Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-traveled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland.

It grew  like an avalanche, and it descended without warning upon the man and the fire, and the fire was blotted out! 

Where it had burned was a mantle of fresh and disordered snow.

The man was shocked. 

It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death. 

And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky.