laid his long snout softly in her lap.
“If I do win?” Harrington pressed.
She looked from dog to lover and back again.
“What you say, Wolf Fang? If him strong mans and file the
papaire, shall we his wife become? Eh? What you say?”
Wolf Fang picked up his ears and growled at Harrington.
“It is vaire cold,” she suddenly added with feminine irrelevance,
rising to her feet and straightening out the team.
Her lover looked on stolidly. She had kept him guessing from the
first time they met, and patience had been joined unto his
virtues.
“Hi! Wolf Fang!” she cried, springing upon the sled as it leaped
into sudden motion. “Ai! Ya! Mush-on!”
From the corner of his eye Harrington watched her swinging down
the trail to Forty Mile. Where the road forked and crossed the
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river to Fort Cudahy, she halted the dogs and turned about.
“O Mistaire Lazy Mans!” she called back. “Wolf Fang, him say yes-
-if you winnaire!”
But somehow, as such things will, it leaked out, and all Forty
Mile, which had hitherto speculated on Joy Molineau’s choice
between her two latest lovers, now hazarded bets and guesses as to
which would win in the forthcoming race. The camp divided itself
into two factions, and every effort was put forth in order that
their respective favorites might be the first in at the finish.
There was a scramble for the best dogs the country could afford,
for dogs, and good ones, were essential, above all, to success.
And it meant much to the victor. Besides the possession of a
wife, the like of which had yet to be created, it stood for a mine
worth a million at least.
That fall, when news came down of McCormack’s discovery on
Bonanza, all the Lower Country, Circle City and Forty Mile
included, had stampeded up the Yukon,–at least all save those
who, like Jack Harrington and Louis Savoy, were away prospecting
in the west. Moose pastures and creeks were staked
indiscriminately and promiscuously; and incidentally, one of the
unlikeliest of creeks, Eldorado. Olaf Nelson laid claim to five
hundred of its linear feet, duly posted his notice, and as duly
disappeared. At that time the nearest recording office was in the
police barracks at Fort Cudahy, just across the river from Forty
Mile; but when it became bruited abroad that Eldorado Creek was a
treasure-house, it was quickly discovered that Olaf Nelson had
failed to make the down-Yukon trip to file upon his property. Men
cast hungry eyes upon the ownerless claim, where they knew a
thousand-thousand dollars waited but shovel and sluice-box. Yet
they dared not touch it; for there was a law which permitted sixty
days to lapse between the staking and the filing, during which
time a claim was immune. The whole country knew of Olaf Nelson’s
disappearance, and scores of men made preparation for the jumping
and for the consequent race to Fort Cudahy.
But competition at Forty Mile was limited. With the camp devoting
its energies to the equipping either of Jack Harrington or Louis
Savoy, no man was unwise enough to enter the contest single-
handed. It was a stretch of a hundred miles to the Recorder’s
office, and it was planned that the two favorites should have four
relays of dogs stationed along the trail. Naturally, the last
relay was to be the crucial one, and for these twenty-five miles
their respective partisans strove to obtain the strongest possible
animals. So bitter did the factions wax, and so high did they
bid, that dogs brought stiffer prices than ever before in the
annals of the country. And, as it chanced, this scramble for dogs
turned the public eye still more searchingly upon Joy Molineau.
Not only was she the cause of it all, but she possessed the finest
sled-dog from Chilkoot to Bering Sea. As wheel or leader, Wolf
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83
Fang had no equal. The man whose sled he led down the last
stretch was bound to win. There could be no doubt of it. But the
community had an innate sense of the fitness of things, and not
once was Joy vexed by overtures for his use. And the factions
drew consolation from the fact that if one man did not profit by
him, neither should the other.
However, since man, in the individual or in the aggregate, has
been so fashioned that he goes through life blissfully obtuse to
the deeper subtleties of his womankind, so the men of Forty Mile
failed to divine the inner deviltry of Joy Molineau. They
confessed, afterward, that they had failed to appreciate this
dark-eyed daughter of the aurora, whose father had traded furs in
the country before ever they dreamed of invading it, and who had
herself first opened eyes on the scintillant northern lights.
Nay, accident of birth had not rendered her less the woman, nor
had it limited her woman’s understanding of men. They knew she
played with them, but they did not know the wisdom of her play,
its deepness and its deftness. They failed to see more than the
exposed card, so that to the very last Forty Mile was in a state
of pleasant obfuscation, and it was not until she cast her final
trump that it came to reckon up the score.
Early in the week the camp turned out to start Jack Harrington and
Louis Savoy on their way. They had taken a shrewd margin of time,
for it was their wish to arrive at Olaf Nelson’s claim some days
previous to the expiration of its immunity, that they might rest
themselves, and their dogs be fresh for the first relay. On the
way up they found the men of Dawson already stationing spare dog
teams along the trail, and it was manifest that little expense had
been spared in view of the millions at stake.
A couple of days after the departure of their champions, Forty
Mile began sending up their relays,–first to the seventy-five
station, then to the fifty, and last to the twenty-five. The
teams for the last stretch were magnificent, and so equally
matched that the camp discussed their relative merits for a full
hour at fifty below, before they were permitted to pull out. At
the last moment Joy Molineau dashed in among them on her sled.
She drew Lon McFane, who had charge of Harrington’s team, to one
side, and hardly had the first words left her lips when it was
noticed that his lower jaw dropped with a celerity and emphasis
suggestive of great things. He unhitched Wolf Fang from her sled,
put him at the head of Harrington’s team, and mushed the string of
animals into the Yukon trail.
“Poor Louis Savoy!” men said; but Joy Molineau flashed her black
eyes defiantly and drove back to her father’s cabin.
Midnight drew near on Olaf Nelson’s claim. A few hundred fur-clad
men had preferred sixty below and the jumping, to the inducements
of warm cabins and comfortable bunks. Several score of them had
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their notices prepared for posting and their dogs at hand. A
bunch of Captain Constantine’s mounted police had been ordered on
duty that fair play might rule. The command had gone forth that
no man should place a stake till the last second of the day had
ticked itself into the past. In the northland such commands are
equal to Jehovah’s in the matter of potency; the dum-dum as rapid
and effective as the thunderbolt. It was clear and cold. The
aurora borealis painted palpitating color revels on the sky. Rosy
waves of cold brilliancy swept across the zenith, while great
coruscating bars of greenish white blotted out the stars, or a
Titan’s hand reared mighty arches above the Pole. And at this
mighty display the wolf-dogs howled as had their ancestors of old
time.
A bearskin-coated policeman stepped prominently to the fore, watch
in hand. Men hurried among the dogs, rousing them to their feet,
untangling their traces, straightening them out. The entries came
to the mark, firmly gripping stakes and notices. They had gone
over the boundaries of the claim so often that they could now have
done it blindfolded. The policeman raised his hand. Casting off
their superfluous furs and blankets, and with a final cinching of
belts, they came to attention.
“Time!”
Sixty pairs of hands unmitted; as many pairs of moccasins gripped
hard upon the snow.
“Go!”
They shot across the wide expanse, round the four sides, sticking
notices at every corner, and down the middle where the two centre
stakes were to be planted. Then they sprang for the sleds on the
frozen bed of the creek. An anarchy of sound and motion broke
out. Sled collided with sled, and dog-team fastened upon dog-team
with bristling manes and screaming fangs. The narrow creek was
glutted with the struggling mass. Lashes and butts of dog-whips