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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 if
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 bundle to the
birch bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh ws 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 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 a 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 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 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
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 his 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 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 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 anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad a
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 w 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.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing 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
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 if
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 bundle to the
birch bark. As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand. His
flesh ws 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 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 a 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 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 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
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 his 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 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 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 anesthetic. Freezing was not so bad a
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 w 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.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing 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