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 center-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.

Reaching the fourth corner, he tripped headlong 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 t