To Build A Fire
Jack London
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 traveled 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 hairline 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 forte 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, traveling 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
wolfdog, 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 traveling. 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 rigger-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 a while, 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. l his 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 an its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of the
earth intervened between it arid 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
wandered 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 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 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, be 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 whiplash
and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whiplash. 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 whiplashes and the dog swung in at the man\'s heel 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, tee 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
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 wrier, and then he could remove his
wet toot-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
do,g 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 ant 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 dosed 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 an 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 birth 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 whiplashes 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 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 plowed 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 weigh.
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 tad! 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
appealingly. 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
salting 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.
|
