We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come
a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin'
off the miles in great shape. I hadn't a place on my map for about sixty
miles, when in the distance I saw a little hut, just in the fringe of
some stunted cottonwoods and some scraggy willows, for we were not far
from the timber limit.
"'Billy,' I called to the Indian, 'ever see that hut before?'
"The Indian shook his head, but knowin' that I wanted to see an' count
everybody in the district, he turned off the trail--he said it was a
trail but I couldn't see it--an' led the way to the hut. I went in an'
found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of
the survivors of the wrecked steamer _Filarleon_, and had frozen all
the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; an' one
of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed
off the decomposin' member with his pocket-knife. One foot also was
frozen an' had turned black, but that afterwards recovered."
"What did you do for him?" asked the boy.
"Put him on the sled, of course," the Alaskan answered, "an' took him to
the nearest settlement.
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