upon whose naked
branches a few dried and shrivelled leaves still clung.

'Merican Joe was travelling ahead breaking trail for his dogs and the
boy saw him raise a mittened hand and brush at his cheek. A few minutes
later the Indian thrashed his arms several times across his chest as
though to restore circulation of the blood against extreme cold. But it
was not cold. A moment later the boy brushed at his own cheek which
stung disagreeably as though nipped by the frost. He glanced at the tiny
thermometer that he kept lashed to the front of his toboggan. It
registered zero, a temperature that should have rendered trailing even
without the heavy parkas uncomfortably warm. Connie glanced backward
toward the distant mountains that should have stood out clean-cut and
distinct in the clear atmosphere, but they had disappeared from view
although the sun shone dazzlingly bright from a cloudless sky. A dog
whimpered uneasily, and Connie cracked his whip above the animal's head
and noted that instead of the sharp snap that should have accompanied
the motion, the sound reached his ears in a dull pop--noted, too, that
the dogs paid no slightest heed to the sound, but plodded on
methodically--slowly, as though they were tired. Connie was conscious of
a growing lassitude--a strange heaviness that hardly amounted to
weariness but which necessitated a distinct effort of brain to complete
each muscle move.

Suddenly 'Merican Joe halted and, removing his mitten, drew his bare
hand across his eyes. Connie noticed that the air seemed heavy and dead,
and that he could hear his own breathing and the breathing of the dogs
which had crouched with their bellies in the snow whimpering uneasily.
Wild-eyed, the Indian pointed aloft and Connie glanced upward. There was
no hint of blue in the cloudless sky. The whole dome of the heavens
glared with a garish, brassy sheen from which the sun blazed out with an
unwholesome, metallic light that gleamed in glints of gold from millions
of floating frost spicules. Even as the two stood gazing upward new suns
formed in the burnished sky--false suns that blazed and danced and
leaped together and re-formed.

With a cry of abject terror 'Merican Joe buried his face in his arms and
stood trembling and moaning, "_Hyas skookum kultus tamahnawus--mesahchee
tamahnawus!_" (a very strong bad spirit--we are bewitched). The words
puled haltingly from lips stiff with fright. The next moment the boy was
beside him, t