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“To Build a Fire” Fiction by Jack London (1908)

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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-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland.  It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch.  It was nine o’clock.  There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky.  It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun.  This fact did not worry the man.  He was used to the lack of sun.  It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

The man flung a look back along the way he had come.  The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice.  On top of this ice were as many feet of snow.  It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed.  North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island.  This dark hair-line was the trail—the main trail—that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man.  It was not because he was long used to it.  He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter.  The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.  He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.  Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost.  Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all.  It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe.  Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks.  Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero.  That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively.  There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him.  He spat again.  And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled.  He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.  Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know.  But the temperature did not matter.  He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already.  They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon.  He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready.  As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket.  It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin.  It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing.  He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

He plunged in among the big spruce trees.  The trail was faint.  A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light.  In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief.  He was surprised, however, at the cold.  It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed nose and cheek-bones with his mittened hand.  He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.

At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf.  The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold.  It knew that it was no time for travelling.  Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment.  In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below.  It was seventy-five below zero.  Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained.  The dog did not know anything about thermometers.  Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain.  But the brute had its instinct.  It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire.  The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath.  The man’s red beard and moustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled.  Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice.  The result was that a crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber was increasing its length on his chin.  If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments.  But he did not mind the appendage.  It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps.  They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.

He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed a wide flat of nigger-heads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream.  This was Henderson Creek, and he knew he was ten miles from the forks.  He looked at his watch.  It was ten o’clock.  He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the forks at half-past twelve.  He decided to celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.

The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed.  The furrow of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last runners.  In a month no man had come up or down that silent creek.  The man held steadily on.  He was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o’clock he would be in camp with the boys.  There was nobody to talk to and, had there been, speech would have been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth.  So he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.

Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and that he had never experienced such cold.  As he walked along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened hand.  He did this automatically, now and again changing hands.  But rub as he would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of his nose went numb.  He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps.  Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them.  But it didn’t matter much, after all.  What were frosted cheeks?  A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.

Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet.  Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail.  The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom—no creek could contain water in that arctic winter—but he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek.  He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewise their danger.  They were traps.  They hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet.  Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow.  Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the waist.

That was why he had shied in such panic.  He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin.  And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger.  At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire, and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins.  He stood and studied the creek-bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right.  He reflected awhile, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing the footing for each step.  Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.

In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps.  Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger.  Once again, however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front.  The dog did not want to go.  It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface.  Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.  It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung to it turned to ice.  It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes.  This was a matter of instinct.  To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet.  It did not know this.  It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being.  But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice-particles.  He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them.  It certainly was cold.  He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his chest.

At twelve o’clock the day was at its brightest.  Yet the sun was too far south on its winter journey to clear the horizon.  The bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow.  At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek.  He was pleased at the speed he had made.  If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six.  He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch.  The action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers.  He did not put the mitten on, but, instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg.  Then he sat down on a snow-covered log to eat.  The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit.  He struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating.  He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented.  He had forgotten to build a fire and thaw out.  He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers.  Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already passing away.  He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed.  He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.

He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up.  He was a bit frightened.  He stamped up and down until the stinging returned into the feet.  It certainly was cold, was his thought.  That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country.  And he had laughed at him at the time!  That showed one must not be too sure of things.  There was no mistake about it, it was cold.  He strode up and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning warmth.  Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a fire.  From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood.  Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in the protection of which he ate his biscuits.  For the moment the cold of space was outwitted.  The dog took satisfaction in the fire, stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape being singed.

When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable time over a smoke.  Then he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek trail up the left fork.  The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the fire.  This man did not know cold.  Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point.  But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge.  And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold.  It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came.  On the other hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man.  The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash.  So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man.  It was not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire.  But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of whip-lashes, and the dog swung in at the man’s heels and followed after.

The man took a chew of tobacco and proceeded to start a new amber beard.  Also, his moist breath quickly powdered with white his moustache, eyebrows, and lashes.  There did not seem to be so many springs on the left fork of the Henderson, and for half an hour the man saw no signs of any.  And then it happened.  At a place where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through.  It was not deep.  He wetted himself half-way to the knees before he floundered out to the firm crust.

He was angry, and cursed his luck aloud.  He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour, for he would have to build a fire and dry out his foot-gear.  This was imperative at that low temperature—he knew that much; and he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed.  On top, tangled in the underbrush about the trunks of several small spruce trees, was a high-water deposit of dry firewood—sticks and twigs principally, but also larger portions of seasoned branches and fine, dry, last-year’s grasses.  He threw down several large pieces on top of the snow.  This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from drowning itself in the snow it otherwise would melt.  The flame he got by touching a match to a small shred of birch-bark that he took from his pocket.  This burned even more readily than paper.  Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with wisps of dry grass and with the tiniest dry twigs.

He worked slowly and carefully, keenly aware of his danger.  Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the twigs with which he fed it.  He squatted in the snow, pulling the twigs out from their entanglement in the brush and feeding directly to the flame.  He knew there must be no failure.  When it is seventy-five below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire—that is, if his feet are wet.  If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile and restore his circulation.  But the circulation of wet and freezing feet cannot be restored by running when it is seventy-five below.  No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze the harder.

All this the man knew.  The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice.  Already all sensation had gone out of his feet.  To build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb.  His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities.  But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down.  The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow.  The blood of his body recoiled before it.  The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold.  So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body.  The extremities were the first to feel its absence.  His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze.  Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood.

But he was safe.  Toes and nose and cheeks would be only touched by the frost, for the fire was beginning to burn with strength.  He was feeding it with twigs the size of his finger.  In another minute he would be able to feed it with branches the size of his wrist, and then he could remove his wet foot-gear, and, while it dried, he could keep his naked feet warm by the fire, rubbing them at first, of course, with snow.  The fire was a success.  He was safe.  He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled.  The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below.  Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself.  Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought.  All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right.  Any man who was a man could travel alone.  But it was surprising, the rapidity with which his cheeks and nose were freezing.  And he had not thought his fingers could go lifeless in so short a time.  Lifeless they were, for he could scarcely make them move together to grip a twig, and they seemed remote from his body and from him.  When he touched a twig, he had to look and see whether or not he had hold of it.  The wires were pretty well down between him and his finger-ends.

All of which counted for little.  There was the fire, snapping and crackling and promising life with every dancing flame.  He started to untie his moccasins.  They were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the mocassin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration.  For a moment he tugged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he drew his sheath-knife.

But before he could cut the strings, it happened.  It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake.  He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree.  He should have built it in the open.  But it had been easier to pull the twigs from the brush and drop them directly on the fire.  Now the tree under which he had done this carried a weight of snow on its boughs.  No wind had blown for weeks, and each bough was fully freighted.  Each time he had pulled a twig he had communicated a slight agitation to the tree—an imperceptible agitation, so far as he was concerned, but an agitation sufficient to bring about the disaster.  High up in the tree one bough capsized its load of snow.  This fell on the boughs beneath, capsizing them.  This process continued, spreading out and involving the whole tree.  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.  For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been.  Then he grew very calm.  Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.  If he had only had a trail-mate he would have been in no danger now.  The trail-mate could have built the fire.  Well, it was up to him to build the fire over again, and this second time there must be no failure.  Even if he succeeded, he would most likely lose some toes.  His feet must be badly frozen by now, and there would be some time before the second fire was ready.

Such were his thoughts, but he did not sit and think them.  He was busy all the time they were passing through his mind, he made a new foundation for a fire, this time in the open; where no treacherous tree could blot it out.  Next, he gathered dry grasses and tiny twigs from the high-water flotsam.  He could not bring his fingers together to pull them out, but he was able to gather them by the handful.  In this way he got many rotten twigs and bits of green moss that were undesirable, but it was the best he could do.  He worked methodically, even collecting an armful of the larger branches to be used later when the fire gathered strength.  And all the while the dog sat and watched him, a certain yearning wistfulness in its eyes, for it looked upon him as the fire-provider, and the fire was slow in coming.

When all was ready, the man reached in his pocket for a second piece of birch-bark.  He knew the bark was there, and, though he could not feel it with his fingers, he could hear its crisp rustling as he fumbled for it.  Try as he would, he could not clutch hold of it.  And all the time, in his consciousness, was the knowledge that each instant his feet were freezing.  This thought tended to put him in a panic, but he fought against it and kept calm.  He pulled on his mittens with his teeth, and threshed his arms back and forth, beating his hands with all his might against his sides.  He did this sitting down, and he stood up to do it; and all the while the dog sat in the snow, its wolf-brush of a tail curled around warmly over its forefeet, its sharp wolf-ears pricked forward intently as it watched the man.  And the man as he beat and threshed with his arms and hands, felt a great surge of envy as he regarded the creature that was warm and secure in its natural covering.

After a time he was aware of the first far-away signals of sensation in his beaten fingers.  The faint tingling grew stronger till it evolved into a stinging ache that was excruciating, but which the man hailed with satisfaction.  He stripped the mitten from his right hand and fetched forth the birch-bark.  The exposed fingers were quickly going numb again.  Next he brought out his bunch of sulphur matches.  But the tremendous cold had already driven the life out of his fingers.  In his effort to separate one match from the others, the whole bunch fell in the snow.  He tried to pick it out of the snow, but failed.  The dead fingers could neither touch nor clutch.  He was very careful.  He drove the thought of his freezing feet; and nose, and cheeks, out of his mind, devoting his whole soul to the matches.  He watched, using the sense of vision in place of that of touch, and when he saw his fingers on each side the bunch, he closed them—that is, he willed to close them, for the wires were drawn, and the fingers did not obey.  He pulled the mitten on the right hand, and beat it fiercely against his knee.  Then, with both mittened hands, he scooped the bunch of matches, along with much snow, into his lap.  Yet he was no better off.

After some manipulation he managed to get the bunch between the heels of his mittened hands.  In this fashion he carried it to his mouth.  The ice crackled and snapped when by a violent effort he opened his mouth.  He drew the lower jaw in, curled the upper lip out of the way, and scraped the bunch with his upper teeth in order to separate a match.  He succeeded in getting one, which he dropped on his lap.  He was no better off.  He could not pick it up.  Then he devised a way.  He picked it up in his teeth and scratched it on his leg.  Twenty times he scratched before he succeeded in lighting it.  As it flamed he held it with his teeth to the birch-bark.  But the burning brimstone went up his nostrils and into his lungs, causing him to cough spasmodically.  The match fell into the snow and went out.

The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of controlled despair that ensued: after fifty below, a man should travel with a partner.  He beat his hands, but failed in exciting any sensation.  Suddenly he bared both hands, removing the mittens with his teeth.  He caught the whole bunch between the heels of his hands.  His arm-muscles not being frozen enabled him to press the hand-heels tightly against the matches.  Then he scratched the bunch along his leg.  It flared into flame, seventy sulphur matches at once!  There was no wind to blow them out.  He kept his head to one side to escape the strangling fumes, and held the blazing bunch to the birch-bark.  As he so held it, he became aware of sensation in his hand.  His flesh was burning.  He could smell it.  Deep down below the surface he could feel it.  The sensation developed into pain that grew acute.  And still he endured it, holding the flame of the matches clumsily to the bark that would not light readily because his own burning hands were in the way, absorbing most of the flame.

At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart.  The blazing matches fell sizzling into the snow, but the birch-bark was alight.  He began laying dry grasses and the tiniest twigs on the flame.  He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel between the heels of his hands.  Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth.  He cherished the flame carefully and awkwardly.  It meant life, and it must not perish.  The withdrawal of blood from the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward.  A large piece of green moss fell squarely on the little fire.  He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering.  He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered.  Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out.  The fire-provider had failed.  As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless, hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting its weight back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.

The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head.  He remembered the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved.  He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them.  Then he could build another fire.  He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man to speak in such way before.  Something was the matter, and its suspicious nature sensed danger,—it knew not what danger but somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man.  It flattened its ears down at the sound of the man’s voice, and its restless, hunching movements and the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced but it would not come to the man.  He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog.  This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away.

The man sat up in the snow for a moment and struggled for calmness.  Then he pulled on his mittens, by means of his teeth, and got upon his feet.  He glanced down at first in order to assure himself that he was really standing up, for the absence of sensation in his feet left him unrelated to the earth.  His erect position in itself started to drive the webs of suspicion from the dog’s mind; and when he spoke peremptorily, with the sound of whip-lashes in his voice, the dog rendered its customary allegiance and came to him.  As it came within reaching distance, the man lost his control.  His arms flashed out to the dog, and he experienced genuine surprise when he discovered that his hands could not clutch, that there was neither bend nor feeling in the lingers.  He had forgotten for the moment that they were frozen and that they were freezing more and more.  All this happened quickly, and before the animal could get away, he encircled its body with his arms.  He sat down in the snow, and in this fashion held the dog, while it snarled and whined and struggled.

But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there.  He realized that he could not kill the dog.  There was no way to do it.  With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal.  He released it, and it plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling.  It halted forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward.  The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms.  It struck him as curious that one should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were.  He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides.  He did this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his shivering.  But no sensation was aroused in the hands.  He had an impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.

A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him.  This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him.  This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail.  The dog joined in behind and kept up with him.  He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life.  Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began to see things again—the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, the leafless aspens, and the sky.  The running made him feel better.  He did not shiver.  Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys.  Without doubt he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there.  And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead.  This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider.  Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.

It struck him as curious that he could run at all on feet so frozen that he could not feel them when they struck the earth and took the weight of his body.  He seemed to himself to skim along above the surface and to have no connection with the earth.  Somewhere he had once seen a winged Mercury, and he wondered if Mercury felt as he felt when skimming over the earth.

His theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw in it: he lacked the endurance.  Several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell.  When he tried to rise, he failed.  He must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and keep on going.  As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and comfortable.  He was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk.  And yet, when he touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation.  Running would not thaw them out.  Nor would it thaw out his hands and feet.  Then the thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must be extending.  He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic.  But the thought asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen.  This was too much, and he made another wild run along the trail.  Once he slowed down to a walk, but the thought of the freezing extending itself made him run again.

And all the time the dog ran with him, at his heels.  When he fell down a second time, it curled its tail over its forefeet and sat in front of him facing him curiously eager and intent.  The warmth and security of the animal angered him, and he cursed it till it flattened down its ears appeasingly.  This time the shivering came more quickly upon the man.  He was losing in his battle with the frost.  It was creeping into his body from all sides.  The thought of it drove him on, but he ran no more than a hundred feet, when he staggered and pitched headlong.  It was his last panic.  When he had recovered his breath and control, he sat up and entertained in his mind the conception of meeting death with dignity.  However, the conception did not come to him in such terms.  His idea of it was that he had been making a fool of himself, running around like a chicken with its head cut off—such was the simile that occurred to him.  Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently.  With this new-found peace of mind came the first glimmerings of drowsiness.  A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death.  It was like taking an anæsthetic.  Freezing was not so bad as people thought.  There were lots worse ways to die.

He pictured the boys finding his body next day.  Suddenly he found himself with them, coming along the trail and looking for himself.  And, still with them, he came around a turn in the trail and found himself lying in the snow.  He did not belong with himself any more, for even then he was out of himself, standing with the boys and looking at himself in the snow.  It certainly was cold, was his thought.  When he got back to the States he could tell the folks what real cold was.  He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek.  He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.

“You were right, old hoss; you were right,” the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.

Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.  The dog sat facing him and waiting.  The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight.  There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog’s experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire.  As the twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man.  But the man remained silent.  Later, the dog whined loudly.  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.  Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.

John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

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“The Lottery Ticket” Fiction by Anton Chekhov (1887)

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IVAN DMITRITCH, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and began reading the newspaper.

“I forgot to look at the newspaper today,” his wife said to him as she cleared the table. “Look and see whether the list of drawings is there.”

“Yes, it is,” said Ivan Dmitritch; “but hasn’t your ticket lapsed?”

“No; I took the interest on Tuesday.”

“What is the number?”

“Series 9,499, number 26.”

“All right… we will look… 9,499 and 26.”

Ivan Dmitritch had no faith in lottery luck, and would not, as a rule, have consented to look at the lists of winning numbers, but now, as he had nothing else to do and as the newspaper was before his eyes, he passed his finger downwards along the column of numbers. And immediately, as though in mockery of his scepticism, no further than the second line from the top, his eye was caught by the figure 9,499! Unable to believe his eyes, he hurriedly dropped the paper on his knees without looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as though some one had given him a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the pit of the stomach; tingling and terrible and sweet!

“Masha, 9,499 is there!” he said in a hollow voice.

His wife looked at his astonished and panic-stricken face, and realized that he was not joking.

“9,499?” she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on the table.

“Yes, yes… it really is there!”

“And the number of the ticket?”

“Oh, yes! There’s the number of the ticket too. But stay… wait! No, I say! Anyway, the number of our series is there! Anyway, you understand….”

Looking at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a broad, senseless smile, like a baby when a bright object is shown it. His wife smiled too; it was as pleasant to her as to him that he only mentioned the series, and did not try to find out the number of the winning ticket. To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!

“It is our series,” said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence. “So there is a probability that we have won. It’s only a probability, but there it is!”

“Well, now look!”

“Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It’s on the second line from the top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That’s not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I shall look at the list, and there—26! Eh? I say, what if we really have won?”

The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence. The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go. They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their imagination, while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself which was so possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner, and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.

“And if we have won,” he said—“why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation! The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new furnishing… travelling… paying debts, and so on…. The other forty thousand I would put in the bank and get interest on it.”

“Yes, an estate, that would be nice,” said his wife, sitting down and dropping her hands in her lap.

“Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces…. In the first place we shouldn’t need a summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income.”

And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical than the last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot! Here, after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close to a stream or in the garden under a lime-tree…. It is hot…. His little boy and girl are crawling about near him, digging in the sand or catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes sweetly, thinking of nothing, and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow, or the day after. Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the peasants catching fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the bathing-shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare chest with his hands, and goes into the water. And in the water, near the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-weeds nod their heads. After bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls…. In the evening a walk or vint with the neighbours.

“Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate,” said his wife, also dreaming, and from her face it was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.

Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its St. Martin’s summer. At that season he would have to take longer walks about the garden and beside the river, so as to get thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big glass of vodka and eat a salted mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then—drink another…. The children would come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh earth…. And then, he would lie stretched full length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his waistcoat, give himself up to slumber.

The St. Martin’s summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains day and night, the bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs, the horses, the fowls—all are wet, depressed, downcast. There is nowhere to walk; one can’t go out for days together; one has to pace up and down the room, looking despondently at the grey window. It is dreary!

Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.

“I should go abroad, you know, Masha,” he said.

And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad somewhere to the South of France… to Italy…. to India!

“I should certainly go abroad too,” his wife said. “But look at the number of the ticket!”

“Wait, wait!…”

He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what if his wife really did go abroad? It is pleasant to travel alone, or in the society of light, careless women who live in the present, and not such as think and talk all the journey about nothing but their children, sigh, and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan Dmitritch imagined his wife in the train with a multitude of parcels, baskets, and bags; she would be sighing over something, complaining that the train made her head ache, that she had spent so much money…. At the stations he would continually be having to run for boiling water, bread and butter…. She wouldn’t have dinner because of its being too dear….

“She would begrudge me every farthing,” he thought, with a glance at his wife. “The lottery ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of her going abroad? What does she want there? She would shut herself up in the hotel, and not let me out of her sight…. I know!”

And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his wife had grown elderly and plain, and that she was saturated through and through with the smell of cooking, while he was still young, fresh, and healthy, and might well have got married again.

“Of course, all that is silly nonsense,” he thought; “but… why should she go abroad? What would she make of it? And yet she would go, of course…. I can fancy… In reality it is all one to her, whether it is Naples or Klin. She would only be in my way. I should be dependent upon her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she will lock the money up as soon as she gets it…. She will hide it from me…. She will look after her relations and grudge me every farthing.”

Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they heard of the winning ticket, would begin whining like beggars, and fawning upon them with oily, hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable people! If they were given anything, they would ask for more; while if they were refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them every kind of misfortune.

Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful.

“They are such reptiles!” he thought.

And his wife’s face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger surged up in his heart against her, and he thought malignantly:

“She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she would give me a hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and key.”

And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She glanced at him too, and also with hatred and anger. She had her own daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections; she understood perfectly well what her husband’s dreams were. She knew who would be the first to try and grab her winnings.

“It’s very nice making daydreams at other people’s expense!” is what her eyes expressed. “No, don’t you dare!”

Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his breast, and in order to annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her at the fourth page on the newspaper and read out triumphantly:

“Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!”

Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to seem to Ivan Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small and low-pitched, that the supper they had been eating was not doing them good, but lying heavy on their stomachs, that the evenings were long and wearisome….

“What the devil’s the meaning of it?” said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to be ill-humoured. “Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one’s feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are never swept! One is simply forced to go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go and hang myself on the first aspen-tree!”

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov Russian: Антон Павлович Чехов, (29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. “Medicine is my lawful wife,” he once said, “and literature is my mistress.”

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“The Gift of the Magi” Fiction by O. Henry (1905)

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One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: “Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again—you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

Jim looked about the room curiously.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry and non-fiction. His works include “The Gift of the Magi“, “The Duplicity of Hargraves“, and “The Ransom of Red Chief“, as well as the novel Cabbages and Kings. Porter’s stories are known for their naturalist observations, witty narration, and surprise endings.

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Rural Fiction Magazine: New Works Coming Soon

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So far at least six stories and two poems, each appearing on separate days, have been scheduled for publication between now and February 1. If more are scheduled, their titles and authors will be posted on this blog. Here are the ones currently slated:

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“Old Garfield’s Heart” Horror by Robert E. Howard (1933)

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I WAS SITTING on the porch when my grandfather hobbled out and sank down on his favorite chair with the cushioned seat, and began to stuff tobacco in his old corncob-pipe.

“I thought you’d be goin’ to the dance,” he said.

“I’m waiting for Doc Blaine,” I answered. “I’m going over to old man Garfield’s with him.”

My grandfather sucked at his pipe awhile before he spoke again.

“Old Jim purty bad off?”

“Doc says he hasn’t a chance.”

“Who’s takin’ care of him?”

“Joe Braxton—­against Garfield’s wishes. But somebody had to stay with him.”

My grandfather sucked his pipe noisily, and watched the heat lightning playing away off up in the hills; then he said: “You think old Jim’s the biggest liar in this county, don’t you?”

“He tells some pretty tall tales,” I admitted. “Some of the things he claimed he took part in, must have happened before he was born.”

“I came from Tennesee to Texas in 1870,” my grandfather said abruptly. “I saw this town of Lost Knob grow up from nothin’. There wasn’t even a log-hut store here when I came. But old Jim Garfield was here, livin’ in the same place he lives now, only then it was a log cabin. He don’t look a day older now than he did the first time I saw him.”

“You never mentioned that before,” I said in some surprise.

“I knew you’d put it down to an old man’s maunderin’s,” he answered. “Old Jim was the first white man to settle in this country. He built his cabin a good fifty miles west of the frontier. God knows how he done it, for these hills swarmed with Comanches then.

“I remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then everybody called him ‘old Jim.’

“I remember him tellin’ me the same tales he’s told you—­how he was at the battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he’d rode with Ewen Cameron and Jack Hayes. Only I believe him, and you don’t.”

“That was so long ago—­” I protested.

“The last Indian raid through this country was in 1874,” said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences. “I was in on that fight, and so was old Jim. I saw him knock old Yellow Tail off his mustang at seven hundred yards with a buffalo rifle.

“But before that I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek. A band of Comanches came down Mesquital, lootin’ and burnin’, rode through the hills and started back up Locust Creek, and a scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran on to them just at sundown in a mesquite flat. We killed seven of them, and the rest skinned out through the brush on foot. But three of our boys were killed, and Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance.

“It was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and it seemed sure nobody could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the brush, and when we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish. I don’t know why the boys didn’t shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fightin’ and killin’, but somethin’ about him made us hold our fire. He said he wasn’t a Comanche, but was an old friend of Garfield’s, and wanted to help him. He asked us to carry Jim into a clump of mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day I don’t know why we did, but we did. It was an awful time—­the wounded moanin’ and callin’ for water, the starin’ corpses strewn about the camp, night comin’ on, and no way of knowin’ that the Indians wouldn’t return when dark fell.

“We made camp right there, because the horses were fagged out, and we watched all night, but the Comanches didn’t come back. I don’t know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield’s body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again; but durin’ the night I kept hearin’ a weird moanin’ that wasn’t made by the dyin’ men, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn.

“And at sunrise Jim Garfield came walkin’ out of the mesquite, pale and haggard, but alive, and already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to heal. And since then he’s never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, nor the strange Indian who came and went so mysteriously. And he hasn’t aged a bit; he looks now just like he did then—­a man of about fifty.”

In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dusk.

“That’s Doc Blaine,” I said. “When I come back I’ll tell you how Garfield is.”

Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak covered hills that lay between Lost Knob and the Garfield farm.

“I’ll be surprised to find him alive,” he said, “smashed up like he is. A man his age ought to have more sense than to try to break a young horse.”

“He doesn’t look so old,” I remarked.

“I’ll be fifty, my next birthday,” answered Doc Blaine. “I’ve known him all my life, and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving.”

Old Garfield’s dwelling-place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails.

Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man’s protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered, his limbs rounded out with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent an innate virility. His eyes, though partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element.

“He’s been ravin’,” said Joe Braxton stolidly.

“First white man in this country,” muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible. “Hills no white man ever set foot in before. Gettin’ too old. Have to settle down. Can’t move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cow-men and squatters. Wish Ewen Cameron could see this country. The Mexicans shot him. Damn ’em!”

Doc Blaine shook his head. “He’s all smashed up inside. He won’t live till daylight.”

Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head and looked at us with clear eyes.

“Wrong, Doc,” he wheezed, his breath whistling with pain. “I’ll live. What’s broken bones and twisted guts? Nothin’! It’s the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumpin’, a man can’t die. My heart’s sound. Listen to it! Feel of it!”

He groped painfully for Doc Blaine’s wrist, dragged his hand to his bosom and held it there, staring up into the doctor’s face with avid intensity.

“Regular dynamo, ain’t it?” he gasped. “Stronger’n a gasoline engine!”

Blaine beckoned me. “Lay your hand here,” he said, placing my hand on the old man’s bare breast. “He does have a remarkable heart action.”

I noted, in the light of the coal-oil lamp, a great livid scar in the gaunt arching breast—­such a scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar, and an exclamation escaped my lips.

Under my hand old Jim Garfield’s heart pulsed, but its throb was like no other heart action I have ever observed. Its power was astounding; his ribs vibrated to its steady throb. It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm, until my own heart seemed to speed up in response.

“I can’t die,” old Jim gasped. “Not so long as my heart’s in my breast. Only a bullet through the brain can kill me. And even then I wouldn’t be rightly dead, as long as my heart beats in my breast. Yet it ain’t rightly mine, either. It belongs to Ghost Man, the Lipan chief. It was the heart of a god the Lipans worshipped before the Comanches drove ’em out of their native hills.

“I knew Ghost Man down on the Rio Grande, when I was with Ewen Cameron. I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost wampum between him and me—­the wampum no man but me and him can see or feel. He came when he knowed I needed him, in that fight up on the headwaters of Locust Creek, when I got this scar.

“I was dead as a man can be. My heart was sliced in two, like the heart of a butchered beef steer.

“All night Ghost Man did magic, callin’ my ghost back from spirit-land. I remember that flight, a little. It was dark, and gray-like, and I drifted through gray mists and heard the dead wailin’ past me in the mist. But Ghost Man brought me back.

“He took out what was left of my mortal heart, and put the heart of the god in my bosom. But it’s his, and when I’m through with it, he’ll come for it. It’s kept me alive and strong for the lifetime of a man. Age can’t touch me. What do I care if these fools around here call me an old liar? What I know, I know. But hark’ee!”

His fingers became claws, clamping fiercely on Doc Blaine’s wrist. His old eyes, old yet strangely young, burned fierce as those of an eagle under his bushy brows.

“If by some mischance I should die, now or later, promise me this! Cut into my bosom and take out the heart Ghost Man lent me so long ago! It’s his. And as long as it beats in my body, my spirit’ll be tied to that body, though my head be crushed like an egg underfoot! A livin’ thing in a rottin’ body! Promise!”

“All right, I promise,” replied Doc Blaine, to humor him, and old Jim Garfield sank back with a whistling sigh of relief.

He did not die that night, nor the next, nor the next. I well remember the next day, because it was that day that I had the fight with Jack Kirby.

People will take a good deal from a bully, rather than to spill blood. Because nobody had gone to the trouble of killing him, Kirby thought the whole countryside was afraid of him.

He had bought a steer from my father, and when my father went to collect for it, Kirby told him that he had paid the money to me—­which was a lie. I went looking for Kirby, and came upon him in a bootleg joint, boasting of his toughness, and telling the crowd that he was going to beat me up and make me say that he had paid me the money, and that I had stuck it into my own pocket. When I heard him say that, I saw red, and ran in on him with a stockman’s knife, and cut him across the face, and in the neck, side, breast and belly, and the only thing that saved his life was the fact that the crowd pulled me off.

There was a preliminary hearing, and I was indicted on a charge of assault, and my trial was set for the following term of court. Kirby was as tough-fibered as a post-oak country bully ought to be, and he recovered, swearing vengeance, for he was vain of his looks, though God knows why, and I had permanently impaired them.

And while Jack Kirby was recovering, old man Garfield recovered too, to the amazement of everybody, especially Doc Blaine.

I well remember the night Doc Blaine took me again out to old Jim Garfield’s farm. I was in Shifty Corlan’s joint, trying to drink enough of the slop he called beer to get a kick out of it, when Doc Blaine came in and persuaded me to go with him.

As we drove along the winding old road in Doc’s car, I asked: “Why are you insistent that I go with you this particular night? This isn’t a professional call, is it?”

“No,” he said. “You couldn’t kill old Jim with a post-oak maul. He’s completely recovered from injuries that ought to have killed an ox. To tell the truth, Jack Kirby is in Lost Knob, swearing he’ll shoot you on sight.”

“Well, for God’s sake!” I exclaimed angrily. “Now everybody’ll think I left town because I was afraid of him. Turn around and take me back, damn it!”

“Be reasonable,” said Doc. “Everybody knows you’re not afraid of Kirby. Nobody’s afraid of him now. His bluff’s broken, and that’s why he’s so wild against you. But you can’t afford to have any more trouble with him now, and your trial only a short time off.”

I laughed and said: “Well, if he’s looking for me hard enough, he can find me as easily at old Garfield’s as in town, because Shifty Corlan heard you say where we were going. And Shifty’s hated me ever since I skinned him in that horse-swap last fall. He’ll tell Kirby where I went.”

“I never thought of that,” said Doc Blaine, worried.

“Hell, forget it,” I advised. “Kirby hasn’t got guts enough to do anything but blow.”

But I was mistaken. Puncture a bully’s vanity and you touch his one vital spot.

Old Jim had not gone to bed when we got there. He was sitting in the room opening on to his sagging porch, the room which was at once living-room and bedroom, smoking his old cob pipe and trying to read a newspaper by the light of his coal-oil lamp. All the windows and doors were wide open for the coolness, and the insects which swarmed in and fluttered around the lamp didn’t seem to bother him.

We sat down and discussed the weather—­which isn’t so inane as one might suppose, in a country where men’s livelihood depends on sun and rain, and is at the mercy of wind and drouth. The talk drifted into other kindred channels, and after some time, Doc Blaine bluntly spoke of something that hung in his mind.

“Jim,” he said, “that night I thought you were dying, you babbled a lot of stuff about your heart, and an Indian who lent you his. How much of that was delirium?”

“None, Doc,” said Garfield, pulling at his pipe. “It was gospel truth. Ghost Man, the Lipan priest of the Gods of Night, replaced my dead, torn heart with one from somethin’ he worshipped. I ain’t sure myself just what that somethin’ is—­somethin’ from away back and a long way off, he said. But bein’ a god, it can do without its heart for awhile. But when I die—­if I ever get my head smashed so my consciousness is destroyed—­the heart must be given back to Ghost Man.”

“You mean you were in earnest about cutting out your heart?” demanded Doc Blaine.

“It has to be,” answered old Garfield. “A livin’ thing in a dead thing is opposed to nat’er. That’s what Ghost Man said.”

“Who the devil was Ghost Man?”

“I told you. A witch-doctor of the Lipans, who dwelt in this country before the Comanches came down from the Staked Plains and drove ’em south across the Rio Grande. I was a friend to ’em. I reckon Ghost Man is the only one left alive.”

“Alive? Now?”

“I dunno,” confessed old Jim. “I dunno whether he’s alive or dead. I dunno whether he was alive when he came to me after the fight on Locust Creek, or even if he was alive when I knowed him in the southern country. Alive as we understand life, I mean.”

“What balderdash is this?” demanded Doc Blaine uneasily, and I felt a slight stirring in my hair. Outside was stillness, and the stars, and the black shadows of the post-oak woods. The lamp cast old Garfield’s shadow grotesquely on the wall, so that it did not at all resemble that of a human, and his words were strange as words heard in a nightmare.

“I knowed you wouldn’t understand,” said old Jim. “I don’t understand myself, and I ain’t got the words to explain them things I feel and know without understandin’. The Lipans were kin to the Apaches, and the Apaches learnt curious things from the Pueblos. Ghost Man was—­that’s all I can say—­alive or dead, I don’t know, but he was. What’s more, he is.”

“Is it you or me that’s crazy?” asked Doc Blaine.

“Well,” said old Jim, “I’ll tell you this much—­Ghost Man knew Coronado.”

“Crazy as a loon!” murmured Doc Blaine. Then he lifted his head. “What’s that?”

“Horse turning in from the road,” I said. “Sounds like it stopped.”

I stepped to the door, like a fool, and stood etched in the light behind me. I got a glimpse of a shadowy bulk I knew to be a man on a horse; then Doc Blaine yelled: “Look out!” and threw himself against me, knocking us both sprawling. At the same instant I heard the smashing report of a rifle, and old Garfield grunted and fell heavily.

“Jack Kirby!” screamed Doc Blaine. “He’s killed Jim!”

I scrambled up, hearing the clatter of retreating hoofs, snatched old Jim’s shotgun from the wall, rushed recklessly out on to the sagging porch and let go both barrels at the fleeing shape, dim in the starlight. The charge was too light to kill at that range, but the bird-shot stung the horse and maddened him. He swerved, crashed headlong through a rail fence and charged across the orchard, and a peach tree limb knocked his rider out of the saddle. He never moved after he hit the ground. I ran out there and looked down at him. It was Jack Kirby, right enough, and his neck was broken like a rotten branch.

I let him lie, and ran back to the house. Doc Blaine had stretched old Garfield out on a bench he’d dragged in from the porch, and Doc’s face was whiter than I’d ever seen it. Old Jim was a ghastly sight; he had been shot with an old-fashioned .45-70, and at that range the heavy ball had literally torn off the top of his head. His features were masked with blood and brains. He had been directly behind me, poor old devil, and he had stopped the slug meant for me.

Doc Blaine was trembling, though he was anything but a stranger to such sights.

“Would you pronounce him dead?” he asked.

“That’s for you to say.” I answered. “But even a fool could tell that he’s dead.

“He is dead,” said Doc Blaine in a strained unnatural voice. “Rigor mortis is already setting in. But feel his heart!”

I did, and cried out. The flesh was already cold and clammy; but beneath it that mysterious heart still hammered steadily away, like a dynamo in a deserted house. No blood coursed through those veins; yet the heart pounded, pounded, pounded, like the pulse of Eternity.

“A living thing in a dead thing,” whispered Doc Blaine, cold sweat on his face. “This is opposed to nature. I am going to keep the promise I made him. I’ll assume full responsibility. This is too monstrous to ignore.”

Our implements were a butcher-knife and a hack-saw. Outside only the still stars looked down on the black post-oak shadows and the dead man that lay in the orchard. Inside, the old lamp flickered, making strange shadows move and shiver and cringe in the corners, and glistened on the blood on the floor, and the red-dabbled figure on the bench. The only sound inside was the crunch of the saw-edge in bone; outside an owl began to hoot weirdly.

Doc Blaine thrust a red-stained hand into the aperture he had made, and drew out a red, pulsing object that caught the lamplight. With a choked cry he recoiled, and the thing slipped from his fingers and fell on the table. And I too cried out involuntarily. For it did not fall with a soft meaty thud, as a piece of flesh should fall. It thumped hard on the table.

Impelled by an irresistible urge, I bent and gingerly picked up old Garfield’s heart. The feel of it was brittle, unyielding, like steel or stone, but smoother than either. In size and shape it was the duplicate of a human heart, but it was slick and smooth, and its crimson surface reflected the lamplight like a jewel more lambent than any ruby; and in my hand it still throbbed mightily, sending vibratory radiations of energy up my arm until my own heart seemed swelling and bursting in response. It was cosmic power, beyond my comprehension, concentrated into the likeness of a human heart.

The thought came to me that here was a dynamo of life, the nearest approach to immortality that is possible for the destructible human body, the materialization of a cosmic secret more wonderful than the fabulous fountain sought for by Ponce de Leon. My soul was drawn into that unterrestrial gleam, and I suddenly wished passionately that it hammered and thundered in my own bosom in place of my paltry heart of tissue and muscle.

Doc Blaine ejaculated incoherently. I wheeled.

The noise of his coming had been no greater than the whispering of a night wind through the corn. There in the doorway he stood, tall, dark, inscrutable—­an Indian warrior, in the paint, war bonnet, breech-clout and moccasins of an elder age. His dark eyes burned like fires gleaming deep under fathomless black lakes. Silently he extended his hand, and I dropped Jim Garfield’s heart into it. Then without a word he turned and stalked into the night. But when Doc Blaine and I rushed out into the yard an instant later, there was no sign of any human being. He had vanished like a phantom of the night, and only something that looked like an owl was flying, dwindling from sight, into the rising moon.

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American writer. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre.

Howard was born and raised in Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood. A bookish and intellectual child, he was also a fan of boxing and spent some time in his late teens bodybuilding, eventually taking up amateur boxing. From the age of nine he dreamed of becoming a writer of adventure fiction but did not have real success until he was 23. Thereafter, until his death by suicide at age 30, Howard’s writings were published in a wide selection of magazines, journals, and newspapers, and he became proficient in several subgenres. His greatest success occurred after his death…

from Wikipedia

“Old Garfield’s Heart” was first published in Weird Tales in December, 1933.

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