The first he ate raw.  Then he rested and slept, while his life assimilated the life of it.  In the darkness he awoke, hungry, with strength to build a fire.  And until early dawn he cooked and ate, crunching the bones to powder between his long-idle teeth.  He slept, awoke in the darkness of another night, and slept again to another sun.

He noted with surprise that the fire crackled with fresh fuel and that a blackened coffee-pot steamed on the edge of the coals.  Beside the fire, within arm’s length, sat Shorty, smoking a brown-paper cigarette and intently watching him.  Smoke’s lips moved, but a throat paralysis seemed to come upon him, while his chest was suffused with the menace of tears.  He reached out his hand for the cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs again and again.

“I have not smoked for a long time,” he said at last, in a low calm voice.  “For a very long time.”

“Nor eaten, from your looks,” Shorty added gruffly.

Smoke nodded and waved his hand at the ptarmigan feathers that lay all about.

“Not until recently,” he returned.  “Do you know, I’d like a cup of coffee.  It will taste strange.  Also flapjacks and a strip of bacon.”

“And beans?” Shorty tempted.

“They would taste heavenly.  I find I am quite hungry again.”

While the one cooked and the other ate, they told briefly what had happened to them in the days since their separation.

“The Klondike was breakin’ up,” Shorty concluded his recital, “an’ we just had to wait for open water.  Two polin’ boats, six other men—­you know ’em all, an’ crackerjacks—­an’ all kinds of outfit.  An’ we’ve sure been a-comin’—­polin’, linin’ up, and portagin’.  But the falls’ll stick ’em a solid week.  That’s where I left ’em a-cuttin’ a trail over the tops of the bluffs for the boats.  I just had a sure natural hunch to keep a-comin’.  So I fills a pack with grub an’ starts.  I knew I’d find you a-driftin’ an’ all in.”

Smoke nodded, and put forth his hand in a silent grip.  “Well, let’s get started,” he said.

“Started hell!” Shorty exploded.  “We stay right here an’ rest you up an’ feed you up for a couple of days.”

Smoke shook his head.

“If you could just see yourself,” Shorty protested.

And what he saw was not nice.  Smoke’s face, wherever the skin showed, was black and purple and scabbed from repeated frost-bite.  The cheeks were fallen in, so that, despite the covering of beard, the upper rows of teeth ridged the shrunken flesh.  Across the forehead and about the deep-sunk eyes, the skin was stretched drum-tight, while the scraggly beard, that should have been golden, was singed by fire and filthy with camp-smoke.

“Better pack up,” Smoke said.  “I’m going on.”

“But you’re feeble as a kid baby.  You can’t hike.  What’s the rush?”

“Shorty, I am going after the biggest thing in the Klondike, and I can’t wait.  That’s all.  Start packing.  It’s the biggest thing in the world.  It’s bigger than lakes of gold and mountains of gold, bigger than adventure, and meat-eating, and bear-killing.”