Finding it impossible to face the dogs Morganson stepped off the trail into the deep snow and floundered in a wide circle to the rear of the sled.  Under the initiative of the leader, the team swung around in its tangled harness.  Because of his crippled condition, Morganson could move only slowly.  He saw the animals circling around on him and tried to retreat.  He almost made it, but the big leader, with a savage lunge, sank its teeth into the calf of his leg.  The flesh was slashed and torn, but Morganson managed to drag himself clear.

He cursed the brutes fiercely, but could not cow them.  They replied with neck-bristling and snarling, and with quick lunges against their breastbands.  He remembered Oleson, and turned his back upon them and went along the trail.  He scarcely took notice of his lacerated leg.  It was bleeding freely; the main artery had been torn, but he did not know it.

Especially remarkable to Morganson was the extreme pallor of the Swede, who the preceding night had been so ruddy-faced.  Now his face was like white marble.  What with his fair hair and lashes he looked like a carved statue rather than something that had been a man a few minutes before.  Morganson pulled off his mittens and searched the body.  There was no money-belt around the waist next to the skin, nor did he find a gold-sack.  In a breast pocket he lit on a small wallet.  With fingers that swiftly went numb with the frost, he hurried through the contents of the wallet.  There were letters with foreign stamps and postmarks on them, and several receipts and memorandum accounts, and a letter of credit for eight hundred dollars.  That was all.  There was no money.

He made a movement to start back toward the sled, but found his foot rooted to the trail.  He glanced down and saw that he stood in a fresh deposit of frozen red.  There was red ice on his torn pants leg and on the moccasin beneath.  With a quick effort he broke the frozen clutch of his blood and hobbled along the trail to the sled.  The big leader that had bitten him began snarling and lunging, and was followed in this conduct by the whole team.

Morganson wept weakly for a space, and weakly swayed from one side to the other.  Then he brushed away the frozen tears that gemmed his lashes.  It was a joke.  Malicious chance was having its laugh at him.  Even John Thompson, with his heaven-aspiring whiskers, was laughing at him.

He prowled around the sled demented, at times weeping and pleading with the brutes for his life there on the sled, at other times raging impotently against them.  Then calmness came upon him.  He had been making a fool of himself.  All he had to do was to go to the tent, get the axe, and return and brain the dogs.  He’d show them.