With this understanding the men parted; Kuiktuk remaining with Dunbar and Gibbs for another day, when, giving them full and explicit directions as to the route to the creek, as well as a complete description of the same, he started back to his own camp. Again the two men pushed southward. "We're up against it now, Dunbar," laughed Gibbs, "and its a question of who'll win out. If it hadn't been for the old rascal's appetite we would have made Kuiktuk come the entire way to Midas; but he lowered our grub so fast it was no use." "No, but be sure you don't lose his rude map and directions to Midas in your notebook. Without them we would indeed be up against it, as you say," replied the older man, seriously, as they were making their way across the big "Divide" when the native had left them. Snow was now beginning to fall in large flakes; a storm signal, and one they liked little. The temperature was falling. It was quite dark at three o'clock in the afternoon, and they were obliged to travel by snow-light. When camp was finally made, after halting for the night in a thicket of pine and spruce trees, the men were cold, tired and hungry. Close under the branches of the pine trees they pitched their little tent for shelter. A big fire of logs and branches was kindled in front. The weary malamutes and their masters had eaten, and lay stretched upon the ground, the men in sleeping bags, thrown upon boughs from the thicket; the dogs upon the snow near the fire. The latter was to be replenished during the night from the pile of sticks just gathered, and the animals would act as sentinels in case a wolf or bear happened to stray that way. Oh, the loneliness of that winter's night; they were surrounded by a sheeted wilderness, how far from human habitation they did not know. No moon or stars gave light to cheer the wanderers, but instead, snow falling heavily and noiselessly over all. No winds stirred among the pines, causing them dead silence. The one solitary sound to be heard at intervals was the snapping in the fire of some pine knot, long since broken and dead upon the ground, or clipped from its parent stem by the axe of the prospector. When the storm had cleared and the two miners were able to look about them sufficiently, they discovered the creek described by Kuiktuk. It lay between high hills, locked in the icy grip of an Arctic winter. On the southern exposure of these hills grew fir, pine and spruce trees of no great size, but still invaluable to prospectors in this otherwise inhospitable region. Had it been in summer time one could have seen a narrow and sinuous creek flowing in a northeasterly direction, emptying itself into a much larger and more sinuous stream which trended easterly and united with the great Koyukuk. There were but a few low-lying "benches" to be found. The hills were everywhere. They sprang from the earth like mushrooms in a moist garden. Their summits were rock-ribbed and sides boulder-strewn.