Jack London
To Build a Fire
From Lost Face
Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man
turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a
dim and little-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 hair-line trail, the absence of
sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it
all - made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it.
He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The
trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in
the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty
degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him
as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to
meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty
in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold;
and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality
and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood 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 numb nose and cheek-bones
with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his face
did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself
aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog,
gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its
brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It
knew that it was no time for 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 mustache were likewise
frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of ice and increasing
with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco,
and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his
chin when he expelled the juice. The result was that a crystal beard of the
color and solidity of amber was increasing its length on his chin. If he fell
down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did
not mind the appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that
country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps. They had not been so
cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they
had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed
a wide flat of niggerheads, 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 numb. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they
were numb.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit frightened. He
stamped up and down until the stinging returned into the feet. It certainly was
cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when
telling how cold it sometimes got in the country. And he had laughed at him at
the time! That showed one must not 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 fire-wood.
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 no keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of
the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the
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 mustache, eyebrows, and
lashes. There did not seem to be so many springs on the left fork of the
Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any.
And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft,
unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through. It
was not deep. He wet himself halfway to the knees before he floundered out to
the firm crust.
He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with
the boys at six o'clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to
build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This was imperative at that low
temperature - he knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he
climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several small
spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry fire-wood - 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
halfway to the knees; and the moccasin strings were like rods of steel all
twisted and knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his
numb fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it 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 faraway 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 down, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten on the
right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with both mittened
hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap. Yet
he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of
his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice
crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He drew the
lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped the bunch with
his upper teeth in order to separate a match. He succeeded in getting one,
which he dropped on his lap. He was no better off. He could not pick it up.
Then he devised a way. He picked it up in his teeth and scratched it on his
leg. Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in lighting it. As it flamed
he held it with his teeth to the birch-bark. But the burning brimstone went up
his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically. The match
fell into the snow and went out.
The old-timer 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 fingers. He had
forgotten for the moment that they were frozen and that they were freezing more
and more. All this happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he
encircled its body with his arms. He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion
held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit
there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it.
With his helpess 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.
1902
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