Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace. Nor did they
talk much. Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath froze on
their faces from lips to chin. So intense was the cold that they almost
continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with their mittens. A few
minutes' cessation from this allowed the flesh to grow numb, and then
most vigorous rubbing was required to produce the burning prickle of
returning circulation.

Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they overtook
more stampeders who had started before them. Occasionally, groups of
men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but invariably they were
discouraged after a mile or two and disappeared in the darkness to the
rear.

"We've been out on trail all winter," was Shorty's comment. "An' them
geezers, soft from layin' around their cabins, has the nerve to think
they can keep our stride. Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be
different. If there's one thing a sour-dough can do it's sure walk."

Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch. He never repeated
it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared hands that half
an hour passed before they were again comfortable.

"Four o'clock," he said, as he pulled on his mittens, "and we've already
passed three hundred."

"Three hundred and thirty-eight," Shorty corrected. "I been keepin'
count. Get outa the way, stranger. Let somebody stampede that knows how
to stampede."

The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no
more than stumble along and who blocked the trail. This, and one other,
were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were very near
to the head of the stampede. Nor did they learn till afterwards the
horrors of that night. Exhausted men sat down to rest by the way and
failed to get up again. Seven were frozen to death, while scores of
amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the Dawson
hospitals on the survivors. For the stampede to Squaw Creek occurred on
the coldest night of the year. Before morning, the spirit thermometers
at Dawson registered seventy degrees below zero. The men composing the
stampede, with few exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did
not know the way of the cold.

The other played-out man they found a few minutes later, revealed by a
streamer of aurora borealis that shot like a searchlight from horizon to
zenith. He was sitting on a piece of ice beside th