ingers 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 Chilkoot and the
third drowned in the open water of Thirty Mile."

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 gon