To Build a Fire byJack 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 anæsthetic.
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.
