Smoke heard the crash and uproar of their collision, released his wheeler, sprang to the gee-pole, and urged his team to the right into the soft snow where the straining animals wallowed to their necks.  It was exhausting work, but he won by the tangled teams and gained the hard-packed trail beyond.

On the relay out of Sixty Mile, Smoke had next to his poorest team, and though the going was good, he had set it a short fifteen miles.  Two more teams would bring him into Dawson and to the gold-recorder’s office, and Smoke had selected his best animals for the last two stretches.  Sitka Charley himself waited with the eight Malemutes that would jerk Smoke along for twenty miles, and for the finish, with a fifteen-mile run, was his own team—­the team he had had all winter and which had been with him in the search for Surprise Lake.

The two men he had left entangled at Sixty Mile failed to overtake him, and, on the other hand, his team failed to overtake any of the three that still led.  His animals were willing, though they lacked stamina and speed, and little urging was needed to keep them jumping into it at their best.  There was nothing for Smoke to do but to lie face downward and hold on.  Now and again he would plunge out of the darkness into the circle of light about a blazing fire, catch a glimpse of furred men standing by harnessed and waiting dogs, and plunge into the darkness again.  Mile after mile, with only the grind and jar of the runners in his ears, he sped on.  Almost automatically he kept his place as the sled bumped ahead or half lifted and heeled on the swings and swerves of the bends.  First one, and then another, without apparent rhyme or reason, three faces limned themselves on his consciousness:  Joy Gastell’s, laughing and audacious; Shorty’s, battered and exhausted by the struggle down Mono Creek; and John Bellew’s, seamed and rigid, as if cast in iron, so unrelenting was its severity.  And sometimes Smoke wanted to shout aloud, to chant a paean of savage exultation, as he remembered the office of The Billow and the serial story of San Francisco which he had left unfinished, along with the other fripperies of those empty days.

The grey twilight of morning was breaking as he exchanged his weary dogs for the eight fresh Malemutes.  Lighter animals than Hudson Bays, they were capable of greater speed, and they ran with the supple tirelessness of true wolves.  Sitka Charley called out the order of the teams ahead.  Big Olaf led, Arizona Bill was second, and Von Schroeder third.  These were the three best men in the country.  In fact, ere Smoke had left Dawson, the popular betting had placed them in that order.  While they were racing for a million, at least half a million had been staked by others on the outcome of the race.  No one had bet on Smoke, who, despite his several known exploits, was still accounted a chechako with much to learn.