six o’clock
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 .