ater of the previous spring had
lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood. 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 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 moustache,
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 wetted himself half-way 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