ture for
you--beams and motes and all that sort of thing.

"Good people with the very best intentions in the world, trying to
interfere in affairs about which they know nothing, thousands of miles
away; when probably around the very next corner are things about which
they should know everything, needing their attention constantly."

"They say, in one letter, that there are many Alaskans, as well as
Outsiders, who have made these complaints."

"Oh, I dare say," scornfully, "even in Alaska there are persons whose
only idea of a dog is that of a fat, wheezy house-dog who crunches bones
under the dining table, and sleeps on a crocheted shawl in a Morris
chair. But _real_ Alaskans know that pity for the dogs of the North
should be felt, not for the Racers, but for the poor work dogs who haul
their burdens of lumber and machinery and all kinds of supplies out to
the distant mines.

"And that, too, over rough and splintered ties in the glare of the
fierce summer sun that shines for nearly twenty-four hours at a stretch.
I'll wager," defiantly, "that if Alaska dogs have one supreme ambition,
like that of every loyal small American boy to become President of the
United States, it is to become a member of a racing team."

"Undoubtedly," agreed the Big Man soothingly. "But Congress, I believe,
is ignorant of such ambitions as yet."

"Congress is ignorant of a good many things concerning Alaska and the
Alaskans," contemptuously.

"It was because for years Congress imposed a prohibitive tax on
railways through this wilderness, a tax only just now removed, that
innumerable freighters, day after day, have crawled into town unnoticed,
with feet cut and bruised and bleeding, and with no one to herald their
suffering to a sympathetic world. It's because their labors were not
spectacular, and the dogs were too obscure to attract more than a
passing pity--never national interest, or interference."

"But they assert, if I may go on," ventured the Big Man with an
assumption of fear, "that the condition of the dogs, at the finish of
these four hundred and eight mile races, is deplorable."

"They're tired; naturally very tired; though the necessity of fairly
forcing their steps through the crushing, cheering, frantic mob often
gives them an effect of utter exhaustion that belies their actual
condition.

"You know how often we have gone down to the Kennel within an hour or so
after their arrival, and have found them comfortably rest