Jack Heaton, gold seeker

When the latter had regained his feet, and recovered from the shock a little, he offered no explanation for his defeat, but in his deep humiliation he moved over toward the door to make as dignified an exit as he could in the quickest possible time.

“Hey, where are youse goin’,” Bill called out after him. “Come back here and sit down at this table and let’s be friends, for I never holds a grudge after I have downed me man. Sit down here, I wants to tell youse something.”

Black Pete reluctantly did as Bill requested and the crowd surged round them to hear what it was this boy from down under had to say to him.

“I takes it you’re a bit loaded with licker to-night and perhaps I had the ’vantage of youse for I never lets any of that hootch stuff interfere with me phys-e-que, see? Now you think you’re some scrapper don’t you? Well maybe you are, and I’ll give you a fair chanst. Tomorrer youse keep away from the bug-juice, see? and come ’round in de evenin’ and I’ll spar’ a few rounds with youse—tree rounds ull be about enough—just a friendly bout for the sport it will give these gents here. Marquis Queensbury rules or sluggers rules, I don’t care which. Youse can go now,” and Black Pete promptly sneaked off wishing that an earthquake would open a gulch through Circle and swallow up him, Bill, Jack and everybody else, but it didn’t.

All the next day Black Pete wondered how he could get out of the ‘friendly bout’ that Bill was so willing to pull off for the mere fun of the thing. He didn’t know what the Marquis of Queensbury rules were but he finally came to the conclusion that he was a better man than his opponent and that the only way he could retrieve his standing in Circle was to give the Keed the beating of his life.

Curiously enough he did ‘cut out the booze’ just as though he had paid Bill for the advice and then he proceeded to get into his best fighting trim.

“I knock heem face een eef I ever heet heem,” he said talking to himself, and then to prove to his own satisfaction that he could do it he made four well defined dents in the pine board wall with a smashing blow of his fist.

“An’ you said these folks up here was all of the peace-lovin’ garden variety, and never use a gun,” Bill said soberly when they were in their room after the fracas.

“I thought they were,” replied Jack.

“You thought they were?” and Bill looked at him as though he had caught him breaking the n^th commandment. “Well don’t youse think again, Buddy, or youse might hurt yourself, see?”

CHAPTER V
OUTFITTING AT CIRCLE

In the great hall everything was as quiet as the faces on the totem poles that reared their ugliness into the air on either side of the Grand Palace Hotel. While the night before had been the most exciting of any that the oldest pioneers of Circle could remember since the days of ’94, in the broad light of the morning after, it seemed as though “the makin’s of it had just melted away,” as Bill expressed it.

The boys found Doc Marling in the ‘office’ of his hotel which meant that he was standing back of the register and ink-bottle. He greeted his paying guests mournfully and when Jack inquired what he had on his young mind that grieved him he pointed to the frame-work which had held the largest mirror north of Dawson so short a time before as yesterday. It only went to prove how fragile are mirrors and the mutability of things in general.

“My lookin’-glass is busted,” he said funeral-like, “and I’m out just three hundred cold dollars in gold.”

“I don’t see how you could blame us because a patron of yours thought he’d let daylight through me. Black Pete started it and it’s up to you to make him settle for it,” suggested Jack.

“He hasn’t got anything to settle with; that’s the worst part of it,” he replied, fishing.

“Then you orter take it gentle-like outen his hide.” This from Bill.

“Well, I kinda allowed that you about did that thing last night,” said Doc, “and bein’ somewhat of a philosopher I allowed too that while the glass was worth three hundred dollars it was worth well nigh that amount in gold dust to see him take his medicine.”

“That’s a pleasant way to look at it, Mr. Marling, and now,” said Jack, “we want you to tell us which of these stores here is the best place to buy our outfit.”

“They’re all all right. But you ought to go and make the acquaintance of Jack McQuesten over there at the N. C. (Northern Commercial Company’s) store. He is the daddy of Circle for he set up a tradin’ post here as soon as the pioneer prospectors begin to come in. Jack’s a man that seventeen dog-sleds loaded with moosehide sacks of gold couldn’t budge from the straight and unerrin’ path of rectitude, is Jack, and he’ll fix you lads up bully and O. K.,” he told them.

So the boys went over to the N. C., and while Jack McQuesten’s fame had reached them down as far as Skagway, Bill Adams’ fame had preceded them that morning from the hotel. The old trader was sitting on a box when they came in and they saw right away that he was a pioneer of the old school. A low, broad brimmed hat, without a dent or crease in it, set squarely on his head, and a pair of keen gray eyes, about half closed as if he didn’t want to see too much at a time, was boring holes through them.

He was full-faced, his nose was broad and his mustache gray; it was plain to be seen why he had been entrusted with hundreds of thousands of dollars by the various companies whose trading posts were famous all over Alaska. He was, as Doc Marling had said, as straight as a die and he knew character, even as characters knew him. He was dressed like a miner and the only outstanding feature of his rig that the boys caught sight of was a magnificent gold watch chain and charm—and he had a watch to match them in his pocket—which had been presented to him by the Order of Pioneers, for of the first of the hardy pioneers of Alaska, he was the very first.

“Mr. McQuesten,” began Jack, “we came over to get a winter’s supply of grub and an outfit fit for an arctic expedition.”

Jack McQuesten took a good look at Bill and said with a twinkle in his eye, “so you are the young chap that whipped Black Pete—well I’ll be dog-goned. But let me give you a pointer, be careful how you handle him for his ways are not our ways—and we can’t be responsible for them. It’s the first time in the history of Circle he has not done up his man and he isn’t any too particular how he does it, so watch out he doesn’t knife you.”

“We’ll be careful all right, from now on, Mr. McQuesten, believe me,” returned Bill.

“He’s out of his latitude,” put in Jack—that is Jack Heaton; “he ought to be ashamed of himself living up here on the Arctic Circle with white people instead of being down there on the Tropic of Cancer with the rest of the greasers.”

“If he pulls any of that Chilili Mex stuff on me to-night I’ll send him so far he’ll need a weegie board to get back to earth on, but I’m thankin’ you Mister McQuesten for tellin’ me as how I should be careful, sir,” Bill said in an apologetic voice, perhaps because he had let Black Pete off so easily the night before.

“Now to get down to business, Mr. McQuesten,” began Jack who was anxious to get things a-moving. “What we want is an outfit of clothes, mess-gear and grub that will carry us through the winter. We’re not going so far away but what we expect to get back before the last ice and first water but we might want to keep on going and we must have an outfit so that we can pull through if needs be.”

“What you want is an outfit for about eight months but you couldn’t begin to pack it on your backs or haul it on sleds,” the old outfitter explained; “such an outfit would weigh in the neighborhood of eight hundred or a thousand pounds, and a man can’t carry more than fifty pounds or haul more than one hundred pounds on a stretch. What you ought to have is a couple of dog-sleds.”

“Perzactly!” agreed Bill, “and the question now is can we get the dogs.”

“There are some very likely dogs in and around Circle that I might be able to pick up for you and I’ll see the men who own them over at the Palace to-night. I’ll go ahead and outfit you on the strength of your being able to get the dogs.”

“Good!” ejaculated Jack.

“First of all the things you’ll wear,” the old trader struck out genially and his eyes twinkled more merrily than ever for here was big business staring him in the face—a volume of it such as he had not transacted since the palmy days of Circle these many years agone.

The boys were all attention.

“You’ll want a couple of suits of waterproof underwear, a Mackinaw coat and breeches for early winter and spring; a caribou skin coat with the fur on which has a hood fixed to it; a pair of moosehide or bearskin breeches, a couple of pairs of moccasins and muk-luks apiece and about a dozen pairs of German sox.”

“Whoa, Buddy,” sang out Bill, “I wouldn’t wear a pair o’ them Boche socks if I had to go barefoot, see?”

“That’s only the name of them, boy; why they make them down there in Dawson,” explained Mr. Jack, the storekeeper.

“Well, I might wear ’em in a pinch then,” said Bill.

“Then you must have fur mittens that are lined with wool; several pairs of woolen mittens to wear when you are building your log cabin, heavy fur caps and fur lined sleeping bags. Of course there will be towels and handkerchiefs and all of that sort of small stuff.”

As the storekeeper enumerated the various items of clothing, he brought them forth and laid out two piles, one for each of the boys.

“Now let me tell you something about taking care of these fur clothes; if you expect them to last you for more than a month take my advice and keep them dry, or if they do get wet, don’t wait but stop where you are, build a fire and dry them then and there. I don’t care how low the quick falls you can’t get cold in one of these suits.

“Oh, yes; I almost forgot your eye shades but they are absolutely necessary in traveling over the snow on bright days,” and he produced a queer looking pair of goggles without any glasses in them. “These are Esquimo shades and I wouldn’t give a cent for any other kind,” he said as he handed the boys a pair.

They examined them closely and found that they were made of wood and where the lenses were supposed to be in a pair of goggles there were thin pieces of wood instead with a couple of slits in them to let the light through. Jack and Bill put them on and made puns and had fun over and out of them. Jack pretended he was a college prof and then gave an imitation of Teddy Roosevelt. Not to be outdone, Bill gave an imitation of Jack giving an imitation of him, and then he wound up by pretending he was Judge Gilhooley of the Harlem Police Court and promptly sentenced himself to pay a fine of seven dollars and twenty-three cents for falsely (or badly) impersonating Hizzoner.

Jack McQuesten laughed at their antics until his sides ached and the boys laughed too, and altogether Circle wasn’t such a bad town as they had painted it.

“You’ll take these eye shades more seriously when you have to use them and you’ll thank your Uncle Jack for giving them to you, for they leave no bad after effects as glass goggles do when you take them off.

“Next comes the hardware,” he went on explaining as he had to a thousand, yes ten thousand, tenderfeet, in the past, and he thoroughly enjoyed living over again those golden days. “I call everything hardware that you can’t eat, wear, use for medicine, hunt or fish with, except the dogs.

“You’ll need quite a lot of hardware including snowshoes and sleds, a wall tent, tarpaulins and compasses, for traveling. For building your cabin you will want a five-foot crosscut saw, a rip and a hand saw, an ax, hammer and some other carpenter tools, besides nails, hinges, rivets and such like traps.

“For cooking a folding sheet-iron stove, pans, coffee pot, tin plates, cups, knives, forks and spoons. You say you’ve got a good single barrelled repeating shotgun and a hunting knife apiece? You must take along plenty of loaded shells and I will fix up all of the fishing tackle you want. For your prospecting outfit you must take a prospector’s pick and a miner’s pick with a steel point, a shovel with a round point such as we use up here, a magnet, a few pounds of quicksilver, a gold pan, a small gold scale to weigh your winnings on and a magnifying glass.

“And now for the grub. This will include flour, corn-meal, yeast in cakes and baking powder; evaporated fruits, potatoes, onions and vegetables; sugar and saccharin tablets; ham, bacon and salt pork; about a hundred pounds of Alaska strawberries and hardtack for emergency rations, also a lot of pemmican for the same purpose; some tea, coffee and condensed milk, soap and oleomargarine; salt and pepper, and a few other little things I shall not forget to put in. You have a medicine case? What have you got in it?” he asked, for Jack McQuesten had taken a great interest in these two ‘down east’ boys and he intended to see that they had enough of everything and the right kind of things—that is if they ever started.

Jack told him it had bottles containing quinine, pepsin, cathartic pills, calomel and migrain.

“No drug kit is complete up here unless you have arnica for stiff joints and strained muscles and boracic acid for blistered and aching feet.”

The old trader was in no hurry to get the outfit together that day for he knew there was going to be a fight to the finish in the evening and knowing Black Pete better than he cared to and not knowing Bill Adams at all, he allowed that, like as not, the boys wouldn’t need anything further unless it was one or two spruce boxes.

“Looks to me as if Mr. Jack is tryin’ to sell us his store and is goin’ off to new diggin’s,” yawped Bill when he looked over the list Jack had made as the storekeeper called off the items. “An’ what’s the quicksilver for anyway—to fill up the thermometer tube when the bottom drops out o’ it?”

Jack laughed at his pal’s little joke. “No, to dissolve out the gold when we find it in quartz.”

“I suppose we’ll have to take it and pay for it and all them other prospectin’ tools just to make things look regular, but we’ll throw them away as soon as we gets outer sight. We’re after gold in sacks, not in handfuls,” said Bill. “Why man alive it ’ud take a freight car to transport all the stuff he’s goin’ to sell us; and besides, think o’ the skads o’ spondulicks we’re goin’ to have to cough up fer it all, too.”

“You must remember that we’ve got to live all winter, Bill, and McQuesten knows just what he’s about.”

“An’ what’s them Alaska strawberries?—a hundred pounds o’ them!—he must think we’re goin’ to a Fourth Ward Picnic or a strawberry festible. Do you know, Jack, I’m goin’ to have some o’ them night-bloomin’ strawberries for supper if I has to tip that slant-eyed, Hong-Kong cook at the hotel a four bit piece.

“I suppose you’ve eaten pemmican, haven’t you Bill?”

“I’ve eaten most everything from chicken-à-la-King with youse at the Ritz-Carlton to a pair o’ old rubber boots when I was shipwrecked at sea. It seems to me I’ve heard that word pemmican somewhere afore in my bright log-book o’ youth, but I can’t say as how I ever sat down to a table-de-hoty dinner where it was served and that I knew I was partakin’ of it at the same time. Explain it to me and maybe I’ll remember it by the way it smells.”

“Pemmican,” began Jack, “is like Irish stew, Hungarian goulash, chop-suey or chili-con-carne in that there is a general recipe for making it. But cooks take even more liberties than poets; consequently no two brands of pemmican are made the same, and, hence, cannot taste, or smell, alike, but the two things that all of them have in common are filling and staying qualities for either man or dog.

“Pemmican is usually made of meat ground up and grease added to it when it is cooked, and some makers put pea-flour and other vegetable ingredients into it to make it cheap. A pound of it will not fill a cup and you can eat it every meal without getting tired of it. We used great lots of it—in fact almost lived on it—when I went on that Arctic expedition, and we fed it to the dogs too.

“Rear Admiral Peary had his pemmican made to order to get the full food value out of it; his recipe called for lean beef ground fine, two thirds part, and this was mixed with beef fat, one third part, to which was added a little sugar and some raisins. The pemmican for the dogs is made of cats, dogs, horses or any other kind of meat that is cheap. What this pemmican is like that we are going to get here I haven’t the faintest idea, but it doesn’t matter much for we’re not going to use it as a steady diet.”

“One thing is sure, other prospectors have et it and what they can eat we can eat if we have to,” was Bill’s idea of it.

On returning to the hotel Bill took Sing Nook, the Chinese cook to one side, pressed a fifty cent piece into his hand and told him it was his earnest desire to have some Alaska strawberries for his supper by way of a little delicacy.

“Velly welly,” returned the celestial dignitary who presided over the joss-house of pots and pans; “I glivee you pleanty Alaska stlawbellies flor slupper.” And so that was easily fixed.

When Bill sat down to partake of the rations that evening he waited patiently for the Alaska strawberries to come under his observation; but none materialized as far as his acute judgment of the luscious fruit was concerned. As soon as the meal was over and the diners had dispersed Bill got Sing into a corner and sang him a song without music, but the words of which ran something like this:

“I gave you four bits this afternoon to get me a helpin’ o’ Alaska strawberries. You took my good money but you failed to deliver the goods. Now what have you got to say for yourself, you Shanghai colored son of a Pekin pigtail.”

“Allee samee I dlid glivee you Alaska stlawbellies flor slupper. You no catchee ’em?” Sing asked very much surprised.

“No, I didn’t catchee ’em and if you don’t catchee ’em for me right now youse ’ell catchee a couple of ’em in the eye, I’m a thinkin’.”

Sing had seen what Bill had done to Black Pete and he had a very wholesome respect for this boy with the “velly badee facee,” so he hustled out into the kitchen and was soon back with an enormous bowl of beans, which he set on the table.

“What’s this?” questioned Bill sharply.

“Alaska stlawbellies, allee samee you havee tonlight for slupper.”

“Holy cat!” cried Bill in an awful voice. “I’ve been stung!”

Sing in the meantime had become very much alarmed over the misunderstanding but when he heard Bill guffawing in appreciation of the joke, he joined in heartily. Bill had learned two things; namely, what Alaskan strawberries are, and that a Chinaman has a sense of humor.

There was a larger gathering of the Northmen in the Grand Palace Hotel that night than there had been since the last election. They came in like spooks at a séance, apparently materialized out of thin air, but unlike the latter, you would have to admit that they looked mighty like hard and fast, flesh and blood human beings; and further they refuse to dematerialize until they had seen what they came forth to see.

As was his wont, Rip Stoneback, who had been prospecting for gold in these parts for the last quarter of a century but whose innumerable disappointments had not affected his musical talent, was on the platform, but he was not fiddling. René and his big brown bear were there too but they were not executing any fancy steps or doing any funny stunts, for the gathering that night were neither interested in the goddess of music, nor of the dance, nor, again, of comedy.

What they were there to see was a man’s game that had originated in the primeval world, had been handed down while man was in the process of development, and has since bided in communities that are far more cultured than Circle. It was the old spirit of the fight that called them and they were there to a man.

The tables, which were always scattered round the hall, where divers and sundry games with the pasteboards were played of an evening, had all been set back against the walls and the chairs piled up around them. Just why Doc Marling had seen fit to move them off the floor was not apparent unless he thought it was going to be a sprinting match instead of a pugilistic contest. There was enough room in the hall for a dozen squared rings.

He had also removed all of the breakable assets to better protected places, his bump of precaution having been enlarged by the unfortunate breaking of his three hundred dollar “lookin’-glass” that was the pride of Circle and the envy of towns up and down the Yukon River for a hundred miles in either direction.

Conversation was being carried on but it was of a tense kind and low, and not at all like the big voiced, open hearted talk that is the way of these free men of the Northland. And all because a seasoned man, but a bully, was going to do battle with a stripling who hailed from a place they had heard spoken of as New York.

Bill had seen fights, yes, he had had fights ever since he could remember and in later years, as a member of the Harlem Athletic Club, he had watched some friendly bouts of give and take and had himself participated in so many battles that the fact he was going to fight Black Pete had no more effect on him than if he had been going to spar with Jack.

Black Pete was in a different mood. He too had had his fights but they were far between and rough and tumble ones at that with men who, like himself, knew nothing about the science of the game, and usually he came out on top. Failing in this he had used his knife on men who downed him, and once he shot a man. A bully sooner or later, though, will meet his match and when Black Pete met Bill he was scheduled for a K. O. (knockout).

At nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the proprietor walked over to the place where the bout was to be pulled off and made this announcement:

“We have with us to-night Black Pete, champeen all round pugilist of Alaska and Bill Adams, the New York Kid, in a friendly bout and may the best man win.”

Black Pete came on to the center of the floor full of dash and dog. Then Bill came on and held out his hand but Black Pete refused to shake, so Bill shook hands with himself, just like that. Evidently Pete was not going to fight according to approved ring rules. Instead he swung a vicious right hander at Bill’s head. Bill ducked it and laughed and he knew his man was slow.

Then by sparring and feinting he drew from Pete rights and lefts with the force of a sledge-hammer back of them but which Bill side-stepped or ducked. It was not long before Pete showed signs of getting tired of hitting the air. As Pete had told himself, if he could ever hit Bill he would smash in his face; the power was back of his blows all right but the trouble was that Bill wouldn’t stand still long enough to let him do it.

Bill, who was as lithe and nimble on his feet as a cat, was everywhere around his opponent at once and kept him on the go following his tactics. Then Bill must have gotten careless for Black Pete gave him a wallop on the jaw that sent him whirling a dozen feet. Now for the first time Pete’s friends egged him on and yelled “give it to him again.”

Then Pete, encouraged by his luck, rushed Bill, but he was not to be caught napping again. He warmed up to his work and tapped Pete on the nose, making it bleed, on the jaw, making it hurt, in the mouth, making it swell and in the eye making it black; in fact he hit him any and everywhere he wanted to and so fast did he hammer him that Pete got bewildered and began to strike out in every direction in the hope that some of his blows would land on his enemy’s anatomy, and so another did. It was a glancing blow and scraped Bill’s cheek so hard it nearly ripped the knife scar open.

“Wind him up Bill,” called out Jack.

“All right,” his partner answered, and with that he gave Pete one of his famous ’ospital punches and he went to the floor in a heap.

Jack went over to Pete and slowly counted ten and as he still failed to show any signs of intelligence he counted him out. Pete’s friends carried him over to a corner where he came to a half hour later and then they put him to bed. He had had “a yard and a half over plenty,” as Bill would say.

Rip sawed away again on his fiddle, Doc put the tables back on the floor, René danced and wrestled with his good-natured bear and the men played cards again, but no one asked Bill or Jack to have a drink, a cigar or a bullet as long as they were in Circle. I dare say that the veriest tenderfoot can now go into the Grand Palace Hotel and he will be treated as considerately as he would in the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York, the Blackstone in Chicago or the Palace in San Francisco.

The next morning after the bout Black Pete lit out for other diggings and he has never been seen in Circle since. In this primitive way then are bad breeds often made into better men.

CHAPTER VI
MUSH, YOU HUSKIES, MUSH

When pioneer Jack McQuesten saw Bill deliver the final blow that knocked Black Pete out he knew he was safe in going ahead with the boys’ outfit. He also made it known that very night that they were in the market to buy some dogs, that nothing but the best would be good enough for them and that he himself would pick them out. The result was that within the next two or three days there was quite a bunch of dogs in Circle, enough I should say to make up half-a-dozen dog-teams.

“How many dogs do you reckon we’ll need to haul our outfit?” Bill wanted to know.

“What do you say, Mr. McQuesten?” Jack put it up to the storekeeper.

“You could get along with five or six dogs to the team, but seven will give you much better service and besides, if any thing should happen to any of them, you would be in no danger of getting stuck.”

“It’s better to have too many than too few,” said Jack Heaton.

Then they went out and took a look at the dogs and they were of all the kinds used in Alaska. Among the lot that were offered the boys were some genuine Eskimo dogs or malamutes as they are called, a number of huskies, which are a mixture of various breeds of dogs that have been brought into Alaska, with the native Indian dogs; a few Siwash, or common Indian dogs and the rest were outside dogs of various breeds.

“It’s like buyin’ a necktie in a department store—any of ’em would do but when you see ’em all together you don’t know which one you like the best,” confided Bill. “Now if they was hawses—”

“Leave it to me Bill,” broke in Jack; “it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve had anything to do with dogs and dog teams but I’ll pick out the best of the bunch with Mr. McQuesten’s help. The malamute was the only kind of dog we used in the Arctic and we’ll buy all of them there are here—what, only four?—not enough for even one team. Can’t you get us three more of these malamutes, Mr. McQuesten, so that we’ll have at least one team of them?” asked Jack.

“These are all that I know about. It’s a great day when you see any one with a matched team of any kind of dogs. The husky is just as good a dog, or better for these parts, and there are five of them. You’ll have to make out with outside dogs for the others.” Then he whispered in Jack’s ear, “I wouldn’t take any of those Indian dogs if I was you, for they are the worst kind of thieves and will keep your teams in bad blood all of the time. But I will say they are good work dogs.”

“You’re in the know, Mr. McQuesten, and I’ll take your tip,” replied Jack.

This buying of dogs was an entirely new phase of business to Bill and he took in every word that the pair of Jacks, by which I mean Messrs. McQuesten and Heaton, were saying and to the remarks, arguments and laudations that the owners of the various dogs made and were having by and between themselves. It must be admitted that Bill stood at the foot of the pass when it came to knowing anything about these work dogs.

“Tell me this, Jack,” Bill whispered so that no one might learn of his profound ignorance, “what’s the diff’ ’tween a malamute and a husky?”

“More than there is between a broncho and a mustang, though the dogs of a dog team are always called huskies, regardless of the kinds of dogs it is made up of. See those handsome, alert-looking fellows over there with their ears sticking straight up?” Jack nodded toward them; “well, they are the malamutes.

“Their pointed ears are in that position for keeps, their noses are black and as sharp as a collie’s, while they have slitted eyes from which I shouldn’t wonder if the Eskimo got his idea for making his eye shades. Their pointed ears, keen eyes and sharp noses make them look as if they were ready to jump out of their hides. They’re the Ford motors of the Arctic region all right. Their close hair is about the color of a silver fox, and look at their tails! two of them stand up like wireless masts and those of the other two look as if they had been put over their backs with a curling iron.

“A husky looks a good deal like a malamute, for his ears are pointed too, but instead of being fixed in an upright position he can move them, so every once in a while you’ll notice he will let them drop. He doesn’t stand one, two, three though with the malamute for beauty.”

“McGargle over there says that dog drivers up here will take a husky anytime before they’d take a malamute. How do you make that out?”

“I make it out because McGargle has a couple of huskies he wants to sell. We’ll ask McQuesten anyway,” said Jack.

“I’ve just had a argument with my pard,” Bill said to the storekeeper as big as though he had all the inside information that is known about dogs, “and he says that the malamutes are the best and I says that the huskies are the best. Now what do you say?”

“Yes, huskies are supposed to be a little better workers for the kind of sledding we do in this part of the country, but speaking for myself I prefer the malamute because the snow doesn’t stick between his toes as easily and his feet are harder. After all it’s only a matter of choice and usually what you can get. Both kinds of dogs were made by Almighty God for the work they have to do and they do it well.

“This is true too of the outside dogs; some of them are just as good workers and just as good in every respect as either the malamutes or the huskies. It isn’t a question of which dogs are the best any more now than in the days back there when a good dog brought two hundred and fifty, five hundred, yes, even a thousand dollars.” McQuesten shook his head sadly. “But those good old days will never come back again.”

Nearly all the time the boys were looking over the dogs and bartering with their owners for them they made a bedlam of the peace and quiet of Circle with their ear-splitting barking and howling, and Jack asked Bill to observe that it was the malamutes and huskies that did the howling, while the Siwashes and outside dogs did the barking.

“Whenever you find a dog barking, though he may look like a malamute or a husky you will know to a certainty that he is not full blooded but has some other strain in him,” explained Jack.

An Indian had half-a-dozen Siwashes for sale and Bill made it his business to get a line on them. Not knowing, or let us say, forgetting, that the Indian dog has the meanest disposition in the world, Bill held out his hand and snapped his fingers at one of them. As a reward for his kindy notice the dog returned the compliment by snapping savagely at his hand and had he not been tied to a stake and Bill somewhat of an acrobat, the brute would have made a partial meal from the extremity.

“No Siwashes for mine,” Bill bellowed; “I wouldn’t have a team o’ them Indian savages on a bet.”

Having selected the dogs they wanted the dickering began in earnest between the boys and the various owners, with McQuesten as referee. They drove some pretty good bargains too, though it just so happened they were favored by a slump in the dog market at that particular time so that dogs that used to fetch a hundred dollars or more they bought for twenty-five dollars or less.

The upshot of it all was that the malamutes and the huskies cost the boys in the neighborhood of twenty-five dollars apiece and the outside dogs from ten to fifteen dollars apiece. The outside dogs included a couple of cross-bred mastiffs, a couple of St. Bernards and a Newfoundland.

The boys paid over the money and got the names of the various dogs, which Jack wrote down, so that they would neither forget them nor get them twisted, for a dog will not respond to any save his own name any quicker than a man will, though he’s not so sensitive about it. The owners who had not been fortunate enough to have made sales took their dogs with them and went their way, but not happily for they knew not when Circle would see prospectors like these boys again.

“Now, men, bring the dogs over to the store and we’ll hitch them up for the boys,” said McQuesten.

“What in thunder to?” Bill wondered, but never a question did he ask.

The men and the boys took a couple of dogs apiece and when they brought up at the store McQuesten went in and in a few minutes returned with two sets of harness. These were made of strips of deerskin a couple of inches wide, fixed to rawhide traces. The strips were made into a loop that went round each dog’s neck to form a collar, and three strips, to which the traces were fastened, crossed his back, the first one just back of his forelegs, and the other two, which were fixed to the trace some fourteen inches apart, met on top of his back just in front of his hind legs.

In front of the store were two small two-wheeled carts which are used in the various towns to transport goods on during the summer months by means of dog teams. Then came the question of which should be the lead-dogs and which should be the wheel-dogs, as the dogs are called that are hitched in front and next to the sled, or in this case to the carts.

Next, old Jack and young Jack separated the dogs into two teams, with the plentiful advice of their former owners and others who were looking on, and then with the aid of more than willing hands of the old timers the dogs were hitched up with all the malamutes in one team and all of the huskies in the other.

“Now let’s get the names of these dogs straight, so that they’ll know when we’re talking to them,” said Jack to Bill.

“First off, which team do you want, Jack?” asked Bill, though he knew his partner, like himself, was strong for the malamutes.

“You take whichever one you want, Bill.”

“Well, I’ll take the huskies if you don’t mind,” he replied as if he meant it.

“That wouldn’t be regular, Bill; we’ll draw straws and whoever gets the long one takes the malamutes.”

“No, I must have them huskies. They’re the best dogs, that’s what all the drivers say, an’ as I don’t know much about drivin’ dog-teams I orter have the best one, what say, Mr. Jack?”

Jack McQuesten saw through Bill’s little game and his eyes twinkled for he had bored into Bill’s nature when he first saw him and he knew he had a heart as big as all Alaska.

“Give him the team of huskies, Jack,” was McQuesten’s decision; “Bill deserves them.”

In Jack’s team of malamutes ’Frisco was the lead-dog, with Wolf, Jennie, Tofty, Jim and Prince after him while Skookum was wheel-dog. The team of huskies that Bill fell heir to was made up of Sate, the leader, and after him came Caro, Lukeen, Danny, Lon, Moosehide and Jinx for wheeler.

How these dogs came by their names is, as Kipling used to say, another story, or, rather, more in the nature of a riddle, but we can make a guess at a few of them. For instance ’Frisco, who was a pure malamute, couldn’t have come from San Francisco, hence it is likely that his first owner had. Wolf, also a pure malamute, probably came by his name from having been a wolf killer, Tofty, from a town over near Fish Creek where he might have been born, while Skookum means strong in the Chinook jargon. So much for Jack’s team.

As to Bill’s team, Sate, it seems clear, is a contraction of Satan, and was so called because he was an imp of knowledge, as wise and wily as huskies are made. Caro is a town over by Chandlar Lake, about a hundred miles northwest of Fort Yukon; Lukeen got his name from old Fort Lukeen, on the Kushokwin River, but on whose site the town of Kolmakoffsky now stands. He was a long, long way from the place where his slit-eyes first saw the light of day. Moosehide may have derived his cognomen by having eaten this delicacy when he was once starving to death, while Jinx is a name that is always associated with bad luck and he finally lived up to it.

The storekeeper handed Jack and Bill a rawhide whip apiece, about twelve or fourteen feet long, and told two of the drivers to give the boys a hand, which was his easy way of saying to show them how to manage the teams, for it takes much time and a deal of practice before a tenderfoot can drive these dogs by word of mouth and the crack of the whip.

It was plain to be seen that the dogs were glad to be in the traces again and they all stood alert and ready for the word to mush, which means the same thing as the farmer’s gid-ap. While Jack had had some experience with driving a dog team in the Arctic he was by no means an adept at it and poor Bill was as helpless as a pedestrian crossing Fifth Avenue at Forty-Second Street. But the men knew and the dogs know what to do.

There was a crack of a whip that sounded like a pistol shot, with a yell of “mush, you huskies,” and Bill’s team was at it and away. Another crack of a whip and another “mush on” from Jack, when his team followed a close second in the wake of the other. It was great sport for the old timers watching the breaking in of the new teams and their new drivers. For the boys it was real hard work and they felt as though they were sweating blood in their efforts to keep the dogs under control.

Every day from that time on Jack and Bill hitched up their dog teams and carted goods to and from the boat landing and the store for Jack McQuesten and when there was nothing else to do they would get on their carts and ride all round the town to the end that they might learn how to drive the dogs right and so that the dogs would get used to them.

As both Jack and Bill were past masters in the game of handling horses they used the same tactics with the dogs—that is to say, they treated them decently and punished them only when they really needed it. At first the dogs didn’t know what the boys were up to, being so kind to them; they seemed to think it was a trick and some of them resented it. Now it has been said that malamutes and huskies have no affection for anyone, not even the man that feeds them, but Jack and Bill believed that dogs are alike the world over and they proceeded to prove it by making friends with these work-dogs of the north. This in the face of the fact that the old timers told them that petting the dogs would spoil them, but the boys thought differently.

Came then the first fall of snow and winter had set in. For the next week or so the boys drove their dog teams around hitched to the sleds and both did much walking on their snow-shoes. Like driving a dog team walking on snow-shoes requires practice, only not nearly as much, and while Jack had learned both of these things in the Arctic they were an entirely new means of transportation to Bill, but he took to them with avidity for they were in the nature of sport.

As I had occasion to remark in an earlier account of Bill, he could learn anything that had to do with the concrete, as for instance riding or shooting or athletics, but when it came to the abstract, such as extracting cube root, how wireless works or the way chemical elements combine, he was as compact as the antlers of a bull moose. But he was like the rest of the human herd in that he would have given his gold-tooth to be able to do what someone else could do, only it must have to do with the working of the mind. What Bill did have, though, was a good memory, but he lacked the fundamentals of education and this was where he fell down. But this has nothing to do with snowshoes and how he learned to use them.

His first efforts at snowshoeing were like everyone’s else, laughable in the extreme, and the natives who congregated to watch him roared as he spilled himself this way or that way and then must needs have assistance to get up again. Before he had done with it, though, he could walk on them very swiftly notwithstanding his rather short bowed legs and it was surprising how quickly he learned the swinging outward motion that must be acquired in order to become an expert.

To cap the climax he laughed best at them by laughing last when he turned a complete back somersault with a pair of five-foot snowshoes on and that, as you will allow, is some very considerable trick.

“He’ll do!” as Jack McQuesten put it.

A good deal of snow had fallen, the streams and rivers had frozen over so that the sledding was good and it was getting around the zero mark. The long awaited day had arrived and Jack McQuesten had packed their outfit on the sleds, at the same time showing the boys how to do it. There is a wonderful knack in knowing how to pack, and the “freight-car” that Bill had declared they would need to carry their outfit, which the old trader had made up for them, his experienced hands compressed into two comfortable loads. It was next to impossible, as Jack said, to believe that such an enormous amount of stores could be contained in so small a space.

The dogs were harnessed and they knew that now they were in for some real work but they were none the less anxious for the start. Then there emerged from McQuesten’s store two strange figures dressed in furs from head to foot. They were neither Eskimos nor Indians but a look at them full in the face revealed that they were no other than a couple of youthful gold seekers who had come out of the far east and answered to the names of Jack and Bill. Truly they looked of the North, Northern.

Finally just as the first dull streaks of daylight sifted through the thick air the cracks of their rawhide whips broke the monotony of weeks of waiting and the orders to “mush on, you huskies” from both Jack and Bill who were at the handle bars of their sleds started the teams down the main street of Circle at a brisk pace.

They crossed the Yukon River and took the No Name River that flows into it a little to the north of Circle and whose headwaters lay some forty miles to the east of it. By noon they calculated they had covered about fifteen miles and here they made their first stop, had a drink of hot tea from their thermos bottles and did justice to some other edibles that Sing Nook had knocked together for them, and they were not Alaska strawberries either.

After they and the dogs had rested half-an-hour, they broke out their sleds, which means loosening the runners, which freeze and stick fast, by moving the sled sidewise with the gee pole, and started up the river again. They didn’t make such good time now for the work was new and was telling on them even more than it was on the dogs. So by sundown they had made only ten miles more, but Bill said he thought that was doing mighty well under the circumstances and Jack thought so too. They had hoped, though, to make the head of the stream that night.

“Four days o’ this kind o’ goin’ will put us in the land o’ the Yeehats,” said Bill.

They pitched their tent on the bank of the river and built a rousing fire just outside of it. Then they fed the dogs a generous piece of fish each, which is the principal diet of the dogs in Alaska; this done they got their own suppers and, just to see how it would go, they warmed up some pemmican, got out the hardtack and made a big pot of coffee.

Here it was that Bill was introduced to that celebrated food which was the chief factor in the discovery of the North Pole, though of course Peary and his malamutes and the Eskimos had something to do with it too.

“Pemmican,” allowed Bill, making a face that would put shame to an ancestor on a totem-pole, “seems to be a concoction on the order o’ a brownstone house built up o’ schnitzel and artificial rubber. I suppose it is all right though when everything else is all wrong but when we get there,” and he pointed somewhere in a direction that might lead to the North Star, the one hundred and thirty-fourth parallel and New York, but meaning their winter quarters to be, “it will be venison steak for ours.”

The dogs, tired after their first day’s work, since they had been idle all summer, had disappeared, having dug out holes in the snow and gone to bed. The boys, though they were dead tired too, were in no mood for sleep, but in their fur clothes they were as warm as though ensconced in their own steam-heated homes, while the mellow glow of the candle light inside their tent gave it as cheery an aspect as a cluster of electric lights in a parlor.

So they sat around for an hour or so after supper discussing their successful start, their outfit, the dogs and—not to be forgotten for a single moment—the gold they were after. It was good to know that here, far from the civilized haunts of men, there were fourteen huskies, strong of leg and tough of feet, sleeping out there under the snow who could carry them to the farthermost ends of the frozen North if needs be. It gave them a great feeling of security.

“Imagine us, Jack, a-drivin’ down Broadway or Fifth Avenoo! What’d the people think anyway?” Bill dreamed in an audible voice.

“I opine we wouldn’t get very far,” replied Jack, laughing at this ridiculous idea of his pal’s.

“I’d like to know why not?” queried Bill.

“Because the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wouldn’t stand for it for a moment. They would send the dogs to the Bide-a-Wee home and us to Randall’s Island.4 And then the tables would be turned for we’d get the dried fish and water and they’d get the pemmican, pink tea and ice cream.”

“I’m on, Buddy; what’s all right in one part o’ the United States is a crime in some other part o’ it. I guess we’ll stay right here with our huskies, eh, Jack?”

“I’ll say we will for about six months—or until we find that gold.”

“These Indian guys ain’t such slouches, are they?” went on Bill, who having filled up on pemmican was in a talkative mood. “Imagine them havin’ sense enough to hitch up a lot o’ dogs and puttin’ them to work pullin’ loads. Some invention I calls it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jack. “While the Indians used dog teams before the white men came here, the Indians didn’t know anything about using a smart dog for a leader and driving them by word of mouth.”

“How’d they do it, then!”

“By having an Indian boy run ahead of the dogs and of course the dogs ran after him. It was the white man that put an intelligent dog ahead of the team to lead them. You must have noticed to-day that our lead dogs, ’Frisco and Sate, did mighty little real pulling but they kept the other dogs spread out and pulling their level best. And it’s the leaders who ho and mush and gee and haw when we yell at them and impart our orders to the other dogs of the teams. It’s always the white man who puts the finishing touches on things he finds.”

“We’ll put the finishin’ touches on them sacks o’ gold, I’m sayin’,” Bill rejoined and then calming down a bit he added, “when we finds ’em.”

The fire had burned low and the boys got into their sleeping bags, when they followed their dogs into the shadowy land of dreams. But while the dogs dreamed of getting their fill of fish just once, their young masters dreamed of enough yellow gold to last them for all time.

CHAPTER VII
IN WINTER QUARTERS

The barking and howling of the dogs woke the boys from a sound sleep. They quickly got out of their sleeping bags to see what it was all about and when they looked out of the tent they saw a pack of fourteen huskies with their mouths wide open and looking for all the world as though they were laughing, except when they were in the act of straining their vocal cords to make a noise.

If they could have talked the boys would have heard them say, “here, you sleepy fellows, get a move on yourselves, for we’ve got to do twenty miles to-day.” The handsome brutes were as playful and joyous as any of their tribe this side of the happy hunting grounds where all good canines go to when they die and where the “toil of the trace and trail” are not known.

On second thought, though, it may just be that they were not so particularly anxious to get into the harness again as it was that they had fond recollections of the dried fish they had eaten the night before, and that they were more than ready now for another helping of the same hyperbolical breakfast food.

While Jack fed them more generous portions of fish than they had ever known before, Bill proceeded to get their own breakfasts, of crisp bacon, real bread made by that heathen Chinese, Sing Nook, back there at Circle, and coffee with condensed milk and sugar in it. What more could they—could anyone—want? The boys couldn’t imagine.

Now as long as they had followed the river their course had been due east and they didn’t have to worry about going in the right direction but when they reached the end of it their course lay northeast, which is, naturally, forty-five degrees between the points of the compass known as due north and due east. To follow this course they produced their compasses and while both Jack and Bill were perfectly familiar with the use of the instruments something seemed to be wrong with them, for instead of the needles pointing to the north as do all good compasses, they pointed almost due east, or to be exact they pointed to east by north, which is eleven and one-fourth degrees north of due east.

“It’s twelve o’clock by both your watch and mine and there’s the sun overhead on the meridian, so north must be up there and here’s these bloomin’ compasses a-pointin’ to the east,” complained Bill. “Here we are a thousand miles from nowhere and we don’t even know the blinkin’ north when we sees it.”

“Now don’t get excited, Bill, but let’s investigate this thing and reason out the whyness of the wherefore,” said Jack sanely, though he couldn’t understand it any more than did his “pard” Bill.

They were so close to the north-pole the needles vibrated with dynamic energy and yet they fixedly held their positions north by east.

“Maybe it’s the hardware in our outfit that’s affectin’ them, or the pemmican we had for lunch yesterday, or else the dogs have et a keg-o’-nails afore we left Circle,” suggested Bill, who had a better idea of funning than he had of science.

“There isn’t enough iron in our outfit to affect them as you can tell if you will walk around the sleds with your compass. It may be the pemmican, though, for I sort of feel as if there’s a loadstone in my stomach. Leaving all joking aside, Bill, there is something here—some phenomenon we don’t understand,” returned Jack, thinking as he had never thought before.

“It may just be,” he went on, “that there is a vein of iron ore running along in this direction which would of course account for the erratic behavior of the needles. If so we’ll soon get out of the range of its influence. What we’ll do is to call the point marked east on our compass cards north and then if we travel north by east we’ll really be going in the right direction, see?” explained Jack.

“It’s as clear as mud,” responded Bill, “we’ll have a nice time correctin’ the errors of these compasses when they are ninety degrees outen the way. You can use your compass if you want to but I’m goin’ by the blinkin’ Sun and the bloomin’ North Star, I am.”

All that day as they were mushing on Jack kept tab on his compass and Bill kept his eye on the sun and while they both firmly believed they were headed right, the compass, by which the mariner pushes boldly forward, steering always as it directs, knowing it will not send him astray, had the boys worked up into something that very nearly approached a nervous state of mind.

All the time they were on the march that afternoon the going was very much heavier than it had been on the No Name River, for they had to break the trail as they went along. Jack kept wondering what had come over the compasses that so persistently made them point east instead of north.

When they had established camp that night they were still discussing the frivolous peculiarities of compasses which enabled them to point east when they were on top-o’-the-world with the same degree of freedom that they pointed north when they were used on the rim-o’-the-world.

The weather was crisp and cold and the air as thin and clear as crystal. Bill, who had lost faith in the instrument that is the symbol of unerring accuracy, stood forth in the night, looking more like some barbarian of the glacial age than a pampered boy of the gas-house district and viewed the twinkling lights in the bowl of the heavens. He called Jack and indicating the North Star with his finger said:

“Either that star is wrong and our compasses are right or the other way about, but ’tween you and me, Bud, I’ll bank on the North Star every time and dish the compasses.”

“I know exactly where the trouble comes in, Bill; funny I couldn’t have thought of it before,” said Jack, brightening up as though his brain-cells had decohered. “The North Star and the compasses are both right. You know that the magnetic north pole and the true, or geographic, north pole are not in the same place.

“In fact the magnetic pole is way south of the true pole—let me see, if I remember rightly it is pretty close to the meridian which is one hundred degrees west of Greenwich and on the sixty-eighth parallel, and is, consequently, nearly twenty degrees south of the geographic pole. This is the reason, then, our compasses point to the east instead of to the north; the only thing we don’t want to forget to do is to allow for this difference.”

“Right you are, Jack,” Bill made answer, for of all times that his admiration for his partner welled in his breast it was when the latter explained what he called “this high-brow stuff.” “Say if I had a brain like yourn I wouldn’t be up here seekin’ moosehide sacks o’ gold, I’d be back there in little ole Noo York on Wall Street shovelin’ it into vaults; that’s what I’d be doin’.”

Having disposed of the vexatious problem of the North Pole Bill again took an interest in his compass and began figuring out how many points this way or that way they would have to go to get so many points the other side of somewhere else. Bill didn’t know it but up there in the cold, cold North he was developing his gray matter, for he was thinking and this is the only process by which it can be done.

And so for the next three days they kept steadily onward over tundras, on streams, through wooded lands, up hills and down dales and always north by east. Nor did the boys feel a bit lonesome here in these vast stretches of the sub-Arctic ice and snow and the great, grim solitude of nature but this may be accounted for in virtue of there being hardly ever a minute but that they were kept on the jump doing something for either themselves or the dogs.

Neither were they without companions for the dogs were the most wonderful company ever. They showed the most amazing intelligence, particularly ’Frisco and Sate, and Bill was not far from the truth when he said “they’re human and that’s all there is to it.” And in very truth so it seemed, for whatever they wanted to do or say, they knew precisely how to go about it, or to make themselves understood.

“We still have another day’s journey before us,” Jack announced as they made their last temporary camp, and they were, indeed, getting pretty close to the end of the rainbow, for they were even then in the land of the Yeehats, which was the land of their golden hopes.

But to Bill, instead of there being more gold the farther north they went, the snowscape grew more desolate and forbidding, for he was better acquainted with a semi-torrid climate than he was with a wholly frigid one, and to him the outlook was far from alluring. Jack who had spent nine months in the Arctic didn’t mind it a little bit. He had the makings in him of a polar explorer.

Harking back to that July morning when Jack had unfolded the fascinating story of gold in moosehide sacks to him in his apartment, and now looking out upon the snow-veiled land as far as his eye could reach Bill again began to wonder if, after all, it wasn’t a fairy tale told by a writer of fiction, or, more likely, a hoax perpetrated by the early miners on the tenderfeet who pestered them with questions.

“What I’d like to know is if this metal is really up here,” he finally said to Jack, “why haven’t men like Jack McQuesten, Doc Marling, Sam Stoneback and all the other old timers who have lived in Ilasker ever since gold was discovered, searched for and found this treasure.”

Jack smiled cynically—that is, as cynically as a boy can smile.

“You might just as reasonably ask me why the head door-keeper of the Stock Exchange has not made a fortune on the floor—he’s on the ground too you know. Or why is it a boot-black sometimes becomes a millionaire, or a girl from Tin Can Alley rises out of the depths and is crowned a queen?” Jack argued.

“Or Bill Adams, of Claremont Avenoo, seekin’ the yellow metal in the shadow o’ the North Pole,” Bill commented and then he added, “I’m gettin’ to be some poet like Mr. Service, what say, Jack?”

“Yes, this beautiful Northland will make a poet of anybody. But were the bootblack and the alley wench destined to do and become what they did do and did become?” Jack went on.

“Is it because they thought their way up, or is the element of chance responsible for it all? Perhaps it is like pemmican, due to a little of everything mixed together. These are things for you to think about, Bill.”

Bill was thinking but he couldn’t think fast enough to keep up with Jack’s line of talk, though he had the satisfaction of knowing what his partner was driving at and this was more than he was sometimes able to do.

“It sounds to me, Jack,” he finally said, “but I’m hopin’ as how you’re right. I wouldn’t take any stock in it comin’ from any one else ’ceptin’ yourself. Your hunches from the time I first knowed you has got the weegie board locked in a vault. An’ consekently I’m sayin’ as how I take it your hunch inkubator is in just as good workin’ order and reliable here in Ilasker, as it was down in Mexico.”

“Now you’re talking sense,” said Jack, throwing out his chest, only it couldn’t be noticed from the exterior because his caribou coat was so big it covered up his abnormal expansion. “And see here, Bill, you want to cut out this ‘it sounds to me’ stuff. I’m not exactly what you call a Christian Scientist but we’ll never find the pot of gold if you’re going to keep doubting it all the time.”

This little talk gave Bill some food for thought too, and he resolved that let come what may he would never show any signs of its “sounding to him” again.

Along in the late afternoon of the next day they came to a river and Jack proclaimed that they had at last reached the end of their long trip.

“This is the Big Black River all right and if I haven’t missed my guess we are about ten miles below the Arctic Circle and fifteen or twenty miles west of the International boundary line. Put her there, old pard, we’re in the land of the Yeehats at last!”

“With nary a Yeehat in sight,” said Bill as they grasped hands, “but I’m goin’ to keep my rifle handy if it’s all the same to you.”

Then came the work of building their winter quarters which was to be a log cabin of one room about twelve feet wide and fourteen feet long. There were plenty of trees about, the chief kind being Alaska spruce, and owing to its abundance in the more northern parts of Alaska it is used for work of every description, such as cabins, mining timber, firewood, sleds, etc.

The first thing to be done was to fell the trees and they began by sawing them down with their crosscut saw. Bill said he would rather chop them down and that he could do it easier and quicker than both of them could do it together with the saw. While this work was in progress the dogs grew restless on account of their inactivity and enlivened things up every now and then with a fight; then Jack would go among them, like Daniel in the lion’s den, and use the butt-end of his whip handle on them until they broke apart.

“I’ll give you muts something to do that will take the fight out of you,” he told them, and he did, for as Bill felled each tree his pardner, as he had now begun to call him, lashed a rope round an end and hitching the dogs to it put them to doing work the like of which none of them had ever done before.

And pull? Why, boy, they pulled so hard that their muscles looked as if they would break through their hides. After he had broken out a log and was ready to start Jack would give his long whip a tremendous crack and yell mush! when every dog did his duty and they liked it too.

It was a never ending source of wonder to the boys that these animals liked to work. And yet under the influence of kind treatment they were very affectionate, especially the malamutes, though none of them showed it in a way at all like dogs that live in the lap of luxury. Neither would it do to pet one of them to the exclusion of the others else there would be a terrific fight going on in an instant for they were fearfully jealous, and would not tolerate the slightest show of partiality.

“I’ve got one o’ them high-brow ideas, Jack; I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ as I’ve watched these huskies, and after what you told me about the way the dogs acted on the front over there in France, I’ve conclooded they’ve got human brains just the same as you and me. They could talk if they wants to but they just pretend they can’t so they won’t have to argy with a feller. They’re just like them furriners in Noo York, they can savvy anything they wanter and anything they don’t wanter savvy—why they don’t.”

“Then you believe in reincarnation,” said Jack.

“Reindarnation!” was Bill’s near echo. “I might believe in it if I knew what it is, but not knowin’ I cannot say.”

Then Jack explained how some folks, including about four hundred million in India, believed that the souls of animals, when they died, passed on into the bodies of people. This was all easy enough for Jack to tell about but when Bill wanted to know what Jack meant by soul his partner had no small time telling him about it in a way that he could understand.

“It sounds reasonable,” declared Bill, “and I would believe in this reindarnation thing only these dogs are so much decenter than most people.”