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No, he tried to say again His mouth opened, and ice sprinkled into his throat

His mother ith him She walked in froh the snow still poured heavily from the sky She looked sad, but there was condemnation on her face as well, and when she opened her

And then the as there again, Death, standing between Jack and the ie of his mother It snarled, and she turned away Then it disappeared into the blizzard once

Jack felt his heart slow, as if the blood were freezing in his veins just as the waters of the hty Yukon had drawn to an icy standstill He had read that the last sense to leave a dying ; when he drew in a breath he s faded into oblivion, he heard theout of a different sort of white silence with a huge gasping breath, as though waking froiant’s fist pressing down upon it, crushing, and then abruptly it pulled away He breathed in ragged gulps of air, all his senses rushing back to life, and with every breath his nostrils filled with the stink of blood and his throat gurgled with it

He choked, let his head fall to the right, gagged, and spat

Blood There could be nothe iron taste; the rich, meaty odor; and beneath it the smell of animal fear and death He could not feel his hands or feet--he was paralyzed, a prisoner inside the frozen slab of flesh that his body had beco down his sides and spreading across his chest In soed, torn apart, not even given the dignity of a frozen death…

Steaed to crane his neck slightly, thoughts dull and sluggish, his eyes widened The blood that coated his tongue and filled his nostrils, that warmed his face and neck and chest, was not his own His heart ht have stopped--in the back of his uess, and how the cold ht upon his chest came not only fro entrails spilled onto Jack and strung along his ars They had bled all over him and now covered his other than rabbits as well, including a pair of owls, three wolverines, and a ravaged cougar nestled against his left side A rush of fear and revulsion swept through Jack, and his vision blurred

The stink was rich in his nose, the taste in his throat causing hith for it In the deep perpetual gloos Those that had spilled off hiid by now, dried blood rimed with ice They had been replaced by fresher kills Replaced on purpose Their lives had been stolen to save hiht was--feeding him

Once more the darkness encroached upon his vision, but he dared not close his eyes again If he did not move, he would die here He knew that Here was iven a chance He had a hunting knife in its sheath at his hip, as well as flint Get up, Jack You have to build a fire, or you’re done

His right hand tingled with a trickle of warht he felt the brush of fur on the frozen skin With deep concentration, he tried to lift his hand, and though his lied it But he would need id fists to survive, and so he tried to ers

Pain lanced up into his hand and all the way to his elbow, like red-hot wires feeding through his veins Jack cried out, but the only sound that eed hiss, a sort of death rattle The sound terrified hi What sort of death was this for a man who had lived by his wits and his fists, and who had extinguished from his heart any trace of fear he had ever found? No, this was not a fitting end Jack had been determined to conquer the wild, and he would not let it destroy hi, the twitch of a nearby tree branch, and stiffened

"Hello?" he rasped, barely a whisper "Is someone there?"

There was no reply, but then he felt it, that faard With a shuddering breath, he let his head loll oncein the trees off to his right with its head high, some kind of small, furred creature in its jaws Blood stained the wolf’s chest Its eyes glea

Not death, but life!

Jack could not breathe This huge wolf had seemed, before, to peer at him from some spirit world, from the wild heart of the Yukon But now it trotted toward hi tracks in the snow Hishis death, but Jack should have listened to his own hearthiht be his own

Yet the gray beast existed as more than a specter of theinto the snow Pinning it with its paws, the wolf tore it open, blood spattering dark against winter white, and then quickly snatched it up and edged closer It had no fear of Jack, and rightly so He had become so weak that he could barely move and hardly think The blood spilled down frorowling with hunger and twisting in disgust at the saray beast existed as more than a specter of the rowl Jack went still, let the blood splash his lips and nose and throat, but pressed his htly closed Whatever the wolf’s intentions, he’d had enough of surviving on the hot blood of dead things

Again it growled, dropping the little corpse right on his face in a move that seeh inhaling his exhaled breath It nudged his cheek with its snout, then grunted and moved away Halfway to the trees it stopped, tipped its head back, and howled The sound reached inside Jack, curling around his heart, and filled hi he had ever known

The wolf glanced at hih it wanted Jack to join it, to run with it through the snooods, but Jack could not run He could not even stand

From stillness to swiftness, the wolf bolted into the trees, howling again as it vanished into the winter forest Jack listened for as long as he could, but when the howling see back down into darkness, though whether the void beneath hiht be unconsciousness or true death he had not the focus even to wonder

There hispers in the dark Voices Since one of them sounded much more like Merritt Sloper than Saint Peter, Jack decided heHe tried to open his eyes but could not His lips were parted slightly, and he could feel aweeks’ worth of beard Only by probing with his tongue could he find the sed toI told you he was breathing," said one of the voices

Jiht Goodman Good man, Jim Inside, he smiled, but his facial muscles did not seem to respond

"He’ll have frostbite for sure," Merritt replied "If he lives"

"He’ll live," Jim retorted "Look at him Someone wanted him kept alive Maybe a mountain man or Indians"

"Look around Do you see any footprints at all?"