good.
But if no meat were killed, and if they lost their way, or encountered
blizzard after howling blizzard, and their journey lengthened to fifteen
or twenty days beyond the estimated time, Connie was determined that it
should also be well and good.

He remembered men who had been found in the spring and
buried--_chechakos_, most of them who had disregarded advice, and whose
outfits had been cut down to a minimum that allowed no margin of safety
for delay. But some of them had been sourdoughs who had taken a chance
and depended on their rifles for food--it had been the same in the end.
In the spring the men who buried them read the whole story of the
wilderness tragedy in visiting their last few camps. Each day the
distance between them shortened, here a dog was killed and eaten, here
another, and another, until at the very last camp, half buried in the
sodden ashes of the last fire, would be found the kettle with its scraps
of moccasins and bits of dog harness shrivelled and dried--moccasin
soup, the very last hopeless expedient of the doomed trail musher. And
generally the grave was dug beside this fire--never far beyond it.

And so Connie added a safety margin to the regular sub-arctic standard
of grub for the trail, and when the outfit pulled out of Dawson the
toboggans carried three and one half pounds of grub apiece for each of
the thirty-five days, which was a full half pound more than was needed,
and this, together with their outfit of sleeping bags, clothing,
utensils, and nine hundred pounds of dog food, totalled thirteen hundred
and fifty pounds--ninety pounds to the dog, which with good dogs is a
comfortable load.

The summit of the Bonnet Plume pass is a bleak place. And dreary and
bleak and indescribably rugged is the country surrounding it. Connie and
'Merican Joe, seated in the lee of their toboggans, boiled a pot of tea
over the little primus stove.

"We've made good time so far," said the boy. "About three hundred miles
more and we'll hit Fort Norman."

'Merican Joe nodded. "Yes, but we got de luck. On dis side we ain' gon'
hav' so mooch luck. Too mooch plenty snow--plenty win'. An' tonight,
mor' comin'." He indicated the sky to the northward, where, beyond the
glittering white peaks, the blue faded to a sullen grey.

"You're right," answered Connie, dropping a chunk of ice into his cup of
scalding tea. "And I'd sure like to make a patch of timber. These high,
bare canyons are rotten places to