'Come, get a fire started,' he commanded, drawing out the
precious matchbox with its attendant strips of dry birchbark.
The two Indians fell sullenly to the task of gathering dead
branches and underwood. They were weak and paused often, catching
themselves, in the act of stooping, with giddy motions, or
staggering to the center of operations with their knees shaking
like castanets.
After each trip they rested for a moment, as though sick and
deadly weary. At times their eyes took on the patient stoicism of
dumb suffering; and again the ego seemed almost burst forth with
its wild cry, 'I, I, I want to exist!'--the dominant note of the
whole living universe.
A light breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed
portions of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of
fire, through fur and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had
grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka
Charley forced his reluctant comrades to lend a hand in pitching
a fly. It was a primitive affair, merely a blanket stretched
parallel with the fire and to windward of it, at an angle of
perhaps forty-five degrees. This shut out the chill wind and
threw the heat backward and down upon those who were to huddle in
its shelter.
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