TO BUILD A FIRE
 
Jack London
 
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man
turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-
bank, where a dim and little-travelled 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 hair-line 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 hairline 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 new-comer 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 for a bite of
frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of
mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees
below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That
there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that
never entered his head.
 
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp,
explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in
the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He
knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this
spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than
fifty below--how much colder he did not know. But the temperature
did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of
Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over
across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come
the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out
logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to
camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys
would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be
ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding
bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in
a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way
to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself
as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon
grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
 
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A
foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he
was glad he was without a sled, travelling 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 numbed 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
wolf-dog, grey-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 travelling.
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 moustache
were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form
of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled.
Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his
lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled
the juice. The result was that a crystal beard of the colour 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 nigger-heads, and dropped down a bank to the
frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and he knew
he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten
o'clock. He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he
would arrive at the forks at half-past twelve. He decided to
celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.
 
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping
discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The furrow of
the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow
covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up
or down that silent creek. The man held steadily on. He was not
much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to
think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six
o'clock he would be in camp with the boys. There was nobody to talk
to and, had there been, speech would have been impossible because of
the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So he continued monotonously to chew
tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
 
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold
and that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he
rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened hand.
He did this automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as
he would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the
following instant the end of his nose went numb. He was sure to
frost his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of regret that
he had not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps.
Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them. But
it didn't matter much, after all. What were frosted cheeks? A bit
painful, that was all; they were never serious.
 
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and
he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-
jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once,
coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse,
curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated
several paces back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen
clear to the bottom--no creek could contain water in that arctic
winter--but he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out
from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of
the creek. He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs,
and he knew likewise their danger. They were traps. They hid pools
of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three
feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and
in turn was covered by the snow. Sometimes there were alternate
layers of water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept
on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the
waist.
 
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under
his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin. And to get
his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the
very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a
fire, and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his
socks and moccasins. He stood and studied the creek-bed and its
banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right. He
reflected awhile, 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. This 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 on its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of
the earth intervened between it and 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 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. It certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from
Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes
got in the country. And he had laughed at him at the time! That
showed one must not be too sure of things. There was no mistake
about it, it was cold. He strode up and down, stamping his feet and
threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning warmth. Then he
got out matches and proceeded to make a fire. From the undergrowth,
where high water of the previous spring had lodged a supply of
seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. Working carefully from a small
beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice
from his face and in the protection of which he ate his biscuits.
For the moment the cold of 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, he 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 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 whip-
lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the
whip-lash. 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 whip-lashes, and the dog
swung in at the man'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 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, the man broke through. It was not deep.
He wetted himself half-way to the knees before he floundered out to
the firm crust.
 
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into
camp with the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour,
for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This
was imperative at that low temperature--he knew that much; and he
turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the
underbrush about the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a
high-water deposit of dry firewood--sticks and twigs principally, but
also larger portions of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year's
grasses. He threw down several large pieces on top of the snow.
This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from
drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt. The flame he
got by touching a match to a small shred of birch-bark that he took
from his pocket. This burned even more readily than paper. Placing
it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass
and with the tiniest dry twigs.
 
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger.
Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the
twigs with which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the
twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly
to the flame. He knew there must be no failure. When it is seventy-
five below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a
fire--that is, if his feet are wet. If his feet are dry, and he
fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and restore his
circulation. But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be
restored by running when it is seventy-five below. No matter how
fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.
 
All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him
about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice.
Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he
had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly
gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping
blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the
instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of
space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that
unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of
his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and
like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the
fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped
that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and
sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the
first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his
exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to
freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all
his body chilled as it lost its blood.
 
But he was safe. Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by
the frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength. He was
feeding it with twigs the size of his finger. In another minute he
would be able to feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and
then he could remove his wet foot-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 half-way to the knees; and the
mocassin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as
by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his numbed
fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath-knife.
 
But before he could cut the strings, it happened. It was his own
fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire
under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But it
had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them
directly on the fire. Now the tree under which he had done this
carried a weight of snow on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks,
and each bough was fully freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig
he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree--an imperceptible
agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to
bring about the disaster. High up in the tree one bough capsized its
load of snow. This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them. This
process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree. It
grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man
and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! Where it had burned was
a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
 
The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own
sentence of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where
the fire had been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on
Sulphur Creek was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would
have been in no danger now. The trail-mate could have built the
fire. Well, it was up to him to build the fire over again, and this
second time there must be no failure. Even if he succeeded, he would
most likely lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by now,
and there would be some time before the second fire was ready.
 
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was
busy all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new
foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous
tree could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs
from the high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together
to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In
this way he got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were
undesirable, but it was the best he could do. He worked
methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be
used later when the fire gathered strength. And all the while the
dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes,
for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, and the fire was slow in
coming.
 
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece
of birch-bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not
feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he
fumbled for it. Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it.
And all the time, in his consciousness, was the knowledge that each
instant his feet were freezing. This thought tended to put him in a
panic, but he fought against it and kept calm. He pulled on his
mittens with his teeth, and threshed his arms back and forth, beating
his hands with all his might against his sides. He did this sitting
down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog 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 and secure in its natural covering.
 
After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation
in his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it
evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man
hailed with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand
and fetched forth the birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly
going numb again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches.
But the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his
fingers. In his effort to separate one match from the others, the
whole bunch fell in the snow. He tried to pick it out of the snow,
but failed. The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch. He was
very careful. He drove the thought of his freezing feet; and nose,
and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches.
He watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and
when he saw his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them--that
is, he willed to close them, for the wires were drawn, 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 on 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 birch-bark.
As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh was burning. He could smell it. Deep down below the surface
he could feel it. The sensation developed into pain that grew acute.
And still he endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to
the bark that would not light readily because his own burning hands
were in the way, absorbing most of the flame.
 
At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart.
The blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch-bark
was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on the
flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel
between the heels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and
green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit them off as well as he
could with his teeth. He cherished the flame carefully and
awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish. The withdrawal of
blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver, and
he grew more awkward. A large piece of green moss fell squarely on
the little fire. He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his
shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus
of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and
scattering. He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of
the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away with him, and the
twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke
and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked
apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across
the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless,
hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other,
shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.
 
The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered
the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and
crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog
and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of
them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to the dog,
calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of fear that
frightened the animal, who had never known the man to speak in such
way before. Something was the matter, and its suspicious nature
sensed danger,--it knew not what danger but somewhere, somehow, in
its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears
down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching
movements and the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more
pronounced but it would not come to the man. He got on his hands and
knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual posture again excited
suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away.
 
The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.
Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon
his feet. He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that
he was really standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet
left him unrelated to the earth. His erect position in itself
started to drive the webs of suspicion from the dog's mind; and when
he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whip-lashes 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 lingers. He had forgotten for the moment
that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more. All
this happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he
encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in
this fashion held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
 
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and
sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no
way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold
his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it
plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling.
It halted forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears
sharply pricked forward. The man looked down at his hands in order
to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms. It
struck him as curious that one should have to use his eyes in order
to find out where his hands were. He began threshing his arms back
and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did this
for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to
the surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was
aroused in the hands. He had an impression that they hung like
weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the
impression down, he could not find it.
 
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear
quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere
matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and
feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances
against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up
the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and
kept up with him. He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as
he had never known in his life. Slowly, as he ploughed 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
weight 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 tail 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 appeasingly. This time the shivering came
more quickly upon the man. He was losing in his battle with the
frost. It was creeping into his body from all sides. The thought of
it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he
staggered and pitched headlong. It was his last panic. When he had
recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his
mind the conception of meeting death with dignity. However, the
conception did not come to him in such terms. His idea of it was
that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a
chicken with its head cut off--such was the simile that occurred to
him. Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take
it decently. With this new-found peace of mind came the first
glimmerings of drowsiness. A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to
death. It was like 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 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.