outfit, and they pulled on across Deep Lake and Long Lake and
dropped down to the level-going of Lake Linderman. It was the
same killing pace going in as coming out, and the Indian did not
stand it as well as Kama. He, too, never complained. Nor did he
try again to desert. He toiled on and did his best, while he
renewed his resolve to steer clear of Daylight in the future.
The days slipped into days, nights and twilight’s alternating,
cold snaps gave way to snow-falls, and cold snaps came on again,
and all the while, through the long hours, the miles piled up
behind them.
But on the Fifty Mile accident befell them. Crossing an
Burning Daylight
39
ice-bridge, the dogs broke through and were swept under the
down-stream ice. The traces that connected the team with the
wheel-dog parted, and the team was never seen again. Only the
one wheel-dog remained, and Daylight harnessed the Indian and
himself to the sled. But a man cannot take the place of a dog at
such work, and the two men were attempting to do the work of five
dogs. At the end of the first hour, Daylight lightened up.
Dog-food, extra gear, and the spare ax were thrown away. Under
the extraordinary exertion the dog snapped a tendon the following
day, and was hopelessly disabled. Daylight shot it, and
abandoned the sled. On his back he took one hundred and sixty
pounds of mail and grub, and on the Indian’s put one hundred and
twenty-five pounds. The stripping of gear was remorseless. The
Indian was appalled when he saw every pound of worthless mail
matter retained, while beans, cups, pails, plates, and extra
clothing were thrown by the board. One robe each was kept, one
ax, one tin pail, and a scant supply of bacon and flour. Bacon
could be eaten raw on a pinch, and flour, stirred in hot water,
could keep men going. Even the rifle and the score of rounds of
ammunition were left behind.
And in this fashion they covered the two hundred miles to
Selkirk. Daylight travelled late and early, the hours formerly
used by camp-making and dog-tending being now devoted to the
trail. At night they crouched over a small fire, wrapped in
their robes, drinking flour broth and thawing bacon on the ends
of sticks; and in the morning darkness, without a word, they
arose, slipped on their packs, adjusted head-straps, and hit the
trail. The last miles into Selkirk, Daylight drove the Indian
before him, a hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed wraith of a man who else
would have lain down and slept or abandoned his burden of mail.
At Selkirk, the old team of dogs, fresh and in condition, were
harnessed, and the same day saw Daylight plodding on, alternating
places at the gee-pole, as a matter of course, with the Le Barge
Indian who had volunteered on the way out. Daylight was two days
behind his schedule, and falling snow and unpacked trail kept him
two days behind all the way to Forty Mile. And here the weather
favored. It was time for a big cold snap, and he gambled on it,
cutting down the weight of grub for dogs and men. The men of
Forty Mile shook their heads ominously, and demanded to know what
he would do if the snow still fell.
“That cold snap’s sure got to come,” he laughed, and mushed out
on the trail.
A number of sleds had passed back and forth already that winter
between Forty Mile and Circle City, and the trail was well
packed. And the cold snap came and remained, and Circle City was
only two hundred miles away. The Le Barge Indian was a young
man, unlearned yet in his own limitations, and filled with pride.
He took Daylight’s pace with joy, and even dreamed, at first,
Burning Daylight
40
that he would play the white man out. The first hundred miles he
looked for signs of weakening, and marveled that he saw them not.
Throughout the second hundred miles he observed signs in himself,
and gritted his teeth and kept up. And ever Daylight flew on
and on, running at the gee-pole or resting his spell on top the
flying sled. The last day, clearer and colder than ever, gave
perfect going, and they covered seventy miles. It was ten at
night when they pulled up the earth-bank and flew along the main
street of Circle City; and the young Indian, though it was his
spell to ride, leaped off and ran behind the sled. It was
honorable braggadocio, and despite the fact that he had found his
limitations and was pressing desperately against them, he ran
gamely on.
CHAPTER VI
A crowd filled the Tivoli–the old crowd that had seen Daylight
depart two months before; for this was the night of the sixtieth
day, and opinion was divided as ever as to whether or not he
would compass the achievement. At ten o’clock bets were still
being made, though the odds rose, bet by bet, against his
success. Down in her heart the Virgin believed he had failed,
yet she made a bet of twenty ounces with Charley Bates, against
forty ounces, that Daylight would arrive before midnight.
She it was who heard the first yelps of the dogs.
“Listen!” she cried. “It’s Daylight!”
There was a general stampede for the door; but where the double
storm-doors were thrown wide open, the crowd fell back. They
heard the eager whining of dogs, the snap of a dog-whip, and the
voice of Daylight crying encouragement as the weary animals
capped all they had done by dragging the sled in over the wooden
floor. They came in with a rush, and with them rushed in the
frost, a visible vapor of smoking white, through which their
heads and backs showed, as they strained in the harness, till
they had all the seeming of swimming in a river. Behind them, at
the gee-pole, came Daylight, hidden to the knees by the swirling
frost through which he appeared to wade.
He was the same old Daylight, withal lean and tired-looking, and
his black eyes were sparkling and flashing brighter than ever.
His parka of cotton drill hooded him like a monk, and fell in
straight lines to his knees. Grimed and scorched by camp-smoke
and fire, the garment in itself told the story of his trip. A
two-months’ beard covered his face; and the beard, in turn, was
matted with the ice of his breathing through the long
seventy-mile run.
His entry was spectacular, melodramatic; and he knew it. It was
his life, and he was living it at the top of his bent. Among his
Burning Daylight
41
fellows he was a great man, an Arctic hero. He was proud of the
fact, and it was a high moment for him, fresh from two thousand
miles of trail, to come surging into that bar-room, dogs, sled,
mail, Indian, paraphernalia, and all. He had performed one more
exploit that would make the Yukon ring with his name–he, Burning
Daylight, the king of travelers and dog-mushers.
He experienced a thrill of surprise as the roar of welcome went
up and as every familiar detail of the Tivoli greeted his
vision–the long bar and the array of bottles, the gambling
games,
the big stove, the weigher at the gold-scales, the musicians, the
men and women, the Virgin, Celia, and Nellie, Dan MacDonald,
Bettles, Billy Rawlins, Olaf Henderson, Doc Watson,–all of them.
It was just as he had left it, and in all seeming it might well
be
the very day he had left. The sixty days of incessant travel
through the white wilderness suddenly telescoped, and had no
existence in time. They were a moment, an incident. He had
plunged out and into them through the wall of silence, and back
through the wall of silence he had plunged, apparently the next
instant, and into the roar and turmoil of the Tivoli.
A glance down at the sled with its canvas mail-bags was necessary
to reassure him of the reality of those sixty days and the two
thousand miles over the ice. As in a dream, he shook the hands
that were thrust out to him. He felt a vast exaltation. Life
was magnificent. He loved it all. A great sense of humanness
and comradeship swept over him. These were all his, his own
kind. It was immense, tremendous. He felt melting in the heart
of him, and he would have liked to shake hands with them all at
once, to gather them to his breast in one mighty embrace.
He drew a deep breath and cried: “The winner pays, and I’m the
winner, ain’t I? Surge up, you-all Malemutes and Siwashes, and
name your poison! There’s your Dyea mail, straight from Salt
Water, and no hornswogglin about it! Cast the lashings adrift,
you-all, and wade into it!”
A dozen pairs of hands were at the sled-lashings, when the young