re! See the snow! Look for the blaze! There it is!
See that spruce!"

She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.

"Now I've done it," she said woefully. Then she cried: "Don't come near
me! I'll wade out."

Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice concealed
under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing. Smoke did not
wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned twigs and sticks,
lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets, waited the match. By the
time she reached his side, the first flames and flickers of an assured
fire were rising.

"Sit down!" he commanded.

She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his back,
and spread a blanket for her feet.

From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.

"Let Shorty stake," she urged.

"Go on, Shorty," Smoke said, as he attacked her moccasins, already stiff
with ice. "Pace off a thousand feet and place the two center-stakes. We
can fix the corner-stakes afterwards."

With his knife Smoke cut away the lacings and leather of the moccasins.
So stiff were they with ice that they snapped and crackled under the
hacking and sawing. The Siwash socks and heavy woollen stockings
were sheaths of ice. It was as if her feet and calves were encased in
corrugated iron.

"How are your feet?" he asked, as he worked.

"Pretty numb. I can't move nor feel my toes. But it will be all right.
The fire is burning beautifully. Watch out you don't freeze your own
hands. They must be numb now from the way you're fumbling."

He slipped his mittens on, and for nearly a minute smashed the open
hands savagely against his sides. When he felt the blood-prickles, he
pulled off the mittens and ripped and tore and sawed and hacked at the
frozen garments. The white skin of one foot appeared, then that of the
other, to be exposed to the bite of seventy below zero, which is the
equivalent of one hundred and two below freezing.

Then came the rubbing with snow, carried on with an intensity of
cruel fierceness, till she squirmed and shrank and moved her toes, and
joyously complained of the hurt.

He half-dragged her, and she half-lifted herself, nearer to the fire. He
placed her feet on the blanket close to the flesh-saving flames.

"You'll have to take care of them for a while," he said.

She could now safely remove her mittens and manipulate her own feet,
with the wisdom of the initiated, being watchful that the heat of t