* * * * *

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 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 were distributed impartially among men and brutes.  And to make it of greater moment, each participant had a bunch of comrades intent on breaking him out of jam.  But one by one, and by sheer strength, the sleds crept out and shot from sight in the darkness of the overhanging banks.

Jack Harrington had anticipated this crush and waited by his sled until it untangled.  Louis Savoy, aware of his rival’s greater wisdom in the matter of dog-driving, had followed his lead and also waited.  The rout had passed beyond earshot when they took the trail, and it was not till they had travelled the ten miles or so down to Bonanza that they came upon it, speeding along in single file, but well bunched.  There was little noise, and less chance of one passing another at that stage.  The sleds, from runner to runner, measured sixteen inches, the trail eighteen;