“Naturally I feel that our half-breeds are best, too.  But I do wish,” regretfully, “that they could all be the same sort of half-breeds—­to make them more uniform as to size and style.  With Kid and Spot part pointer, Irish and Rover part setter, Jack McMillan verging on the mastiff, and all the rest of them part something else, don’t you think it looks the least little bit as if we had picked them up at a remnant sale?”

She caught sight of “Scotty’s” face, full of shocked surprise.

“Don’t say it,” she exclaimed quickly; “both Ben and I know perfectly well that ‘handsome is as handsome does.’  I learned it in my copy-book, ages and ages ago.  And it’s true that they are the greatest dogs in all the world, but they don’t quite look it.  Of course the year you won with Berger’s ‘Brutes,’ with that awkward, high-shouldered native, Mukluk, in the lead, I learned that looks do not go very far in Arctic racing.  But certainly Fink’s ‘Prides’ in their gay trappings of scarlet and gold did seem more to suit the role of Winners when Hegness came in victorious with them in the first race.”

“At that, the ‘Brutes’ were the best dogs, and if it had not been for our delay of eighteen hours at Brown’s Road House, where all of the teams had to lay up because of a howling gale, I am not at all sure that the ‘Prides’ would not have lost out to the ‘Brutes’ in that race too.”

“That must have been a strange night.  I know after that every one called Brown’s ‘The House of a Thousand Bow Wows.’  How many were there?”

“Let me see; there were fifty-four racing dogs, thirty-five freighters, twenty-six belonging to the mail carriers, ten or twelve to casual mushers, and I think about the same number to Eskimo trappers.  And all—­men and dogs—­in the one room, which, fortunately, was of pretty good size.”

“Scotty” laughed heartily at the remembrance.  “We, who were driving the Racing Teams, had put our leaders to bed in the few bunks there were; for we could not afford to take any chances of our leaders scrapping in such close quarters, and possibly being put out of commission.  But an Outsider, a government official, I think, who was on his way to Nome as a passenger with the Mail Team, was pretty sore about it.  Said ’it was a deuce of a country where the dogs slept in beds and the men on the floor.’”

“How perfectly ridiculous,” said the Woman indignantly.  “You might know he was not an Alaskan.  He was as bad as that squaw who wouldn’t give you her mukluks.”

“What was that, Mr. Allan?” questioned the boy, eagerly.

“I’m afraid, Ben, that some of these incidents look a little high-handed, as though everything was allowable in a race, regardless of other people’s rights; but they really don’t happen often.  This time I tore one of my water boots on a stump going through the trees by Council.  At a near-by cabin I tried to buy a pair of mukluks a native woman had on, as I saw they were about the size I needed.  She refused to sell, though I offered her three times their value.  There was no time to argue, nor persuade, so finally in desperation her Eskimo husband and I took them off her feet, though she kicked vigorously.  It saved the day for me, but it seemed a bit ungallant.”