# The relocation of Montana Creek

"Sark and Bassett get into the thick of a man-killing race for gold in the Northwest."
THE RELOCATION OF MONTANA CREEK
A TALE OF DAWSON DAYS
SAMUEL ALEXANDER WHITE
Author of "The Spoilsman," "The Posts of Pillage," etc.
“GO ON and drop that moose, Bassett!” Eric Sark urged his partner. “Your deliberateness is sure exasperating, and there's a dog-team sifting up Indian River this lurid minute. Drop him, I say, or that outfit’ll scare him skin-bald clean up to the Clear Lake country!”
“Don’t fluster yourself, pardner!” retorted Tom Bassett, who, hidden in a spruce clump half-way between Montana and Eureka Creeks, had his quarry marked down three hundred yards away across a little cañon. “He’s got to take another step before I shoot. Thar’s only his head and bell visible, and moose ain’t so plentiful in the Indian River districk this Winter that a man kin afford to miss one. That dog-team’ll be Burge Kivre’s comin’ up from Dawson City. It was jist about here we spoke him goin’ down day before yesterday. Burge is a wise guy, all right. You wave your hand and he’ll stop.”
Sark crawled out on his belly to the riverbank and waved to the flying Kivre for a halt. The latter caught the signal. He threw his weight back upon the gee-pole, brought his dogs to a sudden stop and geed them swiftly around toward the bank.
“Say, boys—” he shouted.
And Bassett’s rifle cracked. For at the sound of Kivre’s voice the moose had taken, not a step, but a twelve-foot jump forward.
“Tarnation!” apologized Kivre. “I didn’t know that was the play. Did you get him, Tom?”
“Sure did,” grinned Bassett, still holding his rifle at the ready and watching the snow fly up in the death-wallow three hundred yards away. “Fair back of the shoulder! But you nearly unflapped the flapjacks, Burge!”
“It was plumb careless of me. But when Eric waved at me, I wasn’t thinking about game. I was thinking about yourselves. I been watching for you all along to give you the hint. Wasn’t it on Montana Creek you told me the other day you staked a claim?”
“Montana Creek, yes,” replied Sark. “We staked one claim in Tom’s name. That’s why we wanted the moose so bad. We’re all out of grub, and we needed the meat to stay on and prove her up. I haven’t surrendered my rights in the valley yet, but if she shows as much as we have reason to believe she will I’ll stake another in my own name.”
“No, you won’t,” informed Kivre pointedly. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s a stampede on Montana, and she’s overflowing to the bench grounds with men. They heeled me out of Dawson and passed me as if I was sitting at bacon and beans. The creek was plumb plastered when I swung by.”
“Ding-blast it!” ejaculated Bassett. “Who in blazes put ’em wise to Montana?”
“I didn’t. You boys confided in me offhand like and never imposed any oaths of secrecy on me, but I tell you straight I didn’t articulate an artless sound. Still, the word’s come out of nowhere as it always does, rising like the mist in the valley or falling like a feather in the air. I didn’t know where the exodus was headed until I came to Montana, and then I remembered about your claim. Now if I were in your moccasins, boys, I’d be smoke-tanning it down to look after that claim. Casino Charlie, Ante Baker, Gunboat Kane and a lot more slippery customers from Dawson City are in on the stampede.”
“By thunder, then that’s what we will be doin’ inside ten sizzlin’ seconds!” declared Bassett. “And we got to leave the moose till later. Here, Burge, lay the empty shell on him when you go by as a symbol of possession. Our dog-team’s down in yon gulch below.”
“All right,” promised Burge, taking the shell and waving them good-luck as they rushed off for the gulch, “I’ll tag him for you. There’s nothing else I can do for you? The new Gold Commissioner and Captain Constantine are up on Eureka straightening out some claim disputes. If you think there’s any chance of a mix-up on Montana, I’ll send them down.”
“Who?” demanded Sark, whirling and running sidewise in his stride. “Tom Fawcett and Cap. Constantine? They’re on Eureka, eh? Well, I’ll tell you what, Burge! You dress and quarter that moose for us and hoist the meat into a tree with the dogs. We’ll be down on Montana before you get done. If there’s any mix-up over our claim, I’ll fire five shots. You answer with two if you get me.”
OUT of the gulch wherein they had secreted their' dog-team during the stalk of the moose, Sark and Bassett haled the five big MacKenzie River huskies and dashed down-river. They traveled at top speed, and the snow-smoke of their going hung in the air for one hundred yards behind them as they switched up Montana, which flowed into Indian River on the left limit. There was a scene of a vast activity. From source to mouth the creek limits were fully staked.
Back on the bench grounds and hill-tops men were pacing, on the forlorn hope of the pay extending that far, while on the creek-ice itself stood many disappointed groups who had not been graced with even this forlorn chance—men who were out of it and knew they were out of it and who extended each other sympathy and the gossip of Montana’s miles.
“What’s chasing you?” these asked as the plunging outfit of Sark and Bassett lumbered up. “You’re too late to get in.”
“We’re already in,” Tom retorted, “and we’re only lookin’ for our claim. Previous location, you geezers!”
“Oh! Previous location, eh? That’s it? Well, if you want to know, everybody on this creek’s been mighty previous in location, and you’ll do blame well if you find your claim in the shuffle. We’ll just go along and see you do it.”
In a solid gang that momentarily increased in size the crowd followed Sark and Bassett. In cases of this kind there was generally something to be seen, and the crowd knew Tom and Eric as men prone to impose their will in retention of their rights.
Straight up the creek the partners tore till they came to an out-thrusting bluff which projected creekwards like a spur from the ridge behind the bench ground.
“The lower boundary of our claim was fifteen hundred feet from the base of that bluff,” spoke Bassett. “I measured it accurately, because there wasn’t no other way to fix its location. Eric, you pace her off. But pace it on the ice. Ginks with fresh-drove stakes don’t take kindly to anybody meanderin’ over their holdin’s.”
Carefully, and using a uniform stride, Sark paced five hundred steps. Behind him moved the dog-team and behind the dog-team moved the scores of onlookers, each pacing for his private satisfaction the stated distance from the bluff.
“Fifteen hundred!” announced Sark, scraping a mark in the snow with his moccasined toe.
“Right you are,” corroborated many of the crowd.
“Yes, sir, you’ve hit it,” declared Bassett. “I remember a leetle alder near the lower center stake. Yonder she is. Now who’s the brazen, beggar pretendin’ to blaze a base-line we’ve already blazed?”
“Casino Charlie, or I’m a soused Siwash!” exclaimed Sark.
“Precisely,” grinned Casino. “Surprised to see me? You might know when a stampede starts from Dawson that I’d be in the van. You boys get staked yet?”
“Yes,” Sark told him, “four days ago. Right where you stand. And you get to blazes off the spot!”
Eric reached for him, ax and all, as he spoke and jerked him sidewise off the creek-bank. Casino described an acrobatic air-swing, hurtled through the foremost ranks of the roaring crowd and landed in the middle of the ice. He was on his feet in a moment, his face contorted with pain and rage and the fallen ax in his hands. But at that moment Sark’s rifle spat in the air over his head, spat and continued to spit as fast as Eric could work the lever. At the first shot Casino dropped the ax again. At the second shot he shoved his arms in air, and at each succeeding report the arms stretched aloft another full inch.
After the fifth shot Sark paused, while far up Eureka way, faint as the bark of a child’s toy-gun, came Burge Kivre’s answering pop-pop. Kivre had got him all right, and the wireless message to Gold Commissioner Thomas Fawcett and Captain Constantine of the Mounted Police was on its way.
“Now,” laughed Eric grimly, “those five shots were only for practise and to warm up the barrel. The next five’ll make a porous-plaster of you, Casino, if you don’t dissolve yourself mighty sudden. Get up onto your friend Ante Baker’s ground or down on to Gunboat Kane’s. For it’s an easy guess that they’re staked on either side of you to cover up your boundary sins!”
“All right,” gritted Casino malevolently, as he cringed away up-creek toward Ante Baker’s claim, “you got the say-so just for the fightin’ minute. But your fightin’ minute won’t last long, and you nor your partner ain’t goin’ to stay on that ground long.”
“Aren’t we?” Sark bellowed. “We’ll stay till the Gold Commissioner gets here. Savvy that? We’ll hold the ground in trust. You’ve made away with our location notices, but that doesn’t give you the claim. Fawcett’ll be the final arbiter.”
“Fawcett!” snarled Casino. “Goin’ to send for him, eh? A whale of a lot of good that’ll do you. Ante and Gunboat and me’ll blow you to Mars and Jupiter before he gets here!”
“Then you’ll have to blow thundering fast. He’ll be here before night. And if you value your sordid skin, don’t set foot on this claim before he comes.”
Casino deemed the Commissioner’s coming only a bluff, and since dark suited him better than daylight under the menace of Sark’s rifle he was content to wait till night. But just as gloom of the early evening drew in he saw something that backed the bluff.
UP THE creek, going at full gallop and covered with sifted snow and the rime of the run, came the outfit of Fawcett and Captain Constantine. Tom Bassett was on the watch for them by the creek-bank. He hailed them loudly, and at his hail they swung in.
“You fellers sure ain’t bin prodigal with time,” chuckled Tom. “How’d you make it so smokin’ fast?”
“Kivre met us up-bound for Australia Creek just at Eureka’s mouth,” informed the Gold Commissioner, shaking off the snow. “Turned us down. Five minutes later he wouldn’t have got us. What’s the trouble here, Tom?”
“Claim-jumpin’s a mild epithet for it. Sark and me staked this ground four days ago, when the creek laid white and clean as a new rabbit-skin blanket. We was up-river a piece killin’ grub when Kivre told us thar was a big stampede in behind us. And what did we see when we lit down but Casino squattin’ here. Bin spyin’ on us evidently, swipin’ our ground and puttin’ all Dawson wise. Eric plumb sky-straddled him offa it and put it in trust till you arrived.
“We’re law-abidin’ men, and you’ve got the proper authority to pass on anythin’ like this. It’s your pass, Fawcett, but while you’re passin’ jist remember we want our claim back. She sampled well. She’s the best claim on the creek, because we had the choice of the hull creek when we staked her. The outthrust of the bluff catches the alluvial drift here. And look at the pitch of the cañon! That spells concentration. Accordin’ to our estimate, that claim’s worth forty thousand dollars if it’s worth a measly ounce. Oh, I tell you, placid and patient, Fawcett, we want her back!”
“That all you have to tell me?”
“No. I know the approximate distance from the mouth up to the bluff yonder, and thar seems to me too many men in for the ground. I ain’t measured it, but it strikes me that way. More’n that, they’s only Gunboat Kane and one other man between us and the bluff, whar thar should be three men. I ain’t bin above, but I expeck it’s the same all the way up. It looks wrong Fawcett. The hull creek looks wrong.”
“Well,” decided the Gold Commissioner, “there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to measure. Most of the boys know me, and they know Captain Constantine also. They’ll not object to us coming officially on to their claims.”
Fawcett produced a steel measuring-tape and, accompanied by Constantine, Sark, Bassett and the crowd of non-stakers who had gathered to await developments, sledded down to Montana’s mouth. To facilitate the measuring in the deepening gloom, brush fires were kindled on the claims, and a score of men in the crowd carried big torches of gummy spruce knots.
From the first it was evident that something was wrong with the ground, but the Commissioner said nothing till the party came to Ante Baker’s claim, where Ante, Gunboat and Casino were conspiring together and discussing ways and means to meet the uneasy situation. And there, after due measurement of Ante’s holdings, Fawcett delivered himself from the tally in his note-book.
“Below the bluff,” he proclaimed, “I find fifteen men in where there should be only twelve; that is, fifteen four-hundred-foot claims instead of twelve five-hundred-foot ones. The first location above the bluff, belonging to Jess Tolume, runs the orthodox five hundred. Gunboat Kane’s, next it, measures seven hundred and fifty——”
A howl of protest broke from the crowd.
“Robber! Pirate! Mud-wallowin’ hogger!” rang the medley of anathemas.
“Shut up!” ordered Captain Constantine.
“The ground jointly claimed by Bassett and Casino,” Fawcett went on, “runs seven hundred and fifty, too, and likewise Ante Baker’s.”
“It measured only five hundred feet when Eric and I staked it!” announced Bassett.
“I don’t doubt it, Tom,” returned the Commissioner. “And that accounts for but two men being in between you and the bluff where there should have been three. Savvy? Tolume’s five hundred, Gunboat’s seven hundred and fifty, and two hundred and fifty added onto your original limits makes the fifteen hundred. Now I’d like to know how these claims were measured. Paced, eh?”
“No,” clamored the crowd; “with a rope belonging to Casino—a fifty-foot rope. Ten lengths of her gave one claim.”
“Ten lengths!” echoed the Commissioner. “Then that rope was ten feet short. A forty-foot rope, boys, instead of a fifty-foot one. But how does your ground run true, Tolume? Didn’t you measure with Casino’s rope?”
“I paced mine,” informed Tolume. “Over the snout of the bluff yonder it wasn’t very easy to use the rope. So I just stepped her off.”
“Pretty lucky for you, then! You hit her dead to within inches of five hundred feet, and it’s the only legal claim I’ve seen so far. But what about these overgrown ones? What happened your rope when it got up as far as Gunboat’s ground, Casino? Begin to stretch?”
“How in blazes do I know?” flared Casino. “The creek was stampeded in the dark of the mornin’, and you know blame well it’s easy to make mistakes in the dark and excitement and all. Don’t you go accusin’ me of under-measurin’ or over-measurin’ either. You ain’t got no grounds for them accusations, and if you persist, Commissioner or no Commissioner, I’ll sure have you up in Dawson for slander and defamation of character.”
“Like thunder you will!” laughed Fawcett. “You’re colossally conceited to think there’s anything to defame. Where’s the rope that was used in measuring?”
“Up at the head of Montana, I guess. Tyin’ some one’s dogs, most like, or holdin’ in somebody else’s tent-pegs.”
“Yes, or shredded into tow to kindle that fire of yours,” retorted the Commissioner. “I suppose there’s no use in looking for it. So we’ll just go on with our measuring and see where we jump off.”
Since it took the lengths of ten creek claims and a little over to total a mile, and since there were several miles of Montana stakings, this operation consumed much time. It was long after midnight when the Gold Commissioner finished and called all the stampeders into a huge council. On top of a four-foot stump he stood by one of the claim-fires half-way down Montana and set forth the situation in explicit terms.
“It’s exactly the same above as below,” he declaimed. “The claims run in general four hundred feet, stretching out in spots to six hundred, seven hundred, seven hundred and fifty and even eight hundred feet. It’s not easy to detect the differences with the naked eye, on account of the inequalities of the bank, but the tape betrays the trick. It’s been well done. The longest claims are on the roughest spots. Where the bank glides level, the stakings keep down nearer the lawful size. And the funny thing about it all is that that rope always shrank for other people and always began to stretch when it struck the territory of some of Casino’s friends.”
An ominous growl arose from the throng of stakers and they turned on Casino.
“String the tarnation thief up!” several yelled.
“Come on, then, and string!” invited Casino belligerently, as, flanked by Ante Baker and Gunboat Kane and backed by nearly a score for whom the rope had stretched, he leered out of the formidable bunch. “You don’t happen to remember that the law’s on this creek, do you? Come on, I say, if your memory’s so wilted, and we’ll sure give you all the recollection you want and a little reminiscence on the side.”
Mouthing angry imprecations at the challenge, the foremost ranks of the crowd surged forward. They collided with Casino’s body-guard in an effort to seize Casino himself, and deadlocked there for an instant op the snowy creek bank. Wild shouts and wilder threats flew back and forth through the frosty air, and several blows were struck. Things began to look ugly, and many ax-heads rose in the throng, but into the mêlée rushed Captain Constantine, aided by Sark and Bassett, and shouldered the combatants a few feet apart.
“Now quit it while the quitting’s good,” ordered Constantine. “Quit it, I tell you, before I have to lambaste some one over the head with a gun-butt. The Commissioner’s running this side-show and he can run it a thundering lot better than you. Starting rough-house and stringing people up isn’t going to land you anywhere but on the Barracks’ wood-pile!”
“Yes, boys,” Bassett urged, “take the Captain’s advice and sit tight for a minnit. Casino’s stabbed me deeper ’n anybody, and I ain’t rattlin’ no bear teeth about it. So you jist take a jolt of opiate calm and conserve all your surplus energy till Fawcett’s unbosomed himself. I think mebbe you’ll need all your steam about then. Go ahead, Commissioner, and say what’s what.”
“You see how it stands,” Fawcett continued in the surly quiet that ensued. “Jess Tolume’s is the only legally held claim on the creek. I’ve surveyed a lot of creeks and seen a lot of muddles in my time, but I never saw a muddle like this one. I’m convinced that it was caused by the trickery of Casino. I’m convinced that he stole Bassett’s claim. I’d like to declare his right of location here forfeited and put him on the wood-pile for about twelve months for claim-jumping and unlawful staking, but I haven’t a particle of proof.
“I can’t prove it wasn’t a natural mistake in the dark and in the excitement. Therefore Casino goes foot-loose and free. There can’t be anything done about him. Yet there can be something done about the creek. There are two ways out of the muddle. Here’s one of them:
“A start can be made at the mouth and my true measurements of the base-lines used to give each man a full five-hundred-foot claim. That’ll shift each man in rotation a piece up-creek. It won’t affect Jess Tolume’s claim because the fifteen four-hundred-foot claims below him make just twelve five-hundred-foot ones, and the shift’ll go round him and work on above just the same. How does that plan sound to you?”
“It isn’t fair, Commissioner,” criticized Sark, speaking for the crowd. “Down there at the mouth men’ll be getting only part of the ground they originally staked. All the way up they’ll be getting less and less. Toward the head they’ll be maybe a mile or so above the claims they used to own. What’s more, on account of the five-hundred-foot length instead of four hundred, there’ll be a lot of men squeezed out at the top with no claims at all. To be sure the over-measured ground of Casino’s gang’ll accommodate some of these, but it won’t accommodate all by a thousand-yard shot.”
“I know it,” nodded Fawcett. “You’ve spotted the drawbacks of that plan. So many’ll lose ground altogether and so many’ll be on strange stakings, farther from the mouth than they were before!”
“And Eric and me’ll lose our claim altogether at that rate of goin’,” Tom Bassett protested. “It’ll go to the first of the three men shifted up from below the bluff. We’ll git none at all. You’ve failed to git Casino with the goods on him. Thar’s no evidence to prove we staked. We’ll be left out in the frost with the cabin door shut and our feet in a waterhole. Fawcett, surely to northern gods, you have some better medicine than that?”
“What does the crowd think about it?” demanded the Commissioner impartially.
“Sark said it,” vociferated the crowd. “We all want to share and share alike. Not a man of us wants to shove anybody else out, and not a man of us wants to be shoved out by anybody else. What’s your other plan?”
“The other plan,” announced Fawcett, with an eloquent sweep of his arm, “is to relocate Montana Creek!”
A cheer burst from the non-stakers who had not been lucky enough to get in at first.
“Hurroo!” they exulted. “Splendiferous! Relocate it is!”
And those who had already staked caught their enthusiasm and swelled their cheers. For this abrupt option of the Gold Commissioner’s struck hot their imagination and stirred their riotous blood. According to the other suggestion their ground was going to be shifted anyway. What they might get would be only a lottery, and many of them would draw blanks. Whereas in this proposition they would get exactly what they staked and recorded, and there were equal chances for all.
That several would be in the running for each of the many prizes only provided more excitement and called for stiffer qualities of manhood in the winners. So they hailed the idea of relocation with acclaim and feverishly urged Fawcett to begin the game.
“You like it, eh?” chuckled the Commissioner amid their clamor. “I’m glad of that. The other switch wouldn’t be fair at all. This is. I knew it would get you. But still both plans have to be duly voted upon by those concerned. All in favor of a shift of the claims shove up their fists!”
Casino and his gang pawed the air, but they could muster no more than a score or so of votes.
“All in favor of relocation!”
Three hundred fur gauntlets and woolen mittens wriggled in the frosty night.
“Carried,” announced Fawcett, and waved off the storm of protest from Casino, Ante, Gunboat and the rest. “Go to thunder, you hoggish kickers. You’re outvoted and that settles it. You take your chance with the others, and I hope to blazes you get badly trimmed. Tom Bassett and Eric Sark, I presume there’s no balk coming from you now?”
“No,” answered Sark promptly, “there isn’t. It puts us under heavy odds. You see Casino’ll concentrate certain of his gang on that promising claim of ours. We’ll be under odds of two or three or four to one, but that doesn’t matter. We don’t want to block the general move for good. We’re dead game sports and we accept those heavy odds. Go on with your relocation.”
“All right, Eric. On we go. To prevent outsiders squeezing in on this the plan’ll have to be carried out at once. It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning now. I’ll throw Montana Creek, with the exception of one legal claim held by Jess Tolume, open for relocation at six. That’ll give everybody a chance to overhaul their sleds, harness the dogs and allow the upper stakers time to make the head of the creek. At six the race begins. The starters’ gun-shots’ll signal the take-off.
“Since Jess Tolume isn’t running, he’ll act as starter at the head. Captain Constantine’ll do the same midway, and I’ll go down to the mouth myself. When the guns go off, you stake and get to the recording office at Dawson City as fast as dog-flesh’ll let you. But first pick out what claim you’re going to try for. I numbered them all as I measured, and I have here a list of all the stakers and non-stakers. You choose and have your stakes blazed and written ready with the number of the claim you’ve set your heart on. Then all you’ll have to do is drive them!”
IMMEDIATELY great rifts split the crowd. This development called for dynamic activity. They had been content to rest that afternoon after having staked without recording for the time being. Under the mining regulations, if they were ten miles from the recording office of the district wherein they staked, they had ten days to file their ground, and for each additional ten miles of distance an additional day.
Montana Creek was in the Dawson Mining District. The recording office was at Dawson City, about forty miles away. Therefore the stakers had had thirteen days to file and had not been in a hurry, preferring first to blaze out the boundary-lines and do other necessary work upon the claims. But now when the claims were discovered to be of illegal length and hopelessly jumbled and the creek was thrown open for relocation by Fawcett, that is to say, declared virgin ground just as it was before ever a stake was driven, there was need for desperate haste.
Now the claims belonged to nobody, or rather there were no claims other than the measurements of Fawcett upon a piece of open creek. They had to be staked afresh. There were many stakers for any one claim, but the man who would get any one claim to hold for his own was the man who first recorded it in Dawson City. The others who also staked it would lose out in the grim race. Hence the turmoil in the crowd. Sections surged this way and that. They leaped upon their sleds and whipped off or ran at top speed to find their anchored out fits. Pandemonium broke loose on the creek, and many were the preliminary skirmishes fought between men and beasts for advantageous positions all up and down Montana’s length.
At the last word of the Gold Commissioner’s proclamation Ante Baker broke down-creek and out of Montana’s mouth with his dog-team. In the general disorder his move was not noticed by many; but Sark, who was keeping strict watch upon Casino and his gang, was one of the few who saw him.
“Ante’s gone,” he protested to the Commissioner. “I know what’s up. Casino’s on for staking our claim by proxy, and Ante’s gone ahead to record.”
“Ante’s cut off,” declared Fawcett, striking the name from his list of stakers. “They don’t run any proxy game on me. Unless Casino stakes and records himself, he doesn’t get a foot of ground. Every other man likewise. And I’ll just bar any more dog-teams from leaving this creek before the relocation’s under way.”
“Scrumptious!” cheered Bassett. “You sure are the real goods, Fawcett—the stiff man in the rigid place. All we want is a fair start. Pardner, you go over the harness and stuff, as he says, and see that the outfit’s all sound. I’ll jump into the spruce and cut a new gee-pole. The one on the sledge is cracked.”
Sark gave his whole outfit a thorough inspection. First of all he stripped the sledge to racing gear. Then he examined carefully the feet of each of the five dogs, biting out any ice that clung between their toes, for on the condition of the dogs’ feet the ultimate outcome of the race might well depend. And finally, although there were no breaks in the harness, he strengthened several suspiciously weak spots that might give way at a critical moment and put them out of the running. All his preparations thus made, he took the team out on the creek ice and anchored it near where the lower center stake of Bassett’s original claim would be driven.
“Aren’t you going to take a chance yourself, Eric?” several men asked. “The creek, except Tolume’s claim, is wide open to every one.”
“No, I’m no game-hog,” replied Sark. “There are a bunch of stakers here now for every claim, and they were here this last trip before I was. I know when it’s good manners to stay out. I’m only running-mate with Bassett. He stakes our old ground.”
Casino and Gunboat slid down the bank and located one outfit near Sark’s. To Eric it was evident that Gunboat was going to act as Casino’s running-mate, and he mark ed five more of Casino’s friends with ready blazed and written stakes in their hands.
The odds were bigger than they had expected, he mentally calculated, and looked anxiously for Bassett’s coming, for the minutes were creeping round to six o’clock. Bassett, however, was not to be seen and his partner began to bellow after him into the spruce.
“Oh, Tom!” he yelled. “Hurry up! It’s getting near the start. Does it take you all night to cut a gee-pole?”
“I’m comin’, pardner,” Bassett yelled back. “Footin’ it fast!”
He broke out of the spruce, the gee-pole in one hand and his mackinaw coat rolled up in the other. The pole he tossed to Sark to lash, while he commenced to bind his coat onto the sledge well toward the front.
“I’ll run lighter in my parka,” he breathed tersely.
“Then throw the coat away,” advised Sark. “I’ve just stripped the sledge of every ounce I could. What you want to lug that thing for?”
“There’s a bit of dog-feed in it.”
“But we don’t want dog-feed. For one thing you kill dogs’ speed if you feed them in a race, and for another thing you can’t stop to feed them. I tell you we can’t possibly use that feed, Tom!”
“Pardner, I hate to dispute at this pressin’ moment, but I tell you we can.”
“But, blast it, you know yourself dogs shouldn’t be fed in a run.”
“It depends on the dogs. I’ve seen a little dog feed at the right moment win many a race, and I’m jist goin’ to be adamant and bind on this bundle.”
“All right,” Sark gave in, viciously jerking tight the last strand of the gee-pole’s lashing, “you can have your way. It always takes days and weeks to change your mind, and I’m sure not going to try to do it in a few seconds. Get out onto the creek ice there with your stakes. It’s two minutes to six by my watch.”
Not only by Sark’s watch, but by the watch of every man was it two minutes to six, for all who possessed watches had set them with the Gold Commissioner’s, and those who carried none relied upon their posted fellows for the time and moved with their fellows out to the starting-line. The starting-line was the middle of the creek ice. Fawcett had so ruled, and there were drawn up all the entries in a race such as the Klondike had never seen before.
It was a sight that thrilled Sark and Basset, old-timers as they were, a sight that set their blood pounding faster, their sinews all tingling and made them forget their late difference over the question of the dog-feed. Low-sunk like a snow-walled defile lay Montana Creek, hill-flanked, spruce-sentineled, along its twisted miles. A glare of brush fires beaconed its course, vying in brightness with the searchlight aurora and the blazing stars above.
The flames played forth over the creek ice, reddening the stream from bank to bank and etching out the tense parka and mackinaw clad figures, stakes and axes in hand, hunched forward on the starting-line awaiting the signal to' stake, and upon the sledges, bunched in places closer to the bank, ready to bear the stakers on their way. The dogs seemed to have imbibed the spirit of the men. They plunged and bickered and snarled, and among them the flash of fangs and the howl of fury advertised a rivalry no less keen.
The second-hand of the watch Sark held ticked around on the sixtieth minute of the hour. It had almost gained it when he flipped the watch back into his pocket and stared fixedly at the tense line. Lucky Jess Tolume’s signal up at the head of Montana was too far away to be caught by the stakers at this point. But Captain Constantine, half-way up, caught it on the stroke of six, and the men heard his gun crack and Fawcett’s answer down at the mouth like an echo.
THE line surged forward. As far as Sark could see, both up and down the creek, there were scores straining in the first strides of the race. The ice shook under their stride.
They leaped upon the snowy bank as upon an enemy. Their axes flashed in the firelight over the lower center stakes, and beyond the scores that Eric saw he knew there were other scores leaping like these as upon an enemy with their ax-blades swinging red in the flames and their souls ablaze in competition. He counted ten men in the dash for Bassett’s claim, three outsiders, Casino, five of Casino’s gang and Tom himself.
Tom and Casino were in the lead. Their axes fell together upon their first stakes, and they were off running side by side, glaring into each other’s faces like two belligerent huskies.
Lurching along the line of the lower boundary of the claim, they disappeared in the darkness beyond the range of the fire. After them into the darkness and hard on their heels plunged Casino’s five friends.
Once into the gloom, Sark could not gage his partner’s progress, but he had seen how the gang was heeling him and he began to have forebodings. He had a half-notion to rush off and back Tom up in the staking, but a wave of wisdom told him that he dared not leave the outfit. A tampering with the unguarded team or sledge might work worse disaster than a loss of time in locating. So all he could do was to sit tight and breathe a prayer after Bassett for a smooth way for his feet.
Yet the way of Bassett’s feet was anything but smooth. Forty paces into the dark and just in a slight depression in the ground Casino’s right leg shot out in a football trip. Bassett stumbled over it, half fell, recovered himself and swung a blind blow at Casino’s head. His mittened fist took Casino behind the ear, but so far behind that the blow glanced off the tight-drawn parka hood.
The muscular impulse of the swing pivoted Tom around when his fist glanced and completed his fall. He collapsed face downward into the soft snow. Four of his five remaining stakes flew from his hand, and his ax slithered after them. This in itself approached calamity, but greater calamity smote him every moment.
As he attempted to scramble to his knees, the foremost of Casino’s five friends bumped into him and sent him down again. And every time he repeated the rising operation, there came another man with a running shock to bowl him over. Each sprawling tumble he received thrust him deeper into the show and farther from his stakes and handicapped him by so many precious minutes. Casino’s gang had him marked, and try as he might he could not rise in the face of the rush.
He gave it up at last, let his fifth enemy go uncursed and resignedly allowed the three outsiders in the rear to overrun and trample him in their haste. Then he arose, white as a snow-man from the drifts, wasted more golden minutes locating his stakes and ax in the dark and raced up the boundary toward the corner.
So much had the others gained on him that there he staked alone. At the second corner he was also alone; but after he had driven his upper center-stake he caught and passed one of the outsiders just at the rise of the farther bank across the creek ice. As he crossed the ruddy belt of flame-light he saw other forms, up creek and down, darting on the same mission, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was not the only one delayed.
Along Montana’s whole length the scene enacted on the claim he coveted was being repeated galore with but slight variations, like the many moving picture scenes upon a strip of film. Other men, scores of them, were being jostled, tripped, snow-christened, trodden upon and delayed in every conceivable manner, and from creek-mouth to creek-head the essay of relocation had resolved itself into one colossal carnival of racing, ramming and riotous recklessness.
Bassett drove his third corner-stake along with the second of the three outsiders, led him in the run for the fourth corner and along the line caught up with the third man. One tap apiece with the axes on that last corner and they flung the implements from them as they made for the creek again.
The third outsider made a grand sprint of it for a short distance, but he could not keep it up. For the claim was five hundred feet long and two thousand feet wide, lying like a double rectangle whose common base was the line of the creek. Thus he had run five thousand feet, almost a mile, around the boundaries, and now in the last few strides he cracked under the strain. Bassett breasted him, forged ahead and hurdled the creek bank onto the ice.
“Thunderation, Tom!” ejaculated Sark, swinging the dog team across to meet him. “I thought you were never coming. Casino’s gone, and his five friends are gone. Did they smother you out?”
“They sure did,” gasped Bassett, seizing the whip from his partner’s hand and falling upon the sled. “I got a rough passage, all right, but the race ain’t won yet. Go to it, you hoary-hided huskies! Mush!”
UNDER the urge of the whip the dogs surged into their breast bands and with Basset lying at full length and driving and Sark running at the rear on the tail rope, the outfit flashed down the creek. Behind them pealed clamorous voices, the howling of dogs, the pistol-like reports of the whips and the whinging shriek of sledge-runners. The claim race was finished. The river race was on. And Dawson City was the goal.
At the mouth of Montana a gigantic fire had been kindled. Its glare lit the snow for rods around, and in the glare stood the Gold Commissioner, bulking hugely in his furs, umpiring a fair start. There would doubtless be rough riding later on, but just now he was on the job, seeing that each outfit launched clear from the narrow gap of Montana’s mouth into the wider course of Indian River.
“How many ahead, Fawcett?” asked Bassett, as they spun by in the red flare.
“Twenty teams,” Fawcett called in their wake. “Casino’s leading. But remember there are over three hundred men behind you.”
“We won’t forgit, for that’s whar they have to stay!”
The rush was close on their heels because, on account of the lesser distance to travel, men had been more prone to take a chance even in the face of heavier odds upon the midway and lower claims of the creek. The stampede was driving down like a great wedge, thick at the head and petering out to single teams in the far upper reaches of Montana.
It was twenty-odd miles from Bassett’s claim on Montana to the junction of Indian River and the Yukon, and eighteen more to Dawson itself, a continuous run of approxmately forty miles. This distance was well within the sprinting powers of a good team of dogs, and it was not a race which could be won by hanging back, husbanding the huskies and drawing away in the stretch run.
There was no stretch run, or rather, it was all stretch run, a grueling drive from start to finish. The man who hung back only increased one hundredfold his chances of being jammed in the crush, and the more outfits he let go ahead of him the tighter he was bottled up.
So the motto of every contestant was: more room in front. With voice and whip they hastened to apply it, but the swiftest in application were Sark and Bassett. Their dogs were big, one hundred and forty pound Mackenzie River huskies, in prime condition and right on their mettle. It was fierce joy to the brutes to fly through the frosty atmosphere. The position of their drivers under the circumstances was not to be considered bad. Excepting Jess Tolume’s claim for which no one was running, Bassett’s was the fifteenth legal claim from the mouth. Given a fair showing in the staking, his position would have been even better, but the rough passage he got enabled twenty teams to lead him in the take-off.
Yet Tom, knowing the stamina of his animals, dared a sprint at the start. He unloosed a fierce lope that pulled down the teams ahead, and before they reached the mouths of McKinnon and Quartz Creeks, on opposite limits of Indian River, they had shown brushes to two racing outfits and were pushing three more to the limit of their speed.
From Quartz onward Bassett, whose wind had now come back, took his turn at the tail rope while Sark rested at full length upon the sled and drove. This work in the rear was exhausting. The pace was so fast that Tom was pounding along with gargantuan strides. Of course there were times when he hauled up on the tail rope and knelt on the rear of the sledge for a rest, but these were only moments of respite and recuperation, breaks in the steady grind that made a fresh renewal of the strenuous toil possible.
The creek mouths were milestones in their whizzing flight, signs for the partners to ex change places and spell each other. On under the play of the aurora and the blaze of the stars they sped, grim eyes focused on the teams ahead, and team by team they left them behind.
At Ruby Creek they passed another outfit; between Ruby and Ophir they led two more. On to Nine-mile Creek another pair succumbed. At Bertha Creek the number of spans ahead had been cut by desperate driving from thirteen to ten, and by the time they slewed out of the mouth of Indian River onto the Yukon, Tom and Eric had lopped off four more.
“Six ahead yet, Eric,” calculated Bassett. “Casino and his five follerers. I’ve watched the ones we passed. They’re exclusively outsiders. Casino and Company’s all to the velvet yet.”
“And going strong,” returned Sark, from his kneeling position on the tail of the sled. “It’s the early start they had.”
“Sure, pardner. The reason of their bein’ in the lead of the bunch of stakers from our claim down to the mouth kin be seen in their manner of stakin’. They concentrated. They disposed of my competition. The competition of the three outsiders wasn’t fierce enough to count. So they jist ambled along in peace, and the six of ’em, unannoyed, staked as a single unanimous spirit. On the other fifteen claims below, things wasn’t unanimous. Thar every man was competin’ aginst every other man, fightin’, holdin’, delayin’ and bein’ delayed and lettin’ Casino and Company steal the lead. But thar’s two places races is won, Eric. They’re won at the finish as well as at the start. They queered me at the start, so now’s the time we got to do our darnedest to be in the competition at the end.”
“Go to it, then. Six to one is still pretty big odds, but we can sure pare it down a little as we go.”
But the paring down was no easy matter. Here on the Yukon the river’s width was greater, and to the casual mind driving appeared all the easier. Yet such was not the case. One reason was that ice-jams predominated and constrained travel to well-defined routes. A second reason was that the stars and the aurora had paled, blanketing the land with a gloom which was the true herald of the coming dawn, and rendering fast journeying doubly dangerous. While a third reason obtained in the fact that the larger river space gave better opportunity for the jockeying which inevitably occurred in races of this kind, and which had not been indulged in on Indian River simply because to indulge in it would have been to court disaster and sled-wreck too early in the game.
It was for this last-named contingency that Sark and Bassett were especially on the look-out, as at the first subdued luminosity of day they drew up on the six leading sleds. Five of the sleds had but a single occupant. Casino, still in the van, had Gunboat Kane as his running-mate. In the conception of chechakos, in the rush a lone driver seemed to have the advantage, but old-timers knew better.
When trouble came, a running-mate to ward off collisions and help hail the dogs through ticklish spots was a great asset, far more than counterbalancing the handicap of his added weight upon the sledge at times. Also, a man erect on the tail-rope was in a superior position to observe the situation ahead than the driver lying down.
Sark held this position on the tail-rope as they inched up on the hindmost sled just at the mouth of Jim Creek on the right limit of the Yukon.
“Be careful if you pass, Tom,” he warned. “There’s an ice jam here.”
THE hindmost sled was to the left of the jam and well clear of it. There was plenty of room to pass between, but the moment Bassett whipped his dogs into the passage, the other team veered sharply over.
“Look out! He’ll wreck us!” yelled Eric.
Their sled was gliding at full speed, but Sark reached for the rocking runners of it and slewed the rear of it about. And even in the second of warning Bassett had vaulted off at the front with the haul-rope in his hand. He jerked the opposite way from Sark. The sledge slithered sidewise around and flicked the huskies off their feet alongside the upper edge of the jam. By the barest fraction the abrupt stop saved them. The veering team bounced to one side of them, the evil lead-dog slashing Eric’s leg in its course, and the outfit crashed into the sharp up-ended nose of the jam.
“That was a swift stunt, partner,” laughed Sark, staring a second at the broken-backed sledge, the cursing driver and the battling dogs.
“The beggar git you deep?” asked Bassett, solicitously, as he straightened out his team again and felt if his bundle of dog-feed was safe.
He pointed to the blood which trickled down his comrade’s moccasin onto the packed snow.
Sark put down his hand. His gauntlet came up dark-wet and warm.
“Not too deep,” he grunted. “Go on! The odds are only five to one.”
The other outfits had marked the fate of the one which tried to run Bassett’s sled into the jam. They tried that trick no more, yet they uncovered one which appeared equally effective.
As Tom’s string glided up, the two rearmost sledges bumped close on either side of him, their lead-dogs’ noses even with his leader’s, their wheel-dogs’ brushes waving in a line with the brush of his wheeler.
“Sandwiched, Tom!” ejaculated Sark. “Watch your balance mighty careful and get out if you can.”
Bassett whipped hard, but he could not shake the flanking outfits. They hung onto him grimly, so near that he could have touched them with a stretched arm, inching in and inching out with nerve-tensing feints and always steering him over the roughest spots in the river’s surface.
In the corrugated reach in the middle of the Yukon where Ensley Creek had vomited forth mush ice at the time of the freeze-up, both sleds by mutual consent swerved violently into him. The shock of them, thrusting to a common center, counter-steadied each other, so that they suffered nothing but a swift outward slewing in recoil.
But with the partners’ sled it was different. Caught on both quarters by the immense driving power of outfits which, dogs and all, weighed nearly half a ton apiece, their sled was catapulted straight up in the air. It came down on its side on the ice, but Sark and Bassett, hanging on to it, and twisting like cats while in the air, lit upon their moccasined feet and, running with the sled as the dogs dragged it along, quickly righted it again.
Sark kneeled as before on the tail of the sled, Bassett put his hand into the bound bundle on the front to see that his dog-feed was still in place and whipped after the of fending outfits. Thrice more those outfits turned the trick between Ensley and Caribou Creeks. Thrice more the partners’ sled bucked into air. Thrice more they flipped it upright again, and after every mishap Bassett felt for his dog-feed while dashing on.
“You’re plumb solicitous about that feed, Tom,” observed Sark, sitting on the sled while he bound a handkerchief around the gash in his leg which was spouting blood every time he landed on the ice.
“I am, pardner. I’m sure not goin’ to lose it arter watchin’ it this far. We’ll mebbe need it before the end comes. But you better watch it and do the drivin’. I’m not goin’ to lie here and see you spatterin’ gore in the rear work. Here, take the whip!”
“No, Tom, stay where you are. I’m not the one who has to record. Savvy? If I do play out, you’ll still be strong for the final spurt. You got to save yourself. But if you can save yourself and at the same time wriggle ’round those hindmost suckers, I’ll be much obliged. They have the sandwich stunt down to a nicety.”
“Yes,” growled Bassett, “but I’ll git ’em yet. Don’t you worry. I’ve bin waitin’. I know a place whar I kin fix ’em.”
The spot he had in mind was past Caribou Creek. There small rocky islands split the stream. The main-traveled trail lay by the east bank.
Bassett made a feint of boring in between his late opponents, then swerved abruptly and flew up the side channel behind the islands. A roar of warning from the two outfits greeted his move. He could hear them lashing their dogs to cut him off, but he too laced the MacKenzie River huskies to a frenzy.
The side channel was tortuous and rough, yet he gained a lead on the others in the main trail. Out of the foot of the passage he swerved his dogs in the arc of a circle. His whizzing sledge banged at an angle into the foremost of the other two. It rolled over and over, its dogs writhing a furry knot in the traces, and into it at full speed, and unable to stop, bolted the second outfit.
“Sandwich yourself, and see how you like it!” laughed Bassett, as they left the snarled heap behind and rocketed once more into the main-traveled trail.
“Good work, pardner, good work!” lauded Eric. “Our stock’s ballooning up. The odds are three to one.”
They had broken Casino’s rear guard, and now they came to grips with Casino himself. But the latter was at no loss to meet the situation. Swiftly he made shrewd disposition of his forces. He, with Gunboat Kane on the tail of his sled, held the lead directly in front of Bassett’s outfit. The two remaining teams he waved into position on the partners’ flanks.
Thus were Tom and Eric pocketed as a good horse is pocketed in a race by rival jockeys. Drive fast or drive slow, they could not worm out. The three held them as in a vise, and whether they kept the main trail or deviated through the island channels, whether they forged straight on or corkscrewed about, chose smooth ice or roughed it out among the jams, Casino’s sled with the other two stuck with them.
“This won’t do, Tom,” declared Sark in desperation. “We’re getting on to Baker Creek. We got to go through. Give me the whip. You cut the gee-pole loose and drive with it.”
QUICKLY Bassett slashed the gee-pole off. He knotted its binding-rope on for a lash and handed the twisted walrus-hide dog-whip to Eric. Balancing himself upon his knees and swinging the formidable weapon around his head, Eric brought it down upon the pocketing outfits. Nor were they slow to retaliate. Directing their dogs by voice, aided by an occasional blow, the two men on either side of him thrashed viciously at him, and ahead, on the tail of Casino’s sled and possessed of Casino’s whip, Gunboat Kane kicked the lead-dog in the nose to hold him down the while he landed thirty-foot flicks of his lash around Sark’s head and shoulders.
It was a wild moment, with the turmoil of the four boring outfits, the shriek of the gritting sled-runners, the howls of the punished dogs, the imprecations of the battling men and the splat-splat-splat of the whip-lashes on parka-clad bodies, all transpiring in reckless, meteor-like flight. A wild moment and a bitter, brutal moment, a moment to break a man’s spirit under odds and lose him the race.
Yet Sark fought madly back at the three, inflicting much punishment and receiving more, and every successive moment he stood the strain he allowed Bassett to push his dogs up closer and closer upon Casino’s leading outfit. So close he pushed them that the lead-dog got his nose over the tail of the sled and sank his fangs in sweet revenge in Gunboat’s calves. Gunboat had to scramble back and sit upon his calves and turn all his fighting power against the enraged beast.
The seams of the pocket began to gape. The two flanking sleds crowded in to hold the partners safe, their runners grinding against those of the partners’ sled and the whip-butts of the drivers taking the place of the whip-lashes at such short range.
It was the crisis for which Sark and Bassett were watching.
“Now, the runner trick, pardner!” whispered Eric. “And heave with every muscle!”
Taking unreturned two vicious blows apiece squarely upon their parka hoods, they leaned out on either side of their bouncing outfits. Their hands gripped the upright supports of their antagonists’ sled-runners. They heaved upward with one tremendous heave, and both outfits heeled high on one runner, quivered there an instant and capsized with a crash.
“Even money!” gloated Sark, wiping away the smear of crimson from his eyes. “Here’s your whip, Tom, and yonder’s the mouth of Swede Creek. Go blood-leathering to it!”
There was no outside support left Casino. No cunning or subterfuge of numbers availed him now. Man to man and dog to dog it was straight and open racing. The Yukon was wide at Swede Creek, and Bassett had plenty of opportunity to swing well clear of Casino’s sled. He gave himself lots of leeway, off to Casino’s left, and then put on his spurt. Casino likewise laid on the walrus-hide to maintain his short lead, and Gunboat Kane, still on the tail of the sled, crouched low to keep his weight well down on the ice and make it easier for the dogs.
“Wonder Gunboat doesn’t drop off!” yelled Sark through the whistling wind-current of their flight.
“Yep,” screamed his partner. “Looks like as if they had another set of ivories in their dice-box. Don’t you drop off till he does. He’s lookin’ ugly and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pull a gun. Watch him keen, pardner. And jist cast an eye to the rear!”
Sark got to his knees, sighted up-river and quickly flopped down again.
“They’re coming!” he gritted. “The rest of the stampede in a solid swam. And, Tom, remember there are three more in it with options on our claim.”
The cracking of Bassett’s whip redoubled. His lead-dog’s nose crept past the tail of Casino’s sled and up, up, inch by inch, to its front. Now his leader paralleled Casino’s wheeler, Casino’s fourth dog, third dog, second dog, and finally Casino’s leader.
Thus the two teams hung for nearly a mile, fighting it out every foot of the way, straining to the utmost of their super beasts’ natures under the furious urge of voice and lash. They ran low to the river surface, stretching their very joints in the marvelous lope of their savage forebears, their flanks raw-red from the flaying whip, their hoar-rimed fur steaming in a cloud, their breaths puffing like smoke-jets, and bloody slaver streaking from their jaws.
Slowly, in an endeavor that was agony for his team, Bassett began to pull ahead. Even as dog by dog Tom had drawn up on Casino, now dog by dog he began to drop him behind. The tail of his sled cleared the nose of Casino’s leader and painfully opened out a gap.
“We win!” shrieked Sark, shaking his gantleted fist at the frantically slashing Casino. “You hear, you shark-faced son of an ancient Pharisee? We win!”
But even in the midst of Sark’s exultation disappointment’s buffet smote him. Straight ahead and only a little distance from the bluff at the Klondike River’s mouth he glimpsed Ante Baker rushing out from shore with a string of five fresh dogs.
“A relay!” he snarled. “Consarn his coat of seven colors and his heart of seventy wiles!”
“I was afraid of it all along,” spoke Bassett. “Eric, I was afraid it was to stage a relay and not to record by proxy that Ante broke for Dawson.”
TOM flailed the last inch of leather into the huskies, and they responded with their last ounce of strength. It was apparently Sark’s and Bassett’s only chance to gain a lead, while Casino exchanged dogs, and hold it if possible in the face of his certain lightning-finish. But they did not get such a lead as was to be expected.
Casino made no ordinary stop to exchange. While still in full flight he cut the haul-rope which fastened the traces. The released dogs, shooting forward with astounding impetus, swerved bewildered, performed a dizzy stagger and fell exhausted on the ice. The sled still shot on, and before it had slowed to a halt, Ante Baker, haling his string of fresh animals along by hand, swung them in ahead of it and fastened up the traces on the run. It was beautiful work, a new team galloping where the old had been, done in the flicker of an eye like the shift of a sleight-of-hand artist, and though it spelled defeat for him, Sark could not help but admire the dexterity of the exploit.
“Tom, they’re sure old-timers, all!” he breathed, as his partner hurled his team by the bluff onto the rubble of rough ice which stretched across the Klondike’s mouth clear from Klondike City to Dawson itself, half a mile north on the other bank. “No matter how hard we crowd them, they always have a side-step left. It’s up to Fate and you. I’ll drop off here and lighten you that much.”
But to Eric’s astonishment Tom vigorously demurred.
“Don’t you do it!” he commanded. “I want you with me. Mebbe we kin fight ’em off. Your weight don’t make a smatter of difference to this team. If they kin’t win with you, they sure kin’t win without you. Here, crawl up and drive. The huskies is used to me now. A new voice sometimes works wonders.”
At Sark’s call the MacKenzie Rivers, though ostensibly on their last legs, bucked up and let out another link. Yet Bassett, looking back, saw that Casino’s fresh team now in full stride was rapidly overhauling them. Behind Casino, Tom glimpsed the main body of the stampede, sweeping in solid array, leathering demoniacally for the finish.
It was the middle of the forenoon. Full day bathed the river and etched out the mountained shores and the forests of spruce phalanxed upon the mountains. The gut of the writhing waterway was crammed with rocking outfits. In a weird throng they poured along, over three hundred men in parkas, mackinaws and furs, white as ghosts with their frozen sweat, mushing singly or in pairs, and flaying like unbridled maniacs their flagging dogs.
The thunder of the sleds upon the river ice reverberated in a hollow booming. The cracking whips rattled like artillery. Here a sled jammed. There a man stumbled. Yonder a string of played dogs slipped down. Yet nothing stayed the onpour. It flowed forward, an irresistible sea, and those who were swamped in its front and trampled upon came up out of its devious under tow at the back and pressed grimly on to override others as unfortunate as themselves. A vast barbaric army, it charged, intent upon a single goal, and the delay caused by the leaders’ sled-jockeying all the way down from Indian River, by the whip battle and by Casino’s exchange of teams had permitted it to gain up and get right in the running for that goal.
The partners’ outfit was half-way across the mouth of the Klondike River. There was only a quarter of a mile to go, and Tom and Eric could see a huge crowd, gathered no doubt at Ante Baker’s news of the coming stampede, blackening the river-bank. Also, they could hear the crowd and knew that the crowd’s sympathies were with them. The mob was gesticulating frantically and yelling for them to win. But Sark, glancing over his shoulder, saw Casino’s team only forty yards away and overtaking his bushed animals as if they were frozen in the ice.
“We lose, Tom; we lose!” he groaned. “It isn’t in this dog-flesh to do it.”
“Then mebbe it’s in the dog-feed!” returned Bassett. “Gimme that mackinaw bundle.”
“What for, you idiot? You can’t feed our team going like this.”
“I don’t wanta feed our team. Gimme the bundle, lightnin’ quick, and don’t pinch it too hard.”
“Tom, their team?” gasped Sark intuitively. He broke the cords and shoved over the bundle which squirmed in his hands. “And alive? But what in thunder is it?”
“Rabbit’s feet—for luck!” chuckled Bassett. “Only the rabbit’s on the feet!”
He stripped away the mackinaw which had been converted into a bag, and held up by the ears a spotless snowshoe rabbit.
“I knowed that greedy geezer of a Casino would have a relay under his medulla oblongata,” Tom grinned. “But here’s somethin’ as beats a relay. It wasn’t the gee-pole I was chasin’ so long in the forest, Eric. It was this joker here. The scrub’s lousy with ’em thar, and that’s whar the Montana Creek squaws has their snares set. I got him in the snares. They was full of dead ones, but it took me some time to spot one that wasn’t strangled.”
Bassett leaned outward as he spoke and planked the snowshoe rabbit down in front of Casino’s speeding team. Casino’s fresh lead-dog snapped at it, but the rabbit leaped aside. Every dog in the team snapped as he ran, missed, and wheeled sharply back for the chase. Cursing furiously, Casino tried to stop the swerve with his whip, but the sled was already whirled broadside on and directly in the path of the rushing forefront of the main stampede.
Those in front had no chance to halt or turn out. They were tearing too close behind. Their sleds collided violently with Casino’s and upset, and before they could make a move, the irresistible sea behind rolled into them. Wave upon wave, with the swiftness of combers dashing on a windy beach, the human and beastly jam piled up in a chaotic flotsam. The snowy breast of the Yukon might have been the foam on shoal and treacherous water and these shipwrecked hordes cast up all tangled with loops of leather, snarls of rope and bits of twisted wood and metal. All along the river-bank below the foot of Main Street were they strewn, and far out to midstream, and they heaved and rose and fell as upon a moving tide.
All the excitement and strain of the race was transmuted into vicious anger at disaster. Like the undertone of the sea rumbled the clamor of their shouts and angry struggles, and sheer through the litter of prone, wrestling bodies one thousand masterless dogs pursued their untrammeled hunt.
In the bottom of the hunt lay Casino, the snowshoe rabbit which had foredoomed him to defeat right under his nose. But Bassett, the wily and triumphant Bassett, was blocks up Main Street kicking at the recording-office door.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1956, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 67 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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