It was a bleak, dreary, wind-swept morning in February. We had broken camp at the faint flush of dawn, after remaining helplessly caught for two days in our tent by a raging blizzard. It had ceased snowing and the thermometer was going down like a piece of lead. The snow, although hardening under the intense cold, was deep.
There was no trail. An Indian was struggling ahead of the dogs.
Everywhere silence. Now and then a mass of snow would slide down noiselessly from the overhanging branch of a spruce tree. There was no sign of animal life. Not a track anywhere. Not even a bird on the wing in the sullen grey sky.
We were following a coulée between two high ridges thickly covered with trees. At a bend of the small valley the Indian, looking ahead, stopped dead. So did the team of Huskies.