And I see one man with dogs and a sled. The baby wolves see, too. They
can no longer talk, but they whisper, 'On, on. Let us hurry!'

"And they fall down, but they go on. The man who is before us, his
blanket harness breaks often, and he must stop and mend it. Our harness
is good, for I have hung it in trees each night. At eleven o'clock the
man is half a mile away. At one o'clock he is a quarter of a mile away.
He is very weak. We see him fall down many times in the snow. One of
his dogs can no longer travel, and he cuts it out of the harness. But he
does not kill it. I kill it with the axe as I go by, as I kill one of my
dogs which loses its legs and can travel no more.

"Now we are three hundred yards away. We go very slow. Maybe in two,
three hours we go one mile. We do not walk. All the time we fall down.
We stand up and stagger two steps, maybe three steps, then we fall down
again. And all the time I must help up the man and woman. Sometimes
they rise to their knees and fall forward, maybe four or five times
before they can get to their feet again and stagger two or three steps
and fall. But always do they fall forward. Standing or kneeling, always
do they fall forward, gaining on the trail each time by the length of
their bodies.

"Sometimes they crawl on hands and knees like animals that live in the
forest. We go like snails, like snails that are dying we go so slow. And
yet we go faster than the man who is before us. For he, too, falls all
the time, and there is no Sitka Charley to lift him up. Now he is two
hundred yards away. After a long time he is one hundred yards away.

"It is a funny sight. I want to laugh out loud, Ha! ha! just like that,
it is so funny. It is a race of dead men and dead dogs. It is like in a
dream when you have a nightmare and run away very fast for your life and
go very slow. The man who is with me is mad. The woman is mad. I am
mad. All the world is mad, and I want to laugh, it is so funny.

"The stranger-man who is before us leaves his dogs behind and goes on
alone across the snow. After a long time we come to the dogs. They lie
helpless in the snow, their harness of blanket and canvas on them, the
sled behind them, and as we pass them they whine to us and cry like
babies that are hungry.

"Then we, too, leave our dogs and go on alone across the snow. The man
and the woman are nearly gone, and they moan and groan and sob, but they
go on. I,