outside.’  ’The trouble with him is clean grit and stubbornness.  He’s cleaned up twice with a stake, but lost it both times.’  Here the conversation was broken off by an uproar from Bettles, for the effect had begun to wear away.  And soon the bleak years of monotonous grub and deadening toil were being forgotten in rough merriment.  Malemute Kid alone seemed unable to lose himself, and cast many an anxious look at his watch.  Once he put on his mittens and beaver-skin cap, and, leaving the cabin, fell to rummaging about in the cache.

Nor could he wait the hour designated; for he was fifteen minutes ahead of time in rousing his guest.  The young giant had stiffened badly, and brisk rubbing was necessary to bring him to his feet.  He tottered painfully out of the cabin, to find his dogs harnessed and everything ready for the start.  The company wished him good luck and a short chase, while Father Roubeau, hurriedly blessing him, led the stampede for the cabin; and small wonder, for it is not good to face seventy-four degrees below zero with naked ears and hands.

Malemute Kid saw him to the main trail, and there, gripping his hand heartily, gave him advice.

‘You’ll find a hundred pounds of salmon eggs on the sled,’ he said.  ’The dogs will go as far on that as with one hundred and fifty of fish, and you can’t get dog food at Pelly, as you probably expected.’  The stranger started, and his eyes flashed, but he did not interrupt.  ’You can’t get an ounce of food for dog or man till you reach Five Fingers, and that’s a stiff two hundred miles.  Watch out for open water on the Thirty Mile River, and be sure you take the big cutoff above Le Barge.’  ’How did you know it?  Surely the news can’t be ahead of me already?’ ’I don’t know it; and what’s more, I don’t want to know it.  But you never owned that team you’re chasing.  Sitka Charley sold it to them last spring.  But he sized you up to me as square once, and I believe him.  I’ve seen your face; I like it.  And I’ve seen—­why, damn you, hit the high places for salt water and that wife of yours, and—­’ Here the Kid unmittened and jerked out his sack.

‘No; I don’t need it,’ and the tears froze on his cheeks as he convulsively gripped Malemute Kid’s hand.

’Then don’t spare the dogs; cut them out of the traces as fast as they drop; buy them, and think they’re cheap at ten dollars a pound.  You can get them at Five Fingers, Little Salmon, and Hootalinqua.  And watch out for wet feet,’ was his parting advice.  ’Keep a-traveling up to twenty-five, but if it gets below that, build a fire and change your socks.’

Fifteen minutes had barely elapsed when the jingle of bells announced new arrivals.  The door opened, and a mounted policeman of the Northwest Territory entered, followed by two half-breed dog drivers.  Like Westondale, they were heavily armed and showed signs of fatigue.  The half-breeds had been borne to the trail and bore it easily; but the young policeman was badly exhausted.  Still, the dogged obstinacy of his race held him to the pace he had set, and would hold him till he dropped in his tracks.