Then he surveyed
the heavens and ran his eye along the white sky-line to the south.
"Twelve o'clock," he mumbled, "A clear sky, and no sun."
He plodded on silently for ten minutes, and then, as though there
had been no lapse in his speech, he added:
"And no ground covered, and it's too cold to travel."
Suddenly he yelled "Whoa!" at the dogs, and stopped. He seemed in
a wild panic over his right hand, and proceeded to hammer it
furiously against the gee-pole.
"You - poor - devils!" he addressed the dogs, which had dropped
down heavily on the ice to rest. His was a broken, jerky
utterance, caused by the violence with which he hammered his numb
hand upon the wood. "What have you done anyway that a two-legged
other animal should come along, break you to harness, curb all your
natural proclivities, and make slave-beasts out of you?"
He rubbed his nose, not reflectively, but savagely, in order to
drive the blood into it, and urged the dogs to their work again.
He travelled on the frozen surface of a great river. Behind him it
stretched away in a mighty curve of many miles, losing itself in a
fantastic jumble of mountains, snow-covered and silent.
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