act, on catching sight of his fellow, was
to howl defiance at him. And even after they have fought it out and
come to some sort of understanding, the first happy thought of your
born Leader on awakening is to proclaim himself boss of the camp.

No sooner has he published this conviction of high calling than he is
set upon by the others, punishes them soundly, or is himself vanquished
and driven off. Whereupon he sits on his haunches in the snow, and,
with his pointed nose turned skyward, howls uninterruptedly for an hour
or two, when all is forgiven and forgotten--till the next time.

Order being restored, the travellers got new harness for the dogs, new
boots for themselves, and set out for the white trading post, thirty
miles above.

Here, having at last come into the region of settlements, they agreed
never again to overtax the dogs. They "travelled light" out of Nulato
towards the Koyukuk.

The dogs simply flew over those last miles. It was glorious going on a
trail like glass.

They had broken the back of the journey now, and could well afford,
they thought, to halt an hour or two on the island at the junction of
the two great rivers, stake out a trading post, and treat themselves to
town lots. Why town lots, in Heaven's name! when they were bound for
Minook, and after that the Klondyke, hundreds of miles away? Well,
partly out of mere gaiety of heart, and partly, the Colonel would have
told you gravely, that in this country you never know when you have a
good thing. They had left the one white layman at Nulato seething with
excitement over an Indian's report of still another rich strike up
yonder on the Koyukuk, and this point, where they were solemnly staking
out a new post, the Nulato Agent had said, was "dead sure to be a great
centre." That almost unknown region bordering the great tributary of
the Yukon, haunt of the fiercest of all the Indians of the North, was
to be finally conquered by the white man. It had been left practically
unexplored ever since the days when the bloodthirsty Koyukons came down
out of their fastnesses and perpetrated the great Nulato massacre,
doing to death with ghastly barbarity every man, woman, and child at
the post, Russian or Indian, except Kurilla, not sparing the unlucky
Captain Barnard or his English escort, newly arrived here in their
search for the lost Sir John Franklin. But the tables were turned now,
and the white man was on the trail of the Indian.

While the Col