cracked, and he was unpleasantly aware of a trickle of warm moisture down his back.
He climbed the bank, the dogs floundering behind, and dodged in among the trees and brush. Slipping out of his snow-shoes, he wallowed forward at full length and peered cautiously out. Nothing was to be seen. Whoever had shot at him was lying quiet among the trees of the opposite bank.
“If something doesn’t happen pretty soon,” he muttered at the end of half an hour, “I’ll have to sneak away and build a fire or freeze my feet. Yellow Face, what’d you do, lying in the frost with circulation getting slack and a man trying to plug you?”
He crawled back a few yards, packed down the snow, danced a jig that sent the blood back into his feet, and managed to endure another half hour. Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle of dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend. Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along. The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks before. His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
Without exposing himself, Smoke whistled warningly. The man did not hear, and came on rapidly. Again, and more sharply, Smoke whistled. The man whoa’d his dogs, stopped, and had turned and faced Smoke when the rifle cracked. The instant afterwards, Smoke fired into the wood in the direction of the sound. The man on the river had been struck by the first shot. The shock of the high velocity bullet staggered him. He stumbled awkwardly to the sled, half- falling, and pulled a rifle out from under the lashings. As he strove to raise it to his shoulder, he crumpled at the waist and sank down slowly to a sitting posture on the sled. Then, abruptly, as the gun went off aimlessly, he pitched backward and across a corner of the sled-load, so that Smoke could see only his legs and stomach.
From below came more jingling bells. The man did not move. Around the bend swung three sleds, accompanied by half a dozen men. Smoke cried warningly, but they had seen the condition of the first sled, and they dashed on to it. No shots came from the other bank, and Smoke, calling his dogs to follow, emerged into the open. There were exclamations from the men, and two of them, flinging off the mittens of their right hands, levelled their rifles at him.
“Come on, you red-handed murderer, you,” one of them, a black- bearded man, commanded, “an’ jest pitch that gun of yourn in the snow.”
Smoke hesitated, then dropped his rifle and came up to them.
“Go through him, Louis, an’ take his weapons,” the black-bearded man ordered.
Louis, a French-Canadian voyageur, Smoke decided, as were four of the others, obeyed. His search revealed only Smoke’s hunting knife, which was appropriated.
“Now, what have you got to say for yourself, Stranger, before I shoot you dead?” the black-bearded man demanded.
“That you’re making a mistake if you think I killed that man,” Smoke answered.
A cry came from one of the voyageurs. He had quested along the trail and found Smoke’s tracks where he had left it to take refuge on the bank. The man explained the nature of his find.
“What’d you kill Joe Kinade for?” he of the black beard asked.
“I tell you I didn’t–” Smoke began.
“Aw, what’s the good of talkin’. We got you red-handed. Right up there’s where you left the trail when you heard him comin’. You laid among the trees an’ bushwhacked him. A short shot. You couldn’t a-missed. Pierre, go an’ get that gun he dropped.”
“You might let me tell what happened,” Smoke objected.
“You shut up,” the man snarled at him. “I reckon your gun’ll tell the story.”
All the men examined Smoke’s rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech.
“One shot,” Blackbeard concluded.
Pierre, with nostrils that quivered and distended like a deer’s, sniffed at the breech.
“Him one fresh shot,” he said.
“The bullet entered his back,” Smoke said. “He was facing me when he was shot. You see, it came from the other bank.”
Blackbeard considered this proposition for a scant second, and shook his head.
“Nope. It won’t do. Turn him around to face the other bank–that’s how you whopped him in the back. Some of you boys run up an’ down the trail and see if you can see any tracks making for the other bank.”
Their report was, that on that side the snow was unbroken. Not even a snow-shoe rabbit had crossed it. Blackbeard, bending over the dead man, straightened up, with a woolly, furry wad in his hand. Shredding this, he found imbedded in the centre the bullet which had perforated the body. Its nose was spread to the size of a half- dollar, its butt-end, steel-jacketed, was undamaged. He compared it with a cartridge from Smoke’s belt.
“That’s plain enough evidence, Stranger, to satisfy a blind man. It’s soft-nosed an’ steel-jacketed; yourn is soft-nosed and steel- jacketed. It’s thirty-thirty; yourn is thirty-thirty. It’s manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company; yourn is manufactured by the J. and T. Arms Company. Now you come along an’ we’ll go over to the bank an’ see jest how you done it.”
“I was bushwhacked myself,” Smoke said. “Look at the hole in my parka.”
While Blackbeard examined it, one of the voyageurs threw open the breech of the dead man’s gun. It was patent to all that it had been fired once. The empty cartridge was still in the chamber.
“A damn shame poor Joe didn’t get you,” Blackbeard said bitterly. “But he did pretty well with a hole like that in him. Come on, you.”
“Search the other bank first,” Smoke urged.
“You shut up an’ come on, an’ let the facts do the talkin’.”
They left the trail at the same spot he had, and followed it on up the bank and in among the trees.
“Him dance that place keep him feet warm,” Louis pointed out. “That place him crawl on belly. That place him put one elbow w’en him shoot–“
“And by God there’s the empty cartridge he had done it with!” was Blackbeard’s discovery. “Boys, there’s only one thing to do–“
“You might ask me how I came to fire that shot,” Smoke interrupted.
“An’ I might knock your teeth into your gullet if you butt in again. You can answer them questions later on. Now, boys, we’re decent an’ law-abidin’, an’ we got to handle this right an’ regular. How far do you reckon we’ve come, Pierre?”
“Twenty mile I t’ink for sure.”
“All right. We’ll cache the outfit an’ run him an’ poor Joe back to Two Cabins. I reckon we’ve seen an’ can testify to what’ll stretch his neck.”
IV.
It was three hours after dark when the dead man, Smoke, and his captors arrived at Two Cabins. By the starlight, Smoke could make out a dozen or more recently built cabins snuggling about a larger and older cabin on a flat by the river bank. Thrust inside this older cabin, he found it tenanted by a young giant of a man, his wife, and an old blind man. The woman, whom her husband called ‘Lucy,’ was herself a strapping creature of the frontier type. The old man, as Smoke learned afterwards, had been a trapper on the Stewart for years, and had gone finally blind the winter before. The camp of Two Cabins, he was also to learn, had been made the previous fall by a dozen men who arrived in half as many poling- boats loaded with provisions. Here they had found the blind trapper, on the site of Two Cabins, and about his cabin they had built their own. Later arrivals, mushing up the ice with dog-teams, had tripled the population. There was plenty of meat in camp, and good low-pay dirt had been discovered and was being worked.
In five minutes, all the men of Two cabins were jammed into the room. Smoke, shoved off into a corner, ignored and scowled at, his hands and feet tied with thongs of moosehide, looked on. Thirty- eight men he counted, a wild and husky crew, all frontiersmen of the States or voyageurs from Upper Canada. His captors told the tale over and over, each the centre of an excited and wrathful group. There were mutterings of “Lynch him now–why wait?” And, once, a big Irishman was restrained only by force from rushing upon the helpless prisoner and giving him a beating.
It was while counting the men that Smoke caught sight of a familiar face. It was Breck, the man whose boat Smoke had run through the rapids. He wondered why the other did not come and speak to him, but himself gave no sign of recognition. Later, when with shielded face Breck passed him a significant wink, Smoke understood.
Blackbeard, whom Smoke heard called Eli Harding, ended the discussion as to whether or not the prisoner should be immediately lynched.
“Hold on,” Harding roared. “Keep your shirts on. That man belongs to me. I caught him an’ I brought him here. D’ye think I brought him all the way here to be lynched? Not on your life. I could a- done that myself when I found him. I brought him here for a fair an’ impartial trial, an’ by God, a fair an’ impartial trial he’s goin’ to get. He’s tied up safe an’ sound. Chuck him in a bunk till morning, an’ we’ll hold the trial right here.”
V.
Smoke woke up. A draught, that possessed all the rigidity of an icicle, was boring into the front of his shoulder as he lay on his side facing the wall. When he had been tied into the bunk there had been no such draught, and now the outside air, driving into the heated atmosphere of the cabin with the pressure of fifty below zero, was sufficient advertizement that some one from without had pulled away the moss-chinking between the logs. He squirmed as far as his bonds would permit, then craned his neck forward until his lips just managed to reach the crack.
“Who is it?” he whispered.
“Breck,” came the answer. “Be careful you don’t make a noise. I’m going to pass a knife in to you.”
“No good,” Smoke said. “I couldn’t use it. My hands are tied behind me and made fast to the leg of the bunk. Besides, you couldn’t get a knife through that crack. But something must be done. Those fellows are of a temper to hang me, and, of course, you know I didn’t kill that man.”
“It wasn’t necessary to mention it, Smoke. And if you did you had your reasons. Which isn’t the point at all. I want to get you out of this. It’s a tough bunch of men here. You’ve seen them. They’re shut off from the world, and they make and enforce their own law–by miner’s meeting, you know. They handled two men already– both grub-thieves. One they hiked from camp without an ounce of grub and no matches. He made about forty miles and lasted a couple of days before he froze stiff. Two weeks ago they hiked the second man. They gave him his choice: no grub, or ten lashes for each day’s ration. He stood for forty lashes before he fainted. And now they’ve got you, and every last one is convinced you killed Kinade.”
“The man who killed Kinade, shot at me, too. His bullet broke the skin on my shoulder. Get them to delay the trial till some one goes up and searches the bank where the murderer hid.”
“No use. They take the evidence of Harding and the five Frenchmen with him. Besides, they haven’t had a hanging yet, and they’re keen for it. You see, things have been pretty monotonous. They haven’t located anything big, and they got tired of hunting for Surprise Lake. They did some stampeding the first part of the winter, but they’ve got over that now. Scurvy is beginning to show up amongst them, too, and they’re just ripe for excitement.”
“And it looks like I’ll furnish it,” was Smoke’s comment. “Say, Breck, how did you ever fall in with such a God-forsaken bunch?”
“After I got the claims at Squaw Creek opened up and some men to working, I came up here by way of the Stewart, hunting for Two Cabins. They’d beaten me to it, so I’ve been higher up the Stewart. Just got back yesterday out of grub.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing much. But I think I’ve got a hydraulic proposition that’ll work big when the country’s opened up. It’s that, or a gold- dredger.”
“Hold on,” Smoke interrupted. “Wait a minute. Let me think.”
He was very much aware of the snores of the sleepers as he pursued the idea that had flashed into his mind.
“Say, Breck, have they opened up the meat-packs my dogs carried?”
“A couple. I was watching. They put them in Harding’s cache.”
“Did they find anything?”
“Meat.”
“Good. You’ve got to get into the brown canvas pack that’s patched with moosehide. You’ll find a few pounds of lumpy gold. You’ve never seen gold like it in the country, nor has anybody else. Here’s what you’ve got to do. Listen.”
A quarter of an hour later, fully instructed and complaining that his toes were freezing, Breck went away. Smoke, his own nose and one cheek frosted by proximity to the chink, rubbed them against the blankets for half an hour before the blaze and bite of the returning blood assured him of the safety of his flesh.
VI.
“My mind’s made up right now. There ain’t no doubt but what he killed Kinade. We heard the whole thing last night. What’s the good of goin’ over it again? I vote guilty.”
In such fashion, Smoke’s trial began. The speaker, a loose-jointed, hard-rock man from Colorado, manifested irritation and disgust when Harding set his suggestion aside, demanded the proceedings should be regular, and nominated one, Shunk Wilson, for judge and chairman of the meeting. The population of Two Cabins constituted the jury, though, after some discussion, the woman, Lucy, was denied the right to vote on Smoke’s guilt or innocence.
While this was going on, Smoke, jammed into a corner on a bunk, overheard a whispered conversation between Breck and a miner.
“You haven’t fifty pounds of flour you’ll sell?” Breck queried.
“You ain’t got the dust to pay the price I’m askin’,” was the reply.
“I’ll give you two hundred.”
The man shook his head.
“Three hundred. Three-fifty.”
At four hundred, the man nodded, and said: “Come on over to my cabin an’ weigh out the dust.”
The two squeezed their way to the door, and slipped out. After a few minutes Breck returned alone.
Harding was testifying, when Smoke saw the door shoved open slightly, and in the crack appear the face of the man who had sold the flour. He was grimacing and beckoning emphatically to one inside, who arose from near the stove and started to work toward the door.
“Where are you goin’, Sam?” Shunk Wilson demanded.
“I’ll be back in a jiffy,” Sam explained. “I jes’ got to go.”
Smoke was permitted to question the witnesses, and he was in the middle of the cross-examination of Harding, when from without came the whining of dogs in harness, and the grind and churn of sled- runners. Somebody near the door peeped out.
“It’s Sam an’ his pardner an’ a dog-team hell-bent down the trail for Stewart River,” the man reported.
Nobody spoke for a long half-minute, but men glanced significantly at one another, and a general restlessness pervaded the packed room. Out of the corner of his eye, Smoke caught a glimpse of Breck, Lucy, and her husband whispering together.
“Come on, you,” Shunk Wilson said gruffly to Smoke. “Cut this questionin’ short. We know what you’re tryin’ to prove–that the other bank wasn’t searched. The witness admits it. We admit it. It wasn’t necessary. No tracks led to that bank. The snow wasn’t broke.”
“There was a man on the other bank just the same,” Smoke insisted.
“That’s too thin for skatin’, young man. There ain’t many of us on the McQuestion, an’ we got every man accounted for.”
“Who was the man you hiked out of camp two weeks ago?” Smoke asked.
“Alonzo Miramar. He was a Mexican. What’s that grub-thief got to do with it?”
“Nothing, except that you haven’t accounted for HIM, Mr Judge.”
“He went down the river, not up.”
“How do you know where he went?”
“Saw him start.”
“And that’s all you know of what became of him?”
“No, it ain’t, young man. I know, we all know, he had four day’s grub an’ no gun to shoot meat with. If he didn’t make the settlement on the Yukon he’d croaked long before this.”
“I suppose you’ve got all the guns in this part of the country accounted for, too,” Smoke observed pointedly.
Shunk Wilson was angry.
“You’d think I was the prisoner the way you slam questions into me. Come on with the next witness. Where’s French Louis?”
While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.
“Where you goin’?” Shunk Wilson shouted.
“I reckon I don’t have to stay,” she answered defiantly. “I ain’t got no vote, an’ besides my cabin’s so jammed up I can’t breathe.”
In a few minutes her husband followed. The closing of the door was the first warning the judge received of it.
“Who was that?” he interrupted Pierre’s narrative to ask.
“Bill Peabody,” somebody spoke up. “Said he wanted to ask his wife something and was coming right back.”
Instead of Bill, it was Lucy who re-entered, took off her furs, and resumed her place by the stove.
“I reckon we don’t need to hear the rest of the witnesses,” was Shunk Wilson’s decision, when Pierre had finished. “We know they only can testify to the same facts we’ve already heard. Say, Sorensen, you go an’ bring Bill Peabody back. We’ll be votin’ a verdict pretty short. Now, Stranger, you can get up an’ say your say concernin’ what happened. In the meantime we’ll just be savin’ delay by passin’ around the two rifles, the ammunition, an’ the bullets that done the killin’.”
Midway in his story of how he had arrived in that part of the country, and at the point in his narrative where he described his own ambush and how he had fled to the bank, Smoke was interrupted by the indignant Shunk Wilson.
“Young man, what sense is there in you testifyin’ that way? You’re just takin’ up valuable time. Of course you got the right to lie to save your neck, but we ain’t goin’ to stand for such foolishness. The rifle, the ammunition, the bullet that killed Joe Kinade is against you–What’s that? Open the door, somebody!”
The frost rushed in, taking form and substance in the heat of the room, while through the open door came the whining of dogs that decreased rapidly with distance.
“It’s Sorensen an’ Peabody,” some one cried, “a-throwin’ the whip into the dawgs an’ headin’ down river!”
“Now, what the hell–!” Shunk Wilson paused, with dropped jaw, and glared at Lucy. “I reckon you can explain, Mrs Peabody.”
She tossed her head and compressed her lips, and Shunk Wilson’s wrathful and suspicious gaze passed on and rested on Breck.
“An’ I reckon that new-comer you’ve ben chinning with could explain if HE had a mind to.”
Breck, now very uncomfortable, found all eyes centred on him.
“Sam was chewing the rag with him, too, before he hit out,” some one said.
“Look here, Mr Breck,” Shunk Wilson continued. “You’ve ben interruptin’ proceedings, and you got to explain the meanin’ of it. What was you chinnin’ about?”
Breck cleared his throat timidly and replied. “I was just trying to buy some grub.”
“What with?”
“Dust, of course.”
“Where’d you get it?”
Breck did not answer.
“He’s ben snoopin’ around up the Stewart,” a man volunteered. “I run across his camp a week ago when I was huntin’. An’ I want to tell you he was almighty secretious about it.”
“The dust didn’t come from there,” Breck said. “That’s only a low- grade hydraulic proposition.”
“Bring your poke here an’ let’s see your dust,” Wilson commanded.
“I tell you it didn’t come from there.”
“Let’s see it just the same.”
Breck made as if to refuse, but all about him were menacing faces. Reluctantly, he fumbled in his coat pocket. In the act of drawing forth a pepper can, it rattled against what was evidently a hard object.
“Fetch it all out!” Shunk Wilson thundered.
And out came the big nugget, first-size, yellow as no gold any onlooker had ever seen. Shunk Wilson gasped. Half a dozen, catching one glimpse, made a break for the door. They reached it at the same moment, and, with cursing and scuffling, jammed and pivoted through. The judge emptied the contents of the pepper can on the table, and the sight of the rough lump-gold sent half a dozen more toward the door.
“Where are you goin’?” Eli Harding asked, as Shunk started to follow.
“For my dogs, of course.”
“Ain’t you goin’ to hang him?”
“It’d take too much time right now. He’ll keep till we get back, so I reckon this court is adjourned. This ain’t no place for lingerin’.”
Harding hesitated. He glanced savagely at Smoke, saw Pierre beckoning to Louis from the doorway, took one last look at the lump- gold on the table, and decided.
“No use you tryin’ to get away,” he flung back over his shoulder. “Besides, I’m goin’ to borrow your dogs.”
“What is it–another one of them blamed stampedes?” the old blind trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room.
“It sure is,” Lucy answered. “An’ I never seen gold like it. Feel that, old man.”
She put the big nugget in his hand. He was but slightly interested.
“It was a good fur-country,” he complained, “before them danged miners come in an’ scared back the game.”
The door opened, and Breck entered.
“Well,” he said, “we four are all that are left in camp. It’s forty miles to the Stewart by the cut-off I broke, and the fastest of them can’t make the round trip in less than five or six days. But it’s time you pulled out, Smoke, just the same.”
Breck drew his hunting knife across the other’s bonds, and glanced at the woman.
“I hope you don’t object?” he said, with significant politeness.
“If there’s goin’ to be any shootin’,” the blind man broke out, “I wish somebody’d take me to another cabin first.”
“Go on, an’ don’t mind me,” Lucy answered. “If I ain’t good enough to hang a man, I ain’t good enough to hold him.”
Smoke stood up, rubbing his wrists where the thongs had impeded the circulation.
“I’ve got a pack all ready for you,” Breck said. “Ten days’ grub, blankets, matches, tobacco, an axe, and a rifle.”
“Go to it,” Lucy encouraged. “Hit the high places, Stranger. Beat it as fast as God’ll let you.”
“I’m going to have a square meal before I start,” Smoke said. “And when I start it will be up the McQuestion, not down. I want you to go along with me, Breck. We’re going to search that other bank for the man that really did the killing.”
“If you’ll listen to me, you’ll head down for the Stewart and the Yukon,” Breck objected. “When this gang gets back from my low-grade hydraulic proposition, it will be seeing red.”
Smoke laughed and shook his head.
“I can’t jump this country, Breck. I’ve got interests here. I’ve got to stay and make good. I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I’ve found Surprise Lake. That’s where that gold came from. Besides, they took my dogs, and I’ve got to wait to get them back. Also, I know what I’m about. There was a man hidden on that bank. He came pretty close to emptying his magazine at me.”
Half an hour afterward, with a big plate of moose-steak before him and a big mug of coffee at his lips, Smoke half-started up from his seat. He had heard the sounds first. Lucy threw open the door.
“Hello, Spike; hello, Methody,” she greeted the two frost-rimed men who were bending over the burden on their sled.
“We just come down from Upper Camp,” one said, as the pair staggered into the room with a fur-wrapped object which they handled with exceeding gentleness. “An’ this is what we found by the way. He’s all in, I guess.”
“Put him in the near bunk there,” Lucy said. She bent over and pulled back the furs, disclosing a face composed principally of large, staring, black eyes, and of skin, dark and scabbed by repeated frost-bite, tightly stretched across the bones.
“If it ain’t Alonzo!” she cried. “You pore, starved devil!”
“That’s the man on the other bank,” Smoke said in an undertone to Breck.
“We found it raidin’ a cache that Harding must a-made,” one of the men was explaining. “He was eatin’ raw flour an’ frozen bacon, an’ when we got ‘m he was cryin’ an’ squealin’ like a hawk. Look at him! He’s all starved, an’ most of him frozen. He’ll kick at any moment.”
. . . . .
Half an hour later, when the furs had been drawn over the face of the still form in the bunk, Smoke turned to Lucy.
“If you don’t mind, Mrs Peabody, I’ll have another whack at that steak. Make it thick and not so well done.”
THE RACE FOR NUMBER ONE.
I.
“Huh! Get on to the glad rags!”
Shorty surveyed his partner with simulated disapproval, and Smoke, vainly attempting to rub the wrinkles out of the pair of trousers he had just put on, was irritated.
“They sure fit you close for a second-hand buy,” Shorty went on. “What was the tax?”
“One hundred and fifty for the suit,” Smoke answered. “The man was nearly my own size. I thought it was remarkable reasonable. What are you kicking about?”
“Who? Me? Oh, nothin’. I was just thinkin’ it was goin’ some for a meat-eater that hit Dawson in an ice-jam, with no grub, one suit of underclothes, a pair of mangy moccasins, an’ overalls that looked like they’d ben through the wreck of the Hesperus. Pretty gay front, pardner. Pretty gay front. Say–?”
“What do you want now?” Smoke demanded testily.
“What’s her name?”
“There isn’t any her, my friend. I’m to have dinner at Colonel Bowie’s, if you want to know. The trouble with you, Shorty, is you’re envious because I’m going into high society and you’re not invited.”
“Ain’t you some late?” Shorty queried with concern.
“What do you mean?”
“For dinner. They’ll be eatin’ supper when you get there.”
Smoke was about to explain with elaborate sarcasm when he caught the twinkle in the others’ eyes. He went on dressing, with fingers that had lost their deftness, tying a Windsor tie in a bow-knot at the throat of the soft cotton shirt.
“Wish I hadn’t sent all my starched shirts to the laundry,” Shorty murmured sympathetically. “I might a-fitted you out.”
By this time Smoke was straining at a pair of shoes. The thick woollen socks were too thick to go into them. He looked appealingly at Shorty, who shook his head.
“Nope. If I had thin ones I wouldn’t lend ’em to you. Back to the moccasins, pardner. You’d sure freeze your toes in skimpy-fangled gear like that.”
“I paid fifteen dollars for them, second-hand,” Smoke lamented.
“I reckon they won’t be a man not in moccasins.”
“But there are to be women, Shorty. I’m going to sit down and eat with real live women–Mrs Bowie, and several others, so the Colonel told me.”
“Well, moccasins won’t spoil their appetite none,” was Shorty’s comment. “Wonder what the Colonel wants with you?”
“I don’t know, unless he’s heard about my finding Surprise Lake. It will take a fortune to drain it, and the Guggenheims are out for investment.”
“Reckon that’s it. That’s right, stick to the moccasins. Gee! That coat is sure wrinkled, an’ it fits you a mite too swift. Just peck around at your vittles. If you eat hearty you’ll bust through. And if them women-folks gets to droppin’ handkerchiefs, just let ’em lay. Don’t do any pickin’ up. Whatever you do, don’t.”
II.
As became a high-salaried expert and the representative of the great house of Guggenheim, Colonel Bowie lived in one of the most magnificent cabins in Dawson. Of squared logs, hand-hewn, it was two stories high, and of such extravagant proportions that it boasted a big living room that was used for a living room and for nothing else.
Here were big bear-skins on the rough board floor, and on the walls horns of moose and caribou. Here roared an open fireplace and a big wood-burning stove. And here Smoke met the social elect of Dawson– not the mere pick-handle millionaires, but the ultra-cream of a mining city whose population had been recruited from all the world– men like Warburton Jones, the explorer and writer, Captain Consadine of the Mounted Police, Haskell, Gold Commissioner of the North-West Territory, and Baron Von Schroeder, an emperor’s favourite with an international duelling reputation.
And here, dazzling in evening gown, he met Joy Gastell, whom hitherto he had encountered only on trail, befurred and moccasined. At dinner he found himself beside her.
“I feel like a fish out of water,” he confessed. “All you folks are so real grand you know. Besides I never dreamed such oriental luxury existed in the Klondike. Look at Von Schroeder there. He’s actually got a dinner jacket, and Consadine’s got a starched shirt. I noticed he wore moccasins just the same. How do you like MY outfit?”
He moved his shoulders about as if preening himself for Joy’s approval.
“It looks as if you’d grown stout since you came over the Pass,” she laughed.
“Wrong. Guess again.”
“It’s somebody else’s.”
“You win. I bought it for a price from one of the clerks at the A. C. Company.”
“It’s a shame clerks are so narrow-shouldered,” she sympathized. “And you haven’t told me what you think of MY outfit.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m out of breath. I’ve been living on trail too long. This sort of thing comes to me with a shock, you know. I’d quite forgotten that women have arms and shoulders. To-morrow morning, like my friend Shorty, I’ll wake up and know it’s all a dream. Now, the last time I saw you on Squaw Creek–“
“I was just a squaw,” she broke in.
“I hadn’t intended to say that. I was remembering that it was on Squaw Creek that I discovered you had feet.”
“And I can never forget that you saved them for me,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to see you ever since to thank you–” (He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly). “And that’s why you are here to-night–“
“You asked the Colonel to invite me?”
“No! Mrs Bowie. And I asked her to let me have you at table. And here’s my chance. Everybody’s talking. Listen, and don’t interrupt. You know Mono Creek?”
“Yes.”
“It has turned out rich–dreadfully rich. They estimate the claims as worth a million and more apiece. It was only located the other day.”
“I remember the stampede.”
“Well, the whole creek was staked to the sky-line, and all the feeders, too. And yet, right now, on the main creek, Number Three below Discovery is unrecorded. The creek was so far away from Dawson that the Commissioner allowed sixty days for recording after location. Every claim was recorded except Number Three Below. It was staked by Cyrus Johnson. And that was all. Cyrus Johnson has disappeared. Whether he died, whether he went down river or up, nobody knows. Anyway, in six days, the time for recording will be up. Then the man who stakes it, and reaches Dawson first and records it, gets it.”
“A million dollars,” Smoke murmured.
“Gilchrist, who has the next claim below, has got six hundred dollars in a single pan off bedrock. He’s burned one hole down. And the claim on the other side is even richer. I know.”
“But why doesn’t everybody know?” Smoke queried skeptically.
“They’re beginning to know. They kept it secret for a long time, and it is only now that it’s coming out. Good dog-teams will be at a premium in another twenty-four hours. Now, you’ve got to get away as decently as you can as soon as dinner is over. I’ve arranged it. An Indian will come with a message for you. You read it, let on that you’re very much put out, make your excuses, and get away.”
“I–er–I fail to follow.”
“Ninny!” she exclaimed in a half-whisper. “What you must do is to get out to-night and hustle dog-teams. I know of two. There’s Hanson’s team, seven big Hudson Bay dogs–he’s holding them at four hundred each. That’s top price to-night, but it won’t be to-morrow. And Sitka Charley has eight Malemutes he’s asking thirty-five hundred for. To-morrow he’ll laugh at an offer of five thousand. Then you’ve got your own team of dogs. And you’ll have to buy several more teams. That’s your work to-night. Get the best. It’s dogs as well as men that will win this race. It’s a hundred and ten miles, and you’ll have to relay as frequently as you can.”
“Oh, I see, you want me to go in for it,” Smoke drawled.
“If you haven’t the money for the dogs, I’ll–“
She faltered, but before she could continue, Smoke was speaking.
“I can buy the dogs. But–er–aren’t you afraid this is gambling?”
“After your exploits at roulette in the Elkhorn,” she retorted, “I’m not afraid that you’re afraid. It’s a sporting proposition, if that’s what you mean. A race for a million, and with some of the stiffest dog-mushers and travellers in the country entered against you. They haven’t entered yet, but by this time to-morrow they will, and dogs will be worth what the richest man can afford to pay. Big Olaf is in town. He came up from Circle City last month. He is one of the most terrible dog-mushers in the country, and if he enters he will be your most dangerous man. Arizona Bill is another. He’s been a professional freighter and mail-carrier for years. It he goes in, interest will be centred on him and Big Olaf.”
“And you intend me to come along as a sort of dark horse.”
“Exactly. And it will have its advantages. You will not be supposed to stand a show. After all, you know, you are still classed as a chechaquo. You haven’t seen the four seasons go around. Nobody will take notice of you until you come into the home stretch in the lead.”
“It’s on the home stretch the dark horse is to show up its classy form, eh?”
She nodded, and continued earnestly. “Remember, I shall never forgive myself for the trick I played on the Squaw Creek Stampede until you win this Mono claim. And if any man can win this race against the old-timers, it’s you.”
It was the way she said it. He felt warm all over, and in his heart and head. He gave her a quick, searching look, involuntary and serious, and for the moment that her eyes met his steadily, ere they fell, it seemed to him that he read something of vaster import than the claim Cyrus Johnson had failed to record.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll win it.”
The glad light in her eyes seemed to promise a greater need than all the gold in the Mono claim. He was aware of a movement of her hand in her lap next to his. Under the screen of the tablecloth he thrust his own hand across and met a firm grip of woman’s fingers that sent another wave of warmth through him.
“What will Shorty say?” was the thought that flashed whimsically through his mind as he withdrew his hand. He glanced almost jealously at the faces of Von Schroeder and Jones, and wondered if they had not divined the remarkableness and deliciousness of this woman who sat beside him.
He was aroused by her voice, and realized that she had been speaking some moments.
“So you see, Arizona Bill is a white Indian,” she was saying. “And Big Olaf is–a bear wrestler, a king of the snows, a mighty savage. He can out-travel and out-endure an Indian, and he’s never known any other life but that of the wild and the frost.”
“Who’s that?” Captain Consadine broke in from across the table.
“Big Olaf,” she answered. “I was just telling Mr Bellew what a traveller he is.”
“You’re right,” the Captain’s voice boomed. “Big Olaf is the greatest traveller in the Yukon. I’d back him against Old Nick himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel. He brought in the government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilcoot and the third drowned in the open water of Thirty Mile.”
III.
Smoke had travelled in a leisurely fashion up to Mono Creek, fearing to tire his dogs before the big race. Also, he had familiarized himself with every mile of the trail and located his relay camps. So many men had entered the race, that the hundred and ten miles of its course was almost a continuous village. Relay camps were everywhere along the trail. Von Schroeder, who had gone in purely for the sport, had no less than eleven dog teams–a fresh one for every ten miles. Arizona Bill had been forced to content himself with eight teams. Big Olaf had seven, which was the complement of Smoke. In addition, over two-score of other men were in the running. Not every day, even in the golden north, was a million dollars the prize for a dog race. The country had been swept of dogs. No animal of speed and endurance escaped the fine-tooth comb that had raked the creeks and camps, and the prices of dogs had doubled and quadrupled in the course of the frantic speculation.
Number Three Below Discovery was ten miles up Mono Creek from its mouth. The remaining hundred miles was to be run on the frozen breast of the Yukon. On Number Three itself were fifty tents and over three hundred dogs. The old stakes, blazed and scrawled sixty days before by Cyrus Johnson, still stood, and every man had gone over the boundaries of the claim again and again, for the race with dogs was to be preceded by a foot and obstacle race. Each man had to re-locate the claim for himself, and this meant that he must place two centre-stakes and four corner-stakes and cross the creek twice, before he could start for Dawson with his dogs.
Furthermore, there were to be no ‘sooners.’ Not until the stroke of midnight of Friday night was the claim open for re-location, and not until the stroke of midnight could a man plant a stake. This was the ruling of the Gold Commissioner at Dawson, and Captain Consadine had sent up a squad of mounted police to enforce it. Discussion had arisen about the difference between sun-time and police-time, but Consadine had sent forth his fiat that police time went, and, further, that it was the watch of Lieutenant Pollock that went.
The Mono trail ran along the level creek-bed, and, less than two feet in width, was like a groove, walled on either side by the snow- fall of months. The problem of how forty-odd sleds and three hundred dogs were to start in so narrow a course was in everybody’s mind.
“Huh!” said Shorty. “It’s goin’ to be the gosh-dangdest mix-up that ever was. I can’t see no way out, Smoke, except main strength an’ sweat an’ to plow through. If the whole creek was glare-ice they ain’t room for a dozen teams abreast. I got a hunch right now they’s goin’ to be a heap of scrappin’ before they get strung out. An’ if any of it comes our way you got to let me do the punchin’.”
Smoke squared his shoulders and laughed non-committally.
“No you don’t!” his partner cried in alarm. “No matter what happens, you don’t dast hit. You can’t handle dogs a hundred miles with a busted knuckle, an’ that’s what’ll happen if you land on somebody’s jaw.”
Smoke nodded his head.
“You’re right, Shorty. I couldn’t risk the chance.”
“An’ just remember,” Shorty went on, “that I got to do all the shovin’ for them first ten miles an’ you got to take it easy as you can. I’ll sure jerk you through to the Yukon. After that it’s up to you an’ the dogs. Say–what d’ye think Schroeder’s scheme is? He’s got his first team a quarter of a mile down the creek an’ he’ll know it by a green lantern. But we got him skinned. Me for the red flare every time.”
IV.
The day had been clear and cold, but a blanket of cloud formed across the face of the sky and the night came on warm and dark, with the hint of snow impending. The thermometer registered fifteen below zero, and in the Klondike-winter fifteen below is esteemed very warm.
At a few minutes before midnight, leaving Shorty with the dogs five hundred yards down the creek, Smoke joined the racers on Number Three. There were forty-five of them waiting the start for the thousand-thousand dollars Cyrus Johnson had left lying in the frozen gravel. Each man carried six stakes and a heavy wooden mallet, and was clad in a smock-like parka of heavy cotton drill.
Lieutenant Pollock, in a big bearskin coat, looked at his watch by the light of a fire. It lacked a minute of midnight.
“Make ready,” he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and watched the second hand tick around.
Forty-five hoods were thrown back from the parkas. Forty-five pairs of hands unmittened, and forty-five pairs of moccasins pressed tensely into the packed snow. Also, forty-five stakes were thrust into the snow, and the same number of mallets lifted in the air.
The shots rang out, and the mallets fell. Cyrus Johnson’s right to the million had expired. To prevent confusion, Lieutenant Pollock had insisted that the lower centre-stake be driven first, next the south-eastern; and so on around the four sides, including the upper centre-stake on the way.
Smoke drove in his stake and was away with the leading dozen. Fires had been lighted at the corners, and by each fire stood a policeman, list in hand, checking off the names of the runners. A man was supposed to call out his name and show his face. There was to be no staking by proxy while the real racer was off and away down the creek.
At the first corner, beside Smoke’s stake, Von Schroeder placed his. The mallets struck at the same instant. As they hammered, more arrived from behind and with such impetuosity as to get in one another’s way and cause jostling and shoving. Squirming through the press and calling his name to the policeman, Smoke saw the Baron, struck in collision by one of the rushers, hurled clean off his feet into the snow. But Smoke did not wait. Others were still ahead of him. By the light of the vanishing fire he was certain that he saw the back, hugely looming, of Big Olaf, and at the south-western corner Big Olaf and he drove their stakes side by side.
It was no light work, this preliminary obstacle race. The boundaries of the claim totalled nearly a mile, and most of it was over the uneven surface of a snow-covered, niggerhead flat. All about Smoke men tripped and fell, and several times he pitched forward himself, jarringly, on hands and knees. Once, Big Olaf fell so immediately in front of him as to bring him down on top.
The upper centre-stake was driven by the edge of the bank, and down the bank the racers plunged, across the frozen creek-bed, and up the other side. Here, as Smoke clambered, a hand gripped his ankle and jerked him back. In the flickering light of a distant fire, it was impossible to see who had played the trick. But Arizona Bill, who had been treated similarly, rose to his feet and drove his fist with a crunch into the offender’s face. Smoke saw and heard as he was scrambling to his feet, but before he could make another lunge for the bank a fist dropped him half-stunned into the snow. He staggered up, located the man, half-swung a hook for his jaw, then remembered Shorty’s warning and refrained. The next moment, struck below the knees by a hurtling body, he went down again.
It was a foretaste of what would happen when the men reached their sleds. Men were pouring over the other bank and piling into the jam. They swarmed up the bank in bunches, and in bunches were dragged back by their impatient fellows. More blows were struck, curses rose from the panting chests of those who still had wind to spare, and Smoke, curiously visioning the face of Joy Gastell, hoped that the mallets would not be brought into play. Overthrown, trod upon, groping in the snow for his lost stakes, he at last crawled out of the crush and attacked the bank farther along. Others were doing this, and it was his luck to have many men in advance of him in the race for the northwestern corner.
Down to the fourth corner, he tripped midway and in the long sprawling fall lost his remaining stake. For five minutes he groped in the darkness before he found it, and all the time the panting runners were passing him. From the last corner to the creek he began overtaking men for whom the mile-run had been too much. In the creek itself Bedlam had broken loose. A dozen sleds were piled up and overturned, and nearly a hundred dogs were locked in combat. Among them men struggled, tearing the tangled animals apart, or beating them apart with clubs. In the fleeting glimpse he caught of it, Smoke wondered if he had ever seen a Dore grotesquery to compare.
Leaping down the bank beyond the glutted passage, he gained the hard-footing of the sled-trail and made better time. Here, in packed harbours beside the narrow trail, sleds and men waited for runners that were still behind. From the rear came the whine and rush of dogs, and Smoke had barely time to leap aside into the deep snow. A sled tore past, and he made out the man, kneeling and shouting madly. Scarcely was it by when it stopped with a crash of battle. The excited dogs of a harboured sled, resenting the passing animals, had got out of hand and sprung upon them.
Smoke plunged around and by. He could see the green lantern of Von Schroeder, and, just below it, the red flare that marked his own team. Two men were guarding Schroeder’s dogs, with short clubs interposed between them and the trail.
“Come on, you Smoke! Come on, you Smoke!” he could hear Shorty calling anxiously.
“Coming!” he gasped.
By the red flare he could see the snow torn up and trampled, and from the way his partner breathed he knew a battle had been fought. He staggered to the sled, and, in a moment he was falling on it, Shorty’s whip snapped as he yelled: “Mush! you devils! Mush!”
The dogs sprang into the breast-bands, and the sled jerked abruptly ahead. They were big animals–Hanson’s prize team of Hudson Bays– and Smoke had selected them for the first stage, which included the ten miles of Mono, the heavy-going of the cut-off across the flat at the mouth, and the first ten miles of the Yukon stretch.
“How many are ahead?” he asked.
“You shut up an’ save your wind,” Shorty answered. “Hi! you brutes! Hit her up! Hit her up!”
He was running behind the sled, towing on a short rope. Smoke could not see him; nor could he see the sled on which he lay at full length. The fires had been left in the rear, and they were tearing through a wall of blackness as fast as the dogs could spring into it. This blackness was almost sticky, so nearly did it take on the seeming of substance.
Smoke felt the sled heel up on one runner as it rounded an invisible curve, and from ahead came the snarls of beasts and the oaths of men. This was known afterward as the Barnes-Slocum Jam. It was the teams of these two men which first collided, and into it, at full career, piled Smoke’s seven big fighters. Scarcely more than semi- domesticated wolves, the excitement of that night on Mono Creek had sent every dog fighting-mad. The Klondike dogs, driven without reins, cannot be stopped except by voice, so that there was no stopping this glut of struggle that heaped itself between the narrow rims of the creek. From behind, sled after sled hurled into the turmoil. Men who had their teams nearly extricated were overwhelmed by fresh avalanches of dogs–each animal well-fed, well-rested, and ripe for battle.
“It’s knock down an’ drag out an’ plow through!” Shorty yelled in his partner’s ear. “An’ watch out for your knuckles! You drag out an’ let me do the punchin’!”
What happened in the next half hour Smoke never distinctly remembered. At the end he emerged exhausted, sobbing for breath, his jaw sore from a first-blow, his shoulder aching from the bruise of a club, the blood running warmly down one leg from the rip of a dog’s fangs, and both sleeves of his parka torn to shreds. As in a dream, while the battle still raged behind, he helped Shorty reharness the dogs. One, dying, they cut from the traces, and in the darkness they felt their way to the repair of the disrupted harnesses.
“Now you lie down an’ get your wind back,” Shorty commanded.
And through the darkness the dogs sped, with unabated strength, down Mono Creek, across the long cut-off, and to the Yukon. Here, at the junction with the main river-trail, somebody had lighted a fire, and here Shorty said good bye. By the light of the fire, as the sled leaped behind the flying dogs, Smoke caught another of the unforgettable pictures of the North Land. It was of Shorty, swaying and sinking down limply in the snow, yelling his parting encouragement, one eye blackened and closed, knuckles bruised and broken, and one arm, ripped and fang-torn, gushing forth a steady stream of blood.
V.
“How many ahead?” Smoke asked, as he dropped his tired Hudson Bays and sprang on the waiting sled at the first relay station.
“I counted eleven,” the man called after him, for he was already away behind the leaping dogs.
Fifteen miles they were to carry him on the next stage, which would fetch him to the mouth of White River. There were nine of them, but they composed his weakest team. The twenty-five miles between White River and Sixty Mile he had broken into two stages because of ice- jams, and here two of his heaviest, toughest teams were stationed.
He lay on the sled at full length, face-down, holding on with both hands. Whenever the dogs slacked from topmost speed he rose to his knees, and, yelling and urging, clinging precariously with one hand, threw his whip into them. Poor team that it was, he passed two sleds before White River was reached. Here, at the freeze-up, a jam had piled a barrier allowing the open water, that formed for half a mile below, to freeze smoothly. This smooth stretch enabled the racers to make flying exchanges of sleds, and down all the course they had placed their relays below the jams.
Over the jam and out on to the smooth, Smoke tore along, calling loudly, “Billy! Billy!”
Billy heard and answered, and by the light of the many fires on the ice, Smoke saw a sled swing in from the side and come abreast. Its dogs were fresh and overhauled his. As the sleds swerved toward each other he leaped across and Billy promptly rolled off.
“Where’s Big Olaf?” Smoke cried.
“Leading!” Billy’s voice answered; and the fires were left behind and Smoke was again flying through the wall of blackness.
In the jams of that relay, where the way led across a chaos of up- ended ice-cakes, and where Smoke slipped off the forward end of the sled and with a haul-rope toiled behind the wheel-dog, he passed three sleds. Accidents had happened, and he could hear the men cutting out dogs and mending harnesses.
Among the jams of the next short relay into Sixty Mile, he passed two more teams. And that he might know adequately what had happened to them, one of his own dogs wrenched a shoulder, was unable to keep up, and was dragged in the harness. Its team-mates, angered, fell upon it with their fangs, and Smoke was forced to club them off with the heavy butt of his whip. As he cut the injured animal out, he heard the whining cries of dogs behind him and the voice of a man that was familiar. It was Von Schroeder. Smoke called a warning to prevent a rear-end collision, and the Baron, hawing his animals and swinging on the gee-pole, went by a dozen feet to the side. Yet so impenetrable was the blackness that Smoke heard him pass but never saw him.
On the smooth stretch of ice beside the trading post at Sixty Mile, Smoke overtook two more sleds. All had just changed teams, and for five minutes they ran abreast, each man on his knees and pouring whip and voice into the maddened dogs. But Smoke had studied out that portion of the trail, and now marked the tall pine on the bank that showed faintly in the light of the many fires. Below that pine was not merely darkness, but an abrupt cessation of the smooth stretch. There the trail, he knew, narrowed to a single sled-width. Leaning out ahead, he caught the haul-rope and drew his leaping sled up to the wheel-dog. He caught the animal by the hind-legs and threw it. With a snarl of rage it tried to slash him with its fangs, but was dragged on by the rest of the team. Its body proved an efficient brake, and the two other teams, still abreast, dashed ahead into the darkness for the narrow way.
Smoke heard the crash and uproar of their collision, released his wheeler, sprang to the gee-pole, and urged his team to the right into the soft snow where the straining animals wallowed to their necks. It was exhausting work, but he won by the tangled teams and gained the hard-packed trail beyond.
VI.
On the relay out of Sixty Mile, Smoke had next to his poorest team, and though the going was good, he had set it a short fifteen miles. Two more teams would bring him in to Dawson and to the Gold- Recorder’s office, and Smoke had selected his best animals for the last two stretches. Sitka Charley himself waited with the eight Malemutes that would jerk Smoke along for twenty miles, and for the finish, with a fifteen-mile run, was his own team–the team he had had all winter and which had been with him in the search for Surprise Lake.
The two men he had left entangled at Sixty Mile failed to overtake him, and, on the other hand, his team failed to overtake any of the three that still led. His animals were willing, though they lacked stamina and speed, and little urging was needed to keep them jumping into it at their best. There was nothing for Smoke to do but to lie face-downward and hold on. Now and again he would plunge out of the darkness into the circle of light about a blazing fire, catch a glimpse of furred men standing by harnessed and waiting dogs, and plunge into the darkness again. Mile after mile, with only the grind and jar of the runners in his ears, he sped on. Almost automatically he kept his place as the sled bumped ahead or half- lifted and heeled on the swings and swerves of the bends. First one, and then another, without apparent rhyme or reason, three faces limned themselves on his consciousness: Joy Gastell’s, laughing and audacious; Shorty’s, battered and exhausted by the struggle down Mono Creek; and John Bellew’s, seamed and rigid, as if cast in iron, so unrelenting was its severity. And sometimes Smoke wanted to shout aloud, to chant a paean of savage exultation, as he remembered the office of the Billow and the serial story of San Francisco which he had left unfinished, along with the other fripperies of those empty days.
The grey twilight of morning was breaking as he exchanged his weary dogs for the eight fresh Malemutes. Lighter animals than Hudson Bays, they were capable of greater speed, and they ran with the supple tirelessness of true wolves. Sitka Charley called out the order of the teams ahead. Big Olaf led, Arizona Bill was second, and Von Schroeder third. These were the three best men in the country. In fact, ere Smoke had left Dawson, the popular betting had placed them in that order. While they were racing for a million, at least half a million had been staked by others on the outcome of the race. No one had bet on Smoke, who, despite his several known exploits, was still accounted a chechaquo with much to learn.
As daylight strengthened, Smoke caught sight of a sled ahead, and, in half an hour, his own lead-dog was leaping at its tail. Not until the man turned his head to exchange greetings, did Smoke recognize him as Arizona Bill. Von Schroeder had evidently passed him. The trail, hard-packed, ran too narrowly through the soft snow, and for another half-hour Smoke was forced to stay in the rear. Then they topped an ice-jam and struck a smooth stretch below, where were a number of relay camps and where the snow was packed widely. On his knees, swinging his whip and yelling, Smoke drew abreast. He noted that Arizona Bill’s right arm hung dead at his side, and that he was compelled to pour leather with his left hand. Awkward as it was, he had no hand left with which to hold on, and frequently he had to cease from the whip and clutch to save himself from falling off. Smoke remembered the scrimmage in the creek bed at Three Below Discovery, and understood. Shorty’s advice had been sound.
“What’s happened?” Smoke asked, as he began to pull ahead.
“I don’t know,” Arizona Bill answered. “I think I threw my shoulder out in the scrapping.”
He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station was in sight he was fully half a mile in the rear. Ahead, bunched together, Smoke could see Big Olaf and Von Schroeder. Again Smoke arose to his knees, and he lifted his jaded dogs into a burst of speed such as a man only can who has the proper instinct for dog- driving. He drew up close to the tail of Von Schroeder’s sled, and in this order the three sleds dashed out on the smooth going, below a jam, where many men and many dogs waited. Dawson was fifteen miles away.
Von Schroeder, with his ten-mile relays, had changed five miles back, and would change five miles ahead. So he held on, keeping his dogs at full leap. Big Olaf and Smoke made flying changes, and their fresh teams immediately regained what had been lost to the Baron. Big Olaf led past, and Smoke followed into the narrow trail beyond.
“Still good, but not so good,” Smoke paraphrased Spencer to himself.
Of Von Schroeder, now behind, he had no fear; but ahead was the greatest dog-driver in the country. To pass him seemed impossible. Again and again, many times, Smoke forced his leader to the other’s sled-trail, and each time Big Olaf let out another link and drew away. Smoke contented himself with taking the pace, and hung on grimly. The race was not lost until one or the other won, and in fifteen miles many things could happen.
Three miles from Dawson something did happen. To Smoke’s surprise, Big Olaf rose up and with oaths and leather proceeded to fetch out the last ounce of effort in his animals. It was a spurt that should have been reserved for the last hundred yards instead of being begun three miles from the finish. Sheer dog-killing that it was, Smoke followed. His own team was superb. No dogs on the Yukon had had harder work or were in better condition. Besides, Smoke had toiled with them, and eaten and bedded with them, and he knew each dog as an individual, and how best to win in to the animal’s intelligence and extract its last least shred of willingness.
They topped a small jam and struck the smooth-going below. Big Olaf was barely fifty feet ahead. A sled shot out from the side and drew in toward him, and Smoke understood Big Olaf’s terrific spurt. He had tried to gain a lead for the change. This fresh team that waited to jerk him down the home stretch had been a private surprise of his. Even the men who had backed him to win had had no knowledge of it.
Smoke strove desperately to pass during the exchange of sleds. Lifting his dogs to the effort, he ate up the intervening fifty feet. With urging and pouring of leather, he went to the side and on until his lead-dog was jumping abreast of Big Olaf’s wheeler. On the other side, abreast, was the relay sled. At the speed they were going, Big Olaf did not dare the flying leap. If he missed and fell off, Smoke would be in the lead and the race would be lost.
Big Olaf tried to spurt ahead, and he lifted his dogs magnificently, but Smoke’s leader still continued to jump beside Big Olaf’s wheeler. For half a mile the three sleds tore and bounced along side by side. The smooth stretch was nearing its end when Big Olaf took the chance. As the flying sleds swerved toward each other, he leaped, and the instant he struck he was on his knees, with whip and voice spurting the fresh team. The smooth pinched out into the narrow trail, and he jumped his dogs ahead and into it with a lead of barely a yard.
A man was not beaten until he was beaten, was Smoke’s conclusion, and drive no matter how, Big Olaf failed to shake him off. No team Smoke had driven that night could have stood such a killing pace and kept up with fresh dogs–no team save this one. Nevertheless, the pace WAS killing it, and as they began to round the bluff at Klondike City, he could feel the pitch of strength going out of his animals. Almost imperceptibly they lagged, and foot by foot Big Olaf drew away until he led by a score of yards.
A great cheer went up from the population of Klondike City assembled on the ice. Here the Klondike entered the Yukon, and half a mile away, across the Klondike, on the north bank, stood Dawson. An outburst of madder cheering arose, and Smoke caught a glimpse of a sled shooting out to him. He recognized the splendid animals that drew it. They were Joy Gastell’s. And Joy Gastell drove them. The hood of her squirrel-skin parka was tossed back, revealing the cameo-like oval of her face outlined against her heavily-massed hair. Mittens had been discarded, and with bare hands she clung to whip and sled.
“Jump!” she cried, as her leader snarled at Smoke’s.
Smoke struck the sled behind her. It rocked violently from the impact of his body, but she was full up on her knees and swinging the whip.
“Hi! You! Mush on! Chook! Chook!” she was crying, and the dogs whined and yelped in eagerness of desire and effort to overtake Big Olaf.
And then, as the lead-dog caught the tail of Big Olaf’s sled, and yard by yard drew up abreast, the great crowd on the Dawson bank went mad. It WAS a great crowd, for the men had dropped their tools on all the creeks and come down to see the outcome of the race, and a dead heat at the end of a hundred and ten miles justified any madness.
“When you’re in the lead I’m going to drop off!” Joy cried out over her shoulder.
Smoke tried to protest.
“And watch out for the dip curve half way up the bank,” she warned.
Dog by dog, separated by half a dozen feet, the two teams were running abreast. Big Olaf, with whip and voice, held his own for a minute. Then, slowly, an inch at a time, Joy’s leader began to forge past.
“Get ready!” she cried to Smoke. “I’m going to leave you in a minute. Get the whip.”
And as he shifted his hand to clutch the whip, they heard Big Olaf roar a warning, but too late. His lead-dog, incensed at being passed, swerved in to the attack. His fangs struck Joy’s leader on the flank. The rival teams flew at one another’s throats. The sleds overran the fighting brutes and capsized. Smoke struggled to his feet and tried to lift Joy up. But she thrust him from her, crying: “Go!”
On foot, already fifty feet in advance, was Big Olaf, still intent on finishing the race. Smoke obeyed, and when the two men reached the foot of the Dawson bank, he was at the others heels. But up the bank Big Olaf lifted his body hugely, regaining a dozen feet.
Five blocks down the main street was the Gold Recorder’s office. The street was packed as for the witnessing of a parade. Not so easily this time did Smoke gain to his giant rival, and when he did he was unable to pass. Side by side they ran along the narrow aisle between the solid walls of fur-clad, cheering men. Now one, now the other, with great convulsive jerks, gained an inch or so only to lose it immediately after.
If the pace had been a killing one for their dogs, the one they now set themselves was no less so. But they were racing for a million dollars and great honour in Yukon Country. The only outside impression that came to Smoke on that last mad stretch was one of astonishment that there should be so many people in the Klondike. He had never seen them all at once before.
He felt himself involuntarily lag, and Big Olaf sprang a full stride in the lead. To Smoke it seemed that his heart would burst, while he had lost all consciousness of his legs. He knew they were flying under him, but he did not know how he continued to make them fly, nor how he put even greater pressure of will upon them and compelled them again to carry him to his giant competitor’s side.
The open door of the Recorder’s office appeared ahead of them. Both men made a final, futile spurt. Neither could draw away from the other, and side by side they hit the doorway, collided violently, and fell headlong on the office floor.
They sat up, but were too exhausted to rise. Big Olaf, the sweat pouring from him, breathing with tremendous, painful gasps, pawed the air and vainly tried to speak. Then he reached out his hand with unmistakable meaning; Smoke extended his, and they shook.
“It’s a dead heat,” Smoke could hear the Recorder saying, but it was as if in a dream, and the voice was very thin and very far away. “And all I can say is that you both win. You’ll have to divide the claim between you. You’re partners.”
Their two arms pumped up and down as they ratified the decision. Big Olaf nodded his head with great emphasis, and spluttered. At last he got it out.
“You damn chechaquo,” was what he said, but in the saying of it was admiration. “I don’t know how you done it, but you did.”
Outside the great crowd was noisily massed, while the office was packing and jamming. Smoke and Big Olaf essayed to rise, and each helped the other to his feet. Smoke found his legs weak under him, and staggered drunkenly. Big Olaf tottered toward him.
“I’m sorry my dogs jumped yours.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” Smoke panted back. “I heard you yell.”
“Say,” Big Olaf went on with shining eyes. “That girl–one damn fine girl, eh?”
“One damn fine girl,” Smoke agreed.