TO BUILD A FIRE
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the manturned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank,where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fatspruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at thetop, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nineo'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloudin the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pallover the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and thatwas due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He wasused to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, andhe knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, duesouth, 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 amile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were asmany feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulationswhere the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as faras his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-linethat curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to thesouth, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where itdisappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-linewas the trail--the main trail--that led south five hundred miles to theChilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles toDawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finallyto St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all this--the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence ofsun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdnessof it all--made no impression on the man. It was not because he was longused to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a _chechaquo_, and this washis first winter. The trouble with him was that he was withoutimagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only inthe things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meanteighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold anduncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate uponhis frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty ingeneral, 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 ofimmortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zerostood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against bythe use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fiftydegrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero.That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought thatnever 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 theair, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knewthat at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle hadcrackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below--howmuch colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He wasbound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where theboys were already. They had come over across the divide from the IndianCreek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at thepossibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in theYukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it wastrue, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hotsupper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against theprotruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrappedup in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the onlyway to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himselfas he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacongrease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A footof snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was gladhe was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he carried nothing butthe lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at thecold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed noseand cheek-bones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, butthe hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eagernose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the properwolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental differencefrom its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by thetremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Itsinstinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man'sjudgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; itwas colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-fivebelow zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meantthat one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did notknow anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was nosharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man'sbrain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague butmenacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at theman's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement ofthe man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhereand build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or elseto 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 finepowder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelasheswhitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard and moustachewere likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form ofice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, theman was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidlythat he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice. Theresult was that a crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber wasincreasing its length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatteritself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did not mind theappendage. 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 coldas this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knewthey had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crosseda wide flat of nigger-heads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed ofa small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and he knew he was ten milesfrom the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock. He wasmaking four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at theforks at half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by eatinghis lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail droopingdiscouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The furrow of theold sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow coveredthe marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or downthat silent creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given tothinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about savethat he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o'clock he would bein 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 lengthof his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold andthat he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbedhis cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did thisautomatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as he would, theinstant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instantthe end of his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knewthat, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised anose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap passedacross 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; theywere never serious.
&
nbsp; Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and henoticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams,and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once, comingaround a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away fromthe place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces backalong the trail. The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom--nocreek could contain water in that arctic winter--but he knew also thatthere were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran alongunder the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the coldestsnaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewise their danger. Theywere traps. They hid pools of water under the snow that might be threeinches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thickcovered them, and in turn was covered by the snow. Sometimes there werealternate layers of water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through hekept on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to thewaist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under hisfeet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin. And to get hisfeet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the veryleast 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 andmoccasins. He stood and studied the creek-bed and its banks, and decidedthat the flow of water came from the right. He reflected awhile, rubbinghis nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly andtesting the 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 similar traps.Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearancethat advertised the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call;and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. Thedog 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 itbroke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water thatclung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off itslegs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice thathad formed between the toes. This was a matter of instinct. To permitthe ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not know this. It merelyobeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of itsbeing. But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, andhe removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out theice-particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and wasastonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was cold.He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across hischest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too farsouth on its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of the earthintervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under aclear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past twelve, to theminute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at thespeed he had made. If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boysby 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 briefmoment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not put themitten on, but, instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes againsthis leg. Then he sat down on a snow-covered log to eat. The sting thatfollowed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased soquickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a bite ofbiscuit. He struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to themitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating. He tried totake a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to builda fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckledhe noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also, he notedthat the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down wasalready passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed.He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.
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. Itcertainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek hadspoken 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 toosure of things. There was no mistake about it, it was cold. He strodeup and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured bythe returning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make afire. From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring hadlodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Workingcarefully from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over whichhe thawed the ice from his face and in the protection of which he ate hisbiscuits. For the moment the cold of space was outwitted. The dog tooksatisfaction in the fire, stretching out close enough for warmth and farenough away to escape being singed.
When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortabletime over a smoke. Then he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear-flapsof his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek trail up the leftfork. The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the fire. Thisman did not know cold. Possibly all the generations of his ancestry hadbeen ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and sevendegrees 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 towalk abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a holein the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the faceof outer space whence this cold came. On the other hand, there was keenintimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of theother, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses ofthe whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened thewhip-lash. So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension tothe man. It was not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for itsown sake that it yearned back toward the fire. But the man whistled, andspoke to it with the sound of whip-lashes, and the dog swung in at theman's heels 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 moustache,eyebrows, and lashes. There did not seem to be so many springs on theleft fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs ofany. And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, wherethe soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the manbroke through. It was not deep. He wetted himself half-way to the kneesbefore he floundered out to the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into campwith the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for hewould have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This wasimperative at that low temperature--he knew that much; and he turnedaside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrushabout the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water depositof dry firewood--sticks and twigs principally, but also larger portionsof seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw downseveral large pieces on top of the snow. This served for a foundationand prevented the young flame from drowning itself in the snow itotherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a match to a smallshred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket. This burned even morereadily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flamewith 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 whichhe fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from theirentanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He knewthere must be no failure. When it is seventy-five below zero, a man mustnot fail in his first attempt to build a fire--that is, if his feet arewet. If his feet are dry, and he fail
s, he can run along the trail forhalf a mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation of wet andfreezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-fivebelow. 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 aboutit the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice. Alreadyall sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he had beenforced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. Hispace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to thesurface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant hestopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of space smote theunprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip,received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiledbefore it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wantedto hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as hewalked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to thesurface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of hisbody. The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet feetfroze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though theyhad 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 thefrost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was feedingit with twigs the size of his finger. In another minute he would be ableto feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and then he could removehis wet foot-gear, and, while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warmby the fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with snow. The fire was asuccess. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer onSulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in layingdown the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fiftybelow. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and hehad 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 allright. 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 hadnot thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time. Lifelessthey 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 atwig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it. The wireswere 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 started tountie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick German sockswere like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the mocassin stringswere like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration.For a moment he tugged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the follyof it, he drew his sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own faultor, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under thespruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But it had beeneasier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on thefire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snowon its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fullyfreighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slightagitation to the tree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he wasconcerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. Highup in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on theboughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading outand involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and itdescended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire wasblotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disorderedsnow.
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentenceof death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire hadbeen. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creekwas right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in nodanger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was upto him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must beno 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 beforethe second fire was ready.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busyall the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new foundationfor a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree could blotit out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-waterflotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, buthe was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he got manyrotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was thebest he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an armful ofthe larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength.And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearningwistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, andthe fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece ofbirch-bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel itwith 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, inhis consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet werefreezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he foughtagainst it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, andthreshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his mightagainst his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it;and all the while the dog sat in the snow, its wolf-brush of a tailcurled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears prickedforward intently as it watched the man. And the man as he beat andthreshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as heregarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation inhis beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolvedinto a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed withsatisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetchedforth the birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again.Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the tremendouscold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his effort toseparate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow. Hetried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead fingers couldneither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove the thought ofhis freezing feet; and nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting hiswhole soul to the matches. He watched, using the sense of vision inplace of that of touch, and when he saw his fingers on each side thebunch, he closed them--that is, he willed to close them, for the wireswere drawn, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten on theright hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with bothmittened 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 ofhis mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The icecrackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. Hedrew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scrapedthe bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match. Hesucceeded in getting one, which he dropped on his lap. He was no betteroff. He could not pick it up. Then he devised a way. He picked it upin his teeth and scratched it on his leg. Twenty times he scratchedbefore he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed he held it with histeeth to the birch-bark. But the burning brimstone went up his nostrilsand into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically. The match fellinto the snow and went out.
The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment ofcontrolled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travelwith a partner. He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any
sensation.Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth. Hecaught the whole bunch between the heels of his hands. His arm-musclesnot being frozen enabled him to press the hand-heels tightly against thematches. Then he scratched the bunch along his leg. It flared intoflame, seventy sulphur matches at once! There was no wind to blow themout. He kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, andheld the blazing bunch to the birch-bark. As he so held it, he becameaware of sensation in his hand. His flesh was burning. He could smellit. Deep down below the surface he could feel it. The sensationdeveloped into pain that grew acute. And still he endured it, holdingthe flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would not lightreadily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing most ofthe flame.
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. Theblazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch-bark wasalight. 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 theheels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung tothe twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. Hecherished the flame carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it mustnot perish. The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body nowmade him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large piece ofgreen moss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it outwith his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far, and hedisrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tinytwigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke them together again,but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away withhim, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff ofsmoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he lookedapathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across theruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunchingmovements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting itsweight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered thetale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawledinside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury hishands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then hecould build another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but inhis voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who hadnever known the man to speak in such way before. Something was thematter, and its suspicious nature sensed danger,--it knew not what dangerbut 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 itsrestless, hunching movements and the liftings and shiftings of itsforefeet became more pronounced but it would not come to the man. He goton his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual postureagain excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away.
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness. Thenhe 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 reallystanding up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelatedto the earth. His erect position in itself started to drive the webs ofsuspicion from the dog's mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with thesound of whip-lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customaryallegiance and came to him. As it came within reaching distance, the manlost his control. His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experiencedgenuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, thatthere was neither bend nor feeling in the lingers. He had forgotten forthe moment that they were frozen and that they were freezing more andmore. 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 inthis 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 sitthere. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way todo it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold hissheath-knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plungedwildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It haltedforty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply prickedforward. The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, andfound them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curiousthat one should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his handswere. He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittenedhands against his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, andhis heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to hisshivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had animpression that they hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but whenhe tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fearquickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a merematter 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 alongthe old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. Heran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in hislife. Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he beganto see things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, theleafless aspens, and the sky. The running made him feel better. He didnot 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 hewould lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys wouldtake care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there. And at thesame time there 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 thefreezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiffand dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused toconsider. 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 thathe could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight ofhis body. He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface and tohave no connection with the earth. Somewhere he had once seen a wingedMercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming overthe earth.
His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw init: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and finally hetottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, he failed. Hemust sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk andkeep on going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he wasfeeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not shivering, and it evenseemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. And yet, whenhe touched his 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, to think ofsomething else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, andhe was afraid of the panic. But the thought asserted itself, andpersisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen. Thiswas too much, and he made another wild run along the trail. Once heslowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itselfmade him run again.
And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels. When he fell down asecond time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of himfacing him curiously eager and intent. The warmth and security of theanimal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its earsappeasingly. This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man. Hewas losing in his battle with the frost. It was creeping into his bodyfrom all sides. The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more thana hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong. It was his lastpanic. When he had recovered his breath and cont
rol, he sat up andentertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.However, the conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea ofit was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like achicken 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 itdecently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmeringsof drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It waslike taking 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 foundhimself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself. And,still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himselflying in the snow. He did not belong with himself any more, for eventhen he was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himselfin the snow. It certainly was cold, was his thought. When he got backto the States he could tell the folks what real cold was. He drifted onfrom this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could seehim quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to theold-timer of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable andsatisfying 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 nosigns of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experiencehad it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As thetwilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with agreat lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattenedits ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the manremained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it creptclose to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animalbristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under thestars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then itturned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew,where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.