Lost Face

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"Now, put me to bed," he finished; "I'll eat when I wake up."

They did him honour, carrying him down in his rags and dirt and
depositing him and Bondell's grip in the bridal chamber, which was the
biggest and most luxurious state-room in the ship. Twice he slept the
clock around, and he had bathed and shaved and eaten and was leaning over
the rail smoking a cigar when the two hundred pilgrims from White Horse
came alongside.

By the time the _Athenian_ arrived in Seattle, Churchill had fully
recuperated, and he went ashore with Bondell's grip in his hand. He felt
proud of that grip. To him it stood for achievement and integrity and
trust. "I've delivered the goods," was the way he expressed these
various high terms to himself. It was early in the evening, and he went
straight to Bondell's home. Louis Bondell was glad to see him, shaking
hands with both hands at the same time and dragging him into the house.

"Oh, thanks, old man; it was good of you to bring it out," Bondell said
when he received the gripsack.

He tossed it carelessly upon a couch, and Churchill noted with an
appreciative eye the rebound of its weight from the springs. Bondell was
volleying him with questions.

"How did you make out? How're the boys? What became of Bill Smithers?
Is Del Bishop still with Pierce? Did he sell my dogs? How did Sulphur
Bottom show up? You're looking fine. What steamer did you come out on?"

To all of which Churchill gave answer, till half an hour had gone by and
the first lull in the conversation had arrived.

"Hadn't you better take a look at it?" he suggested, nodding his head at
the gripsack.

"Oh, it's all right," Bondell answered. "Did Mitchell's dump turn out as
much as he expected?"

"I think you'd better look at it," Churchill insisted. "When I deliver a
thing, I want to be satisfied that it's all right. There's always the
chance that somebody might have got into it when I was asleep, or
something."

"It's nothing important, old man," Bondell answered, with a laugh.

"Nothing important," Churchill echoed in a faint, small voice. Then he
spoke with decision: "Louis, what's in that bag? I want to know."

Louis looked at him curiously, then left the room and returned with a
bunch of keys. He inserted his hand and drew out a heavy Colt's
revolver. Next came out a few boxes of ammunition for the revolver and
several boxes of Winchester cartridges.

Churchill took the gripsack and looked into it. Then he turned it upside
down and shook it gently.

"The gun's all rusted," Bondell said. "Must have been out in the rain."

"Yes," Churchill answered. "Too bad it got wet. I guess I was a bit
careless."

He got up and went outside. Ten minutes later Louis Bondell went out and
found him on the steps, sitting down, elbows on knees and chin on hands,
gazing steadfastly out into the darkness.




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.