Smoke Bellew
by
Jack London
Part 3 out of 3
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.
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