or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the
spruce tree. He should have built it in the open. But it had been
easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the
fire. Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow
on its boughs. No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully
freighted. Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight
agitation to the tree--an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was
concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster. High
up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow. This fell on the
boughs beneath, capsizing them. This process continued, spreading out
and involving the whole tree. It grew like an avalanche, and it
descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was
blotted out! Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered
snow.

The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence
of death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had
been. Then he grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek
was right. If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no
danger now. The trail-mate could have built the fire. Well, it was up
to him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be
no failure. Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes.
His feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before
the second fire was ready.

Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them. He was busy
all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new foundation
for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree could blot
it out. Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-water
flotsam. He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but