“Shorty, I’ve got you skinned to death.  I’ve reconstructed every cell in my body since I hit the beach at Dyea.  My flesh is as stringy as whipcords, and as bitter and mean as the bite of a rattlesnake.  A few months ago I’d have patted myself on the back to write such words, but I couldn’t have written them.  I had to live them first, and now that I’m living them there’s no need to write them.  I’m the real, bitter, stinging goods, and no scrub of a mountaineer can put anything over on me without getting it back compound.  Now, you go ahead and set pace for half an hour.  Do your worst, and when you’re all in I’ll go ahead and give you half an hour of the real worst.”

“Huh!” Shorty sneered genially.  “An’ him not dry behind the ears yet.  Get outa the way an’ let your father show you some goin’.”

Half-hour by half-hour they alternated in setting pace.  Nor did they talk much.  Their exertions kept them warm, though their breath froze on their faces from lips to chin.  So intense was the cold that they almost continually rubbed their noses and cheeks with their mittens.  A few minutes’ cessation from this allowed the flesh to grow numb, and then most vigorous rubbing was required to produce the burning prickle of returning circulation.

Often they thought they had reached the lead, but always they overtook more stampeders who had started before them.  Occasionally, groups of men attempted to swing in behind to their pace, but invariably they were discouraged after a mile or two and disappeared in the darkness to the rear.

“We’ve been out on trail all winter,” was Shorty’s comment.  “An’ them geezers, soft from layin’ around their cabins, has the nerve to think they can keep our stride.  Now, if they was real sour-doughs it’d be different.  If there’s one thing a sour-dough can do it’s sure walk.”

Once, Smoke lighted a match and glanced at his watch.  He never repeated it, for so quick was the bite of the frost on his bared hands that half an hour passed before they were again comfortable.

“Four o’clock,” he said, as he pulled on his mittens, “and we’ve already passed three hundred.”

“Three hundred and thirty-eight,” Shorty corrected.  “I been keepin’ count.  Get outa the way, stranger.  Let somebody stampede that knows how to stampede.”

The latter was addressed to a man, evidently exhausted, who could no more than stumble along and who blocked the trail.  This, and one other, were the only played-out men they encountered, for they were very near to the head of the stampede.  Nor did they learn till afterwards the horrors of that night.  Exhausted men sat down to rest by the way and failed to get up again.  Seven were frozen to death, while scores of amputations of toes, feet, and fingers were performed in the Dawson hospitals on the survivors.  For the stampede to Squaw Creek occurred on the coldest night of the year.  Before morning, the spirit thermometers at Dawson registered seventy degrees below zero.  The men composing the stampede, with few exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did not know the way of the cold.