r 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 teammates, 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 p