"And this is what happened. Came on a cold snap. The juice went down
forty, fifty, sixty below zero. I remember that snap--I was at Forty
Mile; and I remember the very day. At eleven o'clock in the morning the
spirit thermometer at the N. A. T. & T. Company's store went down to
seventy-five below zero. And that morning, near the forks of the Teelee,
Dave Walsh was out after moose with that blessed Indian of his. I got it
all from the Indian afterwards--we made a trip over the ice together to
Dyea. That morning Mr. Indian broke through the ice and wet himself to
the waist. Of course he began to freeze right away. The proper thing
was to build a fire. But Dave Walsh was a bull. It was only half a mile
to camp, where a fire was already burning. What was the good of building
another? He threw Mr. Indian over his shoulder--and ran with him--half a
mile--with the thermometer at seventy-five below. You know what that
means. Suicide. There's no other name for it. Why, that buck Indian
weighed over two hundred himself, and Dave ran half a mile with him. Of
course he froze his lungs. Must have frozen them near solid. It was a
tomfool trick for any man to do. And anyway, after lingering horribly
for several weeks, Dave Walsh died.

"The Indian didn't know what to do with the corpse. Ordinarily he'd have
buried him and let it go at that. But he knew that Dave Walsh was a big
man, worth lots of money, a _hi-yu skookum_ chief. Likewise he'd seen
the bodies of other _hi-yu skookums_ carted around the country like they
were worth something. So he decided to take Dave's body to Forty Mile,
which was Dave's headquarters. You know how the ice is on the grass
roots in this country--well, the Indian planted Dave under a foot of
soil--in short, he put Dave on ice. Dave could have stayed there a
thousand years and still been the same old Dave. You understand--just
the same as a refrigerator. Then the Indian brings over a whipsaw from
the cabin at Surprise Lake and makes lumber enough for the box. Also,