ite. No animals nor humming
insects broke the silence. No birds flew in the chill air. There was no
sound of man, no mark of the handiwork of man. The world slept, and it
was like the sleep of death.

John Messner seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost was
benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant,
mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering hand
against the gee-pole in the straight trail-stretches.

But the dogs were observant, and suddenly they stopped, turning their
heads and looking back at their master out of eyes that were wistful and
questioning. Their eyelashes were frosted white, as were their muzzles,
and they had all the seeming of decrepit old age, what of the frost-rime
and exhaustion.

The man was about to urge them on, when he checked himself, roused up
with an effort, and looked around. The dogs had stopped beside a water-
hole, not a fissure, but a hole man-made, chopped laboriously with an axe
through three and a half feet of ice. A thick skin of new ice showed
that it had not been used for some time. Messner glanced about him. The
dogs were already pointing the way, each wistful and hoary muzzle turned
toward the dim snow-path that left the main river trail and climbed the
bank of the island.

"All right, you sore-footed brutes," he said. "I'll investigate. You're
not a bit more anxious to quit than I am."

He climbed the bank and disappeared. The dogs did not lie down, but on
their feet eagerly waited his return. He came back to them, took a
hauling-rope from the front of the sled, and put it around his shoulders.
Then he _gee'd_ the dogs to the right and put them at the bank on the
run. It was a stiff pull, but their weariness fell from them as they
crouched low to the snow, whining with eagerness and gladness as they
struggled upward to the last ounce of effort in their bodies. When a dog
slipped or faltered, the one behind nipped his hind quarters. The man
shouted encouragement and threats, and threw all his weight on the
hauling-rope.

They cleared the bank with a rush, swung to the left, and dashed up to a
small log cabin. It was a deserted cabin of a single room, eight feet by
ten on the inside. Messner unharnessed the animals, unloaded his sled
and took possession. The last chance wayfarer had left a supply of
firewood. Messner set up his light sheet-iron stove and starred a fire.
He put five sun-cured salmon