"It done feel jest laik a burn," remarked Johnson as he drew on his mitten again.
"Yes, intense cold such as we are now in does feel for a moment almost like heat to the naked flesh," said Mr. Baxter. "Let this be a lesson to all of us. We must exercise the greatest care, or some of us will have frost-bitten hands or feet, to say nothing of our noses."
By this time the Indians were skinning and cutting up the moose. It would have been hard work in a region where everything froze solid almost the minute life left it, but Holfax and his men built a big fire, and in the warmth of that they worked. Every one had a good dinner, even the dogs, who feasted to their hearts' content on moose meat. Some was left to freeze, to be packed on the sleds for future use.
Once more they started the dogs northward, the day soon coming to a close, as the short-lived sun went down, and the Northern Lights began to play.
Their camp that night was not disturbed by any wolves, and they made an early start the next day, coming a few miles nearer to the mountains which they hoped held the store of buried gold.
As they approached a region where the going would be hard, for it was mostly up hill, Mr. Baxter decided to make a camp where they could remain a day or so to give the dogs a chance to rest. Some of the animals had sore feet, where they had been cut by the sharp ice, and, as the dogs were their only means of transportation, it was necessary to take good care of them.
Accordingly they stopped that afternoon on the edge of a big wood which, Holfax said, would take them two days to get through. It was a gloomy forest, stretching for miles and miles throughout the heart of Alaska, and beyond it lay the mountain range where Stults, the German hunter, had been pursued by the fierce Indians, to escape from whom he had hidden his gold.
The tent was put up for the adventurers, and the Indians made themselves a shelter of the sleds, heaping snow up around them and spreading blankets across the top. Then, with a good fire, there was more comfort than at first would seem possible to get in a country where, at that season, it was seldom warmer than ten or fifteen degrees below zero.
They slept better that night than they had any previous one since starting on their land journey, for the terrible cold had somewhat abated. The next day the sun shone brightly, and the two boys decided to take a little trip for exercise, since sitting on a sled, weighted down by fur robes, had made their muscles stiff.
They put on their snowshoes, and with their rifles started off. They hoped they might see another moose, or a musk ox, or, at least, an Arctic fox, at which to take a shot.