At 9:00 on an extremely cold winter morning (−75 °F or −59 °C), an unnamed man leaves the Yukon Trail, expecting to meet his associates ("the boys") at a mining claim by 6:00 that evening. The man is accompanied only by a large husky dog, whose instincts tell it that the weather is too cold for traveling. However, the weather does not deter the man, a relative newcomer to the Yukon, even though the water vapor in the man's exhaled breaths and the saliva from the tobacco he is chewing have frozen his mouth shut. As he hikes along a creek, he takes care to avoid pockets of unfrozen water hidden beneath thin layers of ice. He stops to build a fire and thaw out so he can eat his lunch, but after he begins hiking again, he breaks through the ice and soaks his feet and lower legs.