“Look out for springs,” Joy warned, as Smoke led the way down the creek. “At seventy below you'll lose your feet if you break through.”
These springs, common to most Klondike streams, never cease at the lowest temperatures. The water flows out from the banks and lies in pools which are cuddled from the cold by later surface-freezings and snow falls. Thus, a man, stepping on dry snow, might break through half an inch of ice-skin and find himself up to the knees in water. In five minutes, unless able to remove the wet gear, the loss of one's foot was the penalty.
Though only three in the afternoon, the long grey twilight of the Arctic had settled down. They watched for a blazed tree on either bank, which would show the center-stake of the last claim located. Joy, impulsively eager, was the first to find it. She darted ahead of Smoke, crying: “Somebody's been here! See the snow! Look for the blaze! There it is! See that spruce!”
She sank suddenly to her waist in the snow.
“Now I've done it,” she said woefully. Then she cried: “Don't come near me! I'll wade out.”
Step by step, each time breaking through the thin skin of ice concealed under the dry snow, she forced her way to solid footing. Smoke did not wait, but sprang to the bank, where dry and seasoned twigs and sticks, lodged amongst the brush by spring freshets, waited the match. By the time she reached his side, the first flames and flickers of an assured fire were rising.
“Sit down!” he commanded.
She obediently sat down in the snow. He slipped his pack from his back, and spread a blanket for her feet.
From above came the voices of the stampeders who followed them.
“Let Shorty stake,” she urged.