North

When Lou Gordon drove her dogs straight for the bright lights of Nome at the finish of their long run from Candle, she recognized the dark figure that waited beside the trail on the outskirts of the town, and halted the dogs with a word. A moment later she found herself pouring the story of the great run into the eager ears of this tall stranger, who listened with little nods of approval. When she had finished, the man went to the dogs and examined them one by one. “There ain’t a played-out dog in the bunch,” he announced, “Not one. They’ll do, all right. But how about you? You must be about all in.”

The girl smiled into the face that peered so solicitously into her own. “Oh, I’m all right. I could do it over again, if I had to! I’m tired, of course. But I’m good for a whole lot yet.”

“You’re game, all right, Miss Gordon, but I wish you wouldn’t drive that race. It ain’t a woman’s job. Tell you what—let me drive for you!”

“No, indeed! No one can handle those dogs like I can. No, if I win, I’ve got to drive them myself—and I’ve got to win!”

Together they made their way into town, and after bidding her good night, MacShane took a long, long walk and then went to bed.

In the morning they met at breakfast, and MacShane asked after her father.

“I hardly ever see him,” laughed the girl, “His room is always empty by the time I get up, and he’s had his breakfast and is off to watch those boilers work.”

“And, what do you find to do here all alone?” he asked.

“Oh, I take the dogs out for a run in the morning, and manage to fill in the rest of the day just looking around, or reading, or sewing. Would you like to go with me, out on the trail with the dogs?” she asked.

“I sure would!” exclaimed the man, so quickly that for some reason they both blushed furiously, and laughed.

From that time on the two were together every day, and for the greater part of every day.

“Do you know,” said the girl, one day when they were out on the trail with the dogs, “That you have never told me your name!”

MacShane laughed: “You never asked me,” he said. “But, I don’t think I’d tell you if you did—not yet, anyway.”

“But, why not?” she asked, searching his smiling eyes.

“Oh, we’ll just pretend it’s a kind of a game we’re playing. I know you, but you don’t know me. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I ain’t a hooch-runner, or a criminal of some sort. I ain’t really. I’m somethin’ of a minin’ man—in a small way—like your father, an’ thousands of others up here in the big country.”

“But,” objected the girl, “I’ve got to call you something!”

“Call me—Huloimee Tilakum.”

“Huloimee Tilakum,” repeated the girl, “Stranger. I don’t know whether I like that, or not.”

“It’s the name you, yourself gave me—back there on the trail the first time we met,” he smiled, “Don’t you remember you warned me that Skookum didn’t like strangers.”

“But, sometime you will tell me your name?”

The man was silent for a space of seconds. “Yes,” he answered as he raised his eyes to hers, “yes, sometime, I think I shall tell you my name.”

It was through MacShane that Lou Gordon was enabled to place the money that the men of Nolan had sent down to bet on her dogs. At first he readily got odds of ten-to-one, but as more and more money appeared to back the unknown Koyukuk dogs, the odds shrank to eight, to seven, to six, and on the last day before the race, MacShane found difficulty in placing the last thousand at five-to-one.

During all this time he had only seen Old Man Gordon once. The old man did not recognize him, and with Lou sitting by and endeavoring to turn the conversation into other channels, MacShane listened patiently to a two-hour discourse on the absolute supremacy of “b’ilers” over wood-thawing. Later, when Lou apologized for her father’s harangue, MacShane laughed. “Oh don’t bother about that,” he assured her, “I believe he’s right.”

Jake Dalzene’s surprise at meeting Lou Gordon on the trail between Nome and Soloman swiftly gave place to an outburst of rage that found vent in an outpouring of meaningless curses and a senseless abuse of his dogs during the remaining journey to Nome.

Dalzene’s presence on the Seward Peninsula had but indirectly to do with the Alaska Sweepstakes. With the escape of Skookum on Dall River, had vanished all thought of entering the great race. An infection in his mangled hand held him at Fort Gibbon in care of the Army surgeon who had saved the member only to have it heal into a twisted, and all but worthless, claw.

It was while at the fort that Dalzene learned of the appearance on the Yukon of a United States marshal who was as proficient as he was persistent in the extermination of hooch-runners. And so it was that when the hand had healed sufficiently for travel, he quietly slipped up to Rampart City, loaded his remaining stock of liquor onto his sled and hit the trail for Nome. It was a long trail. Dalzene would have much preferred a trip up the Koyukuk. But, far rather would he have taken chances with the marshal and the Yukon, than to show up on the Koyukuk in the face of the protocol of the miner’s meeting. With hate-smouldering eyes he promised himself that some day he would quietly slip up to Myrtle and, in his own way, even up the score with the Gordons—but not yet.

The upper Yukon, policed as it was by the Mounted would prove equally unhealthy, and the Tanana hardly less so. The lower coast had been closed to him for years, so perforce, he must hit for Nome. There were plenty of natives along the coast. If he made good time he could get rid of his hooch to the Eskimos and, by judicious betting on the big race, would have a chance to retrieve the fortune he had lost on the Koyukuk.

Taking with him an Indian from Rampart, he made good time on the trail, despite the fact that, swath it as he would, his injured hand was so sensitive to the cold that it gave him almost constant pain. From Unalaklik north he managed to trade all of his hooch for fur. At Council he learned through careful inquiry that it was almost a foregone conclusion that John Johnson would win the Sweepstakes. Whereupon he placed several bets, and continued his journey to Nome.

Just beyond Soloman he had come face to face with Lou Gordon. One glance at Skookum, and he had swung wide to avoid the white fangs that had bared at sight and scent of him, and as the girl passed, the abysmal hate that had smouldered for weeks in his warped soul burst into a volcano of insane rage. Here, was the primal cause of all his misfortune. The dogs which had beaten him out of his fifteen thousand dollars—all he owned in the world except his outfit, and the single load of hooch cached at Rampart City. And here, glaring at him in all eagerness to finish a job only well begun, stood the great leader of those dogs, crouching with bared fangs. And in the brief interval before the outfit passed, it seemed as though the memory of each moment of pain that had been his since those fangs had struck, surged up within him, until as the outfit disappeared down the trail, he wiped cold sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his parka.

In Nome he learned that the Gordon dogs were entered in the race and that Old Man Gordon was to drive. In Nome, as in Council, John Johnson’s team was the favorite. But Nome knew nothing of the Gordon dogs, and he, Dalzene, did know. The Gordon dogs were a joke in Nome. They were offering ten-to-one against them—and no takers. But, they had never seen those dogs run!

The first thought that entered Dalzene’s head was to take the short end of that ten-to-one money. If the Gordon dogs won, he could clean up big. But right there, the supreme hatred of his soul manifested itself. The talk in Nome was that already the stakes for the race had mounted to seven thousand dollars, and that in all probability from fifteen hundred to two thousand would be added from the proceeds of a big dance that was to be held on the night of the twelfth. If he won, so would the Gordons! All Alaska would be talking of the great dog that led the team, and of the old man who drove them—the dog that had maimed him for life, and the man who had caused him to lose his fifteen thousand dollars! No! He would bet even money on Johnson’s dogs, and somehow he would put the Gordon team out of the running. He’d show ’em! They couldn’t beat him out of his money and get away with it! They weren’t on the Koyukuk, now! And this was only the beginning. Wait till he appeared suddenly on Myrtle—then the real squaring of accounts would come off!

For days after the return of the girl, Dalzene watched for a chance to strike. His first intent was to injure, or kill the leader. He tried to ingratiate himself with the keeper of the dogs at the hotel but the man had taken an intense liking to the girl with the dark eyes, and he cared for her dogs as though they had been his own. Furthermore, the man knew dogs, and loved them. On the day Dalzene appeared at the kennels, with the apparent intention of a friendly chat, the keeper noted instantly the actions of Skookum, who crouched on his chain with bared fangs. Noted, also, that Dalzene unconsciously shrank back from the dog, although not within several yards of him.

“Great dog you’ve got there,” hazarded Dalzene, with a show of friendliness.

“Yeh,” answered the man, dryly, as he met Dalzene’s glance with a stony stare. “I’m jest about to turn him loose fer a run.” As he spoke he started toward Skookum, whose smouldering amber eyes seemed to flash red lights as they fastened upon Dalzene.

“For Christ’s sake—don’t!” Dalzene’s voice rose in a thin scream, and the next instant the corral gate slammed, and white faced, Dalzene stood peering through from the outside.

Advancing to the gate, the keeper spoke deliberately, “I don’t know who you be—an’ I don’t give a damn. I do know that if you ever show up around this corral agin while that dog is here—what one of us leaves of you, the other one will finish. Now git!”

And Dalzene “got.” Thereafter he sought other means of putting the Gordon dogs out of the running. He considered hiding behind an ice-hummock and taking a shot with a rifle as the dogs went past on their daily exercise run. But, decided the risk was too great in a country where there was no timber. Day after day he cudgeled his brains for a plan, and then, with the great event only a few days off he hit it. So effective, and yet so beautifully simple that the only wonder was he had not thought of it before.

Whereupon, he purchased a bottle of liquor, and bided his time until the day before the race.

Immediately after breakfast on that day Old Man Gordon visited an abandoned working at the outskirts of the town to look over a small boiler which had been offered to him at a bargain. A half-hour later from the direction of this abandoned dump, the Indian who had accompanied Dalzene from Rampart, staggered up the street, waving his bottle of liquor and howling defiance in the faces of all white men. With admirable promptitude, the hand of the law fell heavily upon his shoulder, and he was jailed. It happened that Dalzene was one of a small group of the curious who followed the officer to the jail with his prisoner, and there when questioned, the Indian stated that he had bought the hooch from an old man—a white man, and that the man was down by the old dump. Two officers, starting immediately for the abandoned dump, were accosted by Dalzene, who confidentially slipped them the word that he had happened to be passing the aforementioned dump, an hour since, and had seen a man who wore a beard, pass the Indian a bottle of liquor, in exchange for some money. It seemed like a damned shame to pinch the Injun, and he for one, would be glad to see any man convicted that would sell hooch to an Injun.

This tallied so accurately with the rather vague story of the drunken man that the officers doubled their pace, and a few moments later Old Man Gordon, fighting in righteous rage, roaring loudly his protest, was dragged to jail and locked up in a cell, after having been duly identified by the Indian.

In the meantime Dalzene had disappeared from the vicinity and, directly across the street from the hotel, came face to face with the man he had noticed very often recently in company with Lou Gordon. He knew nothing of this man, except that it was he who was backing the Gordon dogs so heavily that he had forced the odds down from ten-to-one to six-to-one. Instantly Dalzene’s fingers closed about his remaining roll of bills, and abruptly he accosted the stranger. “I got five hundred that says John Johnson’s dogs wins the race!” he challenged, truculently.

“The hell you have!” replied MacShane, “Well you won’t have, after tomorrow. Step over here to the Malamute, an’ we’ll put up the dust.”

The matter was soon settled, and, while MacShane strolled over and watched a game of solo, Dalzene refreshed himself at the bar. “That’ll fix ’em,” he muttered, “Old Man Gordon hain’t on the Koyukuk, now. They’ll put his bail so high he won’t never be able to raise it here where they don’t know him, an’ I know enough about dogs to know that with their reg’lar driver out of the way, they hain’t goin’ to do no good in the race. The gal, she allus exercised ’em fer him, but it was the old man that druv the race that beat me out—an’ it’s him that’s entered to drive this one.” And well satisfied with himself, Dalzene quitted the saloon, a short time before MacShane left the place and crossed over to the hotel.