Jack London for the CSET English and CSET Multiple Subject

To Build a Fire
by Jack London (1908)
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.