.

The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard. Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white hismustache, eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so manysprings on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hourthe man saw no signs of any. And then it happened. At a placewhere there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemedto advertise solidity beneath, tee man broke through. It was notdeep. He wet himself halfway to the knees before he flounderedout to the firm crust.

He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get intocamp with the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him anhour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out hisfoot-gear. This was imperative at that low temperature--he knewthat much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. Ontop, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several smallspruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry firewood--sticksand twigs, principally, but also larger portions of seasonedbranches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw downseveral large pieces on top of the snow. This served for afoundation and prevented the young flame from drowning itself inthe snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching amatch to a small shred of birch bark that he took from hispocket. This burned even more readily than paper. Placing it onthe foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grassand 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 ofthe twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pullingthe twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feedingdirectly to the flame. He knew there must be no failure. When itis seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail in his firstattempt to build a fire--that is, if his feet are wet. If hisfeet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half amile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet andfreezing feet cannot be restored by running when it isseventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet willfreeze the harder.

All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had toldhim about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating theadvice. Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To buildthe fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and thefingers had quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour hadkept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and toall the extremities. But the instant he stopped, the action ofthe pump eased down. The cold of space smote the unprotected tipof the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, receivedthe full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled beforeit. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wantedto hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So longas he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood,willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank downinto the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first tofeel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposedfingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun tofreeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin ofall his body chilled as it lost its blood.

But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touchedby the frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength.He was feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In anotherminute he would be able to feed it with branches the size of hiswrier, and then he could remove his wet toot-gear, and, while itdried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbingthem at first, of course, with snow. The fire was a success. Hewas safe. He remembered the advice of the old timer on SulphurCreek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in layingdown the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike afterfifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he wasalone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were ratherwomanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was tokeep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man couldtravel alone. But it was surprising, the rapidity with which hischeeks and nose were freezing. And he had not thought his fingerscould go lifeless in so short a time. Lifeless they were, for hecould scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and theyseemed 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. Thewires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.

All of which counted for little. There was the fire, snapping andcrackling and promising life with every dancing flame. He startedto untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thickGerman socks were like sheaths of iron halfway to the knees; andthe moccasin strings were like rods of steel all twisted andknotted as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with hisnumb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew hissheath-knife.

But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his ownfault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fireunder the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. Butit had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop themdirectly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done thiscarried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown forweeks, and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he hadpulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to thetree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, butan agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High up inthe tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on theboughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreadingout and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, andit descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and thefire was blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of freshand disordered snow.

The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his ownsentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spotwhere the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps theold-timer on Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had atrail-mate he would have been in no danger now. The trail-matecould have built the fire. Well, it was up to him to build thefire over again, and this second time there must be no failure.Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes Hisfeet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some timebefore the second fire Was ready.

Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He wasbusy all the time they were passing through his mind. He made anew foundation for a fire, this time in the open, where notreacherous tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grassesand tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam. He could not bringhis fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gatherthem by the handful. In this way he got many rotten twigs andbits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best hecould do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful ofthe larger branches to be used later when the fire gatheredstrength. And all the while the dog sat and watched him, acertain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon himas the fire-provider, and the fire was slow in coming.

When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a secondpiece of birch bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though hecould not feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisprustling as he fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could notclutch hold of it. And all the time in his consciousness, was theknowledge that each instant his feet were freezing. This thoughttended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and keptcalm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and threshed hisarms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might againsthis 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 atail curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-earspricked forward intently as it watched the man And the man, as hebeat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge ofenvy as he regarded the creature that was warm ant secure in itsnatural covering.

After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals ofsensation in his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew strongertill it evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, butwhich the man hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mittenfrom his right hand and fetched forth the birch bark. The exposedfingers were quickly going numb again. Next he brought out hisbunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendous cold had alreadydriven the life out of his fingers. In his effort to separate onematch from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. He triedto pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers couldneither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove thethought of his freezing feet, and nose, and cheeks, out of hismind, devoting his whole soul to the matches. He watched, usingthe sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he sawhis fingers on each side the bunch, he dosed them--that is, hewilled to close them, for the wires were down, and the fingersdid not obey. He pulled the mitten on the right hand and beat itfiercely against his knee. Then. with both mittened hands, hescooped 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 theheels of his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to hismouth. The ice crackled and snapped when by a violent effort heopened his mouth. He drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lipout of the way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth inorder to separate a match. He succeeded in getting one, which hedropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick itup. Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth andscratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratched before hesucceeded in lighting it. As it flamed he held it with his teethto the birch bark. But the burning brimstone went up his nostrilsand into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically. Thematch fell into the snow and went out.

The old-timer an Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in themoment of controlled despair that ensued after fifty below, aman should travel with a partner. He beat his hands, but failedin exciting any sensation. Suddenly he bared both hands, removingthe mittens with his teeth. He caught the whole bunch between theheels of his hands. His arm muscles not being frozen enabled himto press the hand-heels tightly against the matches. Then hescratched the bunch along his leg It flared into flame, seventysulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow them out Hekept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, andheld the blazing bunch to the birth bark. As he so held it, hebecame aware of sensation in his hand. His flesh was burning. Hecould smell it. Deep down below the surface he could feel it. Thesensation developed into pain that grew acute. And still heendured, it holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the barkthat would not light readily because his own burning hands werein 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 birchbark was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniesttwigs on the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had tolift the fuel between the heels of his hands. Small pieces ofrotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit themoff as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flamecarefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish.The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made himbegin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece of greenmoss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it outwith his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too farand he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burninggrasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried topoke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of theeffort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs werehopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and wentout. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apatheticallyabout him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the ruinsof the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunchingmovements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other,shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistfuleagerness.

The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He rememberedthe tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer andcrawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill thedog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness wentout of them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to thedog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note offear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man tospeak in such way before. Something was the matter, and itssuspicious nature sensed danger--it knew not what danger, butsomewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of theman. It flattened its ears down at the sound of the man's voice,and its restless, hunching movements and the liftings andshiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced; but it wouldnot come to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawledtoward the dog. This unusual posture again excited suspicion, andthe animal sidled mincingly away.

The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled forcalmness. Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth,and got upon his feet. He glanced down at first in order toassure himself that he was really standing up, for the absence ofsensation in his feet left him unrelated to the earth. His erectposition in itself started to drive the webs of suspicion fromthe dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the sound ofwhiplashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customaryallegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance,the man lost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and heexperienced genuine surprise when he discovered that his handscould not clutch, that there was neither bend nor feeling in thefingers. He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozenand that they were freezing more and more. All this happenedquickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled itsbody with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashionheld the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.

But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his armsand sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. Therewas no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neitherdraw nor hold his sheath knife nor throttle the animal. Hereleased it, and it plunged wildly away, with tail between itslegs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away and surveyedhim curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward. The man lookeddown at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hangingon the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one shouldhave to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were.He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittenedhands against his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently,and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stopto his shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. Hehad an impression that they hung like weights on the ends of hisarms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could notfind it.

A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. Thisfear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longera mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing hishands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death withthe chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and heturned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dogjoined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly, withoutintention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.Slowly, as he plowed and floundered through the snow, he began tosee things again, the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams,the leafless aspens, and the sky. The running made him feelbetter. He did not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet wouldthaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach campand the boys. Without doubt he would lose some fingers and toesand some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, andsave the rest of him when he got there. And at the same timethere was another thought in his mind that said he would neverget 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 wouldsoon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the backgroundand refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward anddemanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to thinkof other things.

It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet sofrozen that he could not feel them when they struck the earth andtook the weigh. of his body. He seemed to himself to skim alongabove the surface, and to have no connection with the earth.Somewhere he had once seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered ifMercury felt as he felt when skimming over the earth.

His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had oneflaw in it: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled,and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried torise, he failed. He must sit and rest, he decided, and next timehe would merely walk and keep on going. As he sat and regainedhis breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm andcomfortable He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warmglow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, when he touchedhis nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. Running would notthaw them out. Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. Then thethought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must beextending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, tothink of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling thatit caused, and he was afraid of the panic. But the thoughtasserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of hisbody totally frozen. This was too much, and he made another wildrun along the trail. Once he slowed down to a walk, but thethought of the freezing extending itself made him run again.

And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he felldown a second time, it curled its tad! over its forefeet and satin front of him, facing him, curiously eager and intent Thewarmth and security of the animal angered him, and he cursed ittill it flattened down its ears appealingly. This time theshivering came more quickly upon the man. He was losing in hisbattle with the frost. It was creeping into his body from allsides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than ahundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was hislast panic. When he had recovered his breath and control, he satup and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting deathwith dignity. However, the conception did not come to him in suchterms. His idea of it was that he had been making a fool ofhimself, running around like a chicken with its head cutoff--such was the simile that occurred to him. Well, he was boundto freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently. Withthis new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings ofdrowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. Itwas like salting an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad aspeople thought. There were lots worse ways to die.

He pictured the boys finding his body next day. Suddenly he foundhimself with them, coming along the trail and looking forhimself. And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trailand found himself lying in the snow. He did not belong withhimself any more, for even then he was out of himself, standingwith the boys and looking at himself in the snow. It certainlywas cold, was his thought. When he got back to the States hecould tell the folks what real cold was He drifted on from thisto a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek He could see himquite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.

"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled tothe old-timer of Sulphur Creek.

Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the mostcomfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog satfacing 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 sitlike that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on,its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a greatlifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, thenflattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by theman. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly.And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent ofdeath. This made the animal bristle and back away. A littlelonger it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and dancedand shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted upthe trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were theother food-providers and fire-providers.