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