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 keep his head, and he was all right.
Any man who was a man could travel alone.
But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing.
And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time.
Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and
they seemed remote from his body and from him.
When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it.
The wires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.
All of which counted for little.
There was the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life with every dancing flame.
He started to untie his moccasins.
They were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like sheaths of iron half-way to
the knees; and the mocassin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by
some conflagration.
For a moment he tugged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his
sheath-knife.
But before he could cut the strings, it happened.
It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake.
He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.
He should have built it in the open.
But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire.
Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs.
No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted.
Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree—an imperceptible
agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the
disaster.
High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow.
This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them.
This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree.
It grew like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire,
and the fire was blotted out!
Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.
The man was shocked.
It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death.
For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been.
Then he grew very calm.
Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.
If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no danger now.
The trail-mate could have built the fire.
Well, it was up to him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be
no failure.
Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes.
His feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second
fire was ready.