To Build a Fire
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when
the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high
earth- bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through
the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for
breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.
It was nine o'clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was
not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an
intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the
day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not
worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he
had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before
that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky- line and
dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as
many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations
where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far
as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line
that curved and twisted from around the spruce- covered island to the
south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it
disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line
was the trail--the main trail--that led south five hundred miles to the
Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to
Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and
finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a
thousand more.
But all this--the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence
of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and
weirdness of it all--made no impression on the man. It was not because
he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and
this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without
imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in
the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant
eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and
uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon
his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in
general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and
cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of
immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero
stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by
the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty
degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero.
That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that
never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp,
explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the
air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew
that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had
crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below--how
much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was
bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the
boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian
Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at
the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in
the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it
was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot
supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the
protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped
up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only
way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself
as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon
grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot of
snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he
was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he carried nothing but
the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the
cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed nose
and cheek-bones with his mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man,
but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the
eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper
wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental
difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by
the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its
instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man's
judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it
was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five
below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant
that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not
know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no
sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man's
brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but
menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the
man's heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement
of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter
somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted
fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from
the air.
The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine
powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes
whitened by its crystalled breath. The man's red beard and moustache
were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of
ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, the
man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly
that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice. The
result was that a crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber was
increasing its length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter
itself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did not mind the
appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco- chewers paid in that country,
and he had been out before in two cold snaps. They had not been so cold
as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew
they had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed
a wide flat of nigger-heads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed
of a small stream. This was Henderson Creek, and he knew he was ten
miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock. He was
making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at
the forks at half-past twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by
eating his lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping
discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed. The furrow of the
old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered
the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or down
that silent creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to
thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save
that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o'clock he would be
in camp with the boys. There was nobody to talk to and, had there been,
speech would have been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his
mouth. So he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the
length of his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and
that he had never experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbed
his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened hand. He did this
automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as he would, the
instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant
the end of his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew
that, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a
nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap passed
across the cheeks, as well, and saved them. But it didn't matter much,
after all. What were frosted cheeks? A bit painful, that was all; they
were never serious.
Empty as the man's mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he
noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-
jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet. Once, coming
around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away
from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces
back along the trail. The creek he knew was frozen clear to the
bottom--no creek could contain water in that arctic winter--but he knew
also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran
along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek. He knew that the
coldest snaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewise their
danger. They were traps. They hid pools of water under the snow that
might be three inches deep, or three feet. Sometimes a skin of ice half
an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow.
Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice-skin, so that
when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while,
sometimes wetting himself to the waist.
That was why he had shied in such panic. He had felt the give under his
feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin. And to get his
feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger. At the very
least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire,
and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and
moccasins. He stood and studied the creek-bed and its banks, and decided
that the flow of water came from the right. He reflected awhile,
rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly
and testing the footing for each step. Once clear of the danger, he
took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.
In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps.
Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance
that advertised the danger. Once again, however, he had a close call;
and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front. The
dog did not want to go. It hung back until the man shoved it forward,
and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface. Suddenly it
broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.
It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that
clung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its
legs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that
had formed between the toes. This was a matter of instinct. To permit
the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It did not know this. It merely
obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its
being. But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and
he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice-
particles. He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was
astonished at the swift numbness that smote them. It certainly was cold.
He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his
chest.
At twelve o'clock the day was at its brightest. Yet the sun was too far
south on its winter journey to clear the horizon. The bulge of the earth
intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a
clear sky at noon and cast no shadow. At half-past twelve, to the
minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek. He was pleased at the
speed he had made. If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys
by six. He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch.
The action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that
brief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers. He did not
put the mitten on, but, instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp
smashes against his leg. Then he sat down on a snow-covered log to eat.
The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg
ceased so quickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a
bite of biscuit. He struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to
the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating. He tried to
take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented. He had forgotten to
build a fire and thaw out. He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he
chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers. Also,
he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat
down was already passing away. He wondered whether the toes were warm or
numbed. He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were
numbed.
He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up. He was a bit frightened.
He stamped up and down until the stinging returned into the feet. It
certainly was cold, was his thought. That man from Sulphur Creek had
spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country.
And he had laughed at him at the time! That showed one must not be too
sure of things. There was no mistake about it, it was cold. He strode up
and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by
the returning warmth. Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a
fire. From the undergrowth, where high water 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 build a fire and dry out his foot-gear. This was
imperative at that low temperature--he knew that much; and he turned
aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, tangled in the underbrush
about the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water deposit
of dry firewood--sticks and twigs principally, but also larger portions
of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year's grasses. He threw down
several large pieces on top of the snow. This served for a foundation
and prevented the young flame from drowning itself in the snow it
otherwise would melt. The flame he got by touching a match to a small
shred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket. This burned even more
readily than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame
with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs.
He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger. Gradually,
as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with
which he fed it. He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from
their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame. He
knew there must be no failure. When it is seventy- five below zero, a
man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire--that is, if his
feet are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the
trail for half a mile and restore his circulation. But the circulation
of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is
seventy-five below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze
the harder.
All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about
it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice. Already
all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he had been
forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. His
pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the
surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant he
stopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of space smote the
unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip,
received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled
before it. 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 to 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.
Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy
all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new
foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree
could blot it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the
high-water flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull
them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful. In this way he
got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but
it was the best he could do. He worked methodically, even collecting an
armful of the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered
strength. And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain
yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the
fire-provider, and the fire was slow in coming.
When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of
birch-bark. He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it
with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for
it. Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it. And all the time,
in his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were
freezing. This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought
against it and kept calm. He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and
threshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might
against his sides. He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it;
and all the while the dog sat in the snow, its wolf-brush of a tail
curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears pricked
forward intently as it watched the man. And the man as he beat and
threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as he
regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.
After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation in
his beaten fingers. The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved
into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed
with satisfaction. He stripped the mitten from his right hand and
fetched forth the birch-bark. The exposed fingers were quickly going
numb again. Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches. But the
tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers. In his
effort to separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in
the snow. He tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed. The dead
fingers could neither touch nor clutch. He was very careful. He drove
the thought of his freezing feet; and nose, and cheeks, out of his mind,
devoting his whole soul to the matches. He watched, using the sense of
vision in place of that of touch, and when he saw his fingers on each
side the bunch, he closed them--that is, he willed to close them, for
the wires were drawn, and the fingers did not obey. He pulled the mitten
on the right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee. Then, with
both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with much
snow, into his lap. Yet he was no better off.
After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of
his mittened hands. In this fashion he carried it to his mouth. The ice
crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth. He
drew 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 it 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 bunch to the birch-bark. As he so held it, he became
aware of sensation in his hand. His flesh was 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 out
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 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 the 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 lingers. 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 and 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 the 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 ploughed 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 in 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 anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as 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 with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found 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.
"You were right, old hoss; you were right," the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable
and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him 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 a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly,
then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the
man. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And
still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death.
This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed,
howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the
cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of
the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and
fire-providers.
To Build a Fire was featured as The Short Story of the Day on Thu, Nov 29, 2012
ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY CENTS of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And
the next day would be Christmas.