he
fire was absorbed slowly. While she did this, he attacked his hands.
The snow did not melt nor moisten. Its light crystals were like so much
sand. Slowly the stings and pangs of circulation came back into the
chilled flesh. Then he tended the fire, unstrapped the light pack from
her back, and got out a complete change of foot-gear.

Shorty returned along the creek bed and climbed the bank to them. "I
sure staked a full thousan' feet," he proclaimed. "Number twenty-seven
an' number twenty-eight, though I'd only got the upper stake of
twenty-seven, when I met the first geezer of the bunch behind. He just
straight declared I wasn't goin' to stake twenty-eight. An' I told
him--"

"Yes, yes," Joy cried. "What did you tell him?"

"Well, I told him straight that if he didn't back up plum five hundred
feet I'd sure punch his frozen nose into ice-cream an' chocolate
eclaires. He backed up, an' I've got in the center-stakes of two full
an' honest five-hundred-foot creek claims. He staked next, and I guess
by now the bunch has Squaw Creek located to head-waters an' down the
other side. Ourn is safe. It's too dark to see now, but we can put out
the corner-stakes in the mornin'."

When they awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night.
So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets,
estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below. The cold snap
had broken. On top of their blankets lay six inches of frost crystals.

"Good morning! how are your feet?" was Smoke's greeting across the ashes
of the fire to where Joy Gastell, carefully shaking aside the snow, was
sitting up in her sleeping-furs.

Shorty built the fire and quarried ice from the creek, while Smoke
cooked breakfast. Daylight came on as they finished the meal.

"You go an' fix them corner-stakes, Smoke," Shorty said. "There's gravel
under where I chopped ice for the coffee, an' I'm goin' to melt water
and wash a pan of that same gravel for luck."

Smoke departed, axe in hand, to blaze the stakes. Starting from the
down-stream center-stake of 'twenty-seven,' he headed at right angles
across the narrow valley towards its rim. He proceeded methodically,
almost automatically, for his mind was alive with recollections of
the night before. He felt, somehow, that he had won to empery over the
delicate lines and firm muscles of those feet and ankles he had rubbed
with snow, and this empery seemed to extend to the rest and all