As daylight strengthened, Smoke caught sight of a sled ahead, and, in half an hour, his own lead-dog was leaping at its tail.  Not until the man turned his head to exchange greetings, did Smoke recognize him as Arizona Bill.  Von Schroeder had evidently passed him.  The trail, hard-packed, ran too narrowly through the soft snow, and for another half-hour Smoke was forced to stay in the rear.  Then they topped an ice-jam and struck a smooth stretch below, where were a number of relay camps and where the snow was packed widely.  On his knees, swinging his whip and yelling, Smoke drew abreast.  He noted that Arizona Bill’s right arm hung dead at his side, and that he was compelled to pour leather with his left hand.  Awkward as it was, he had no hand left with which to hold on, and frequently he had to cease from the whip and clutch to save himself from falling off.  Smoke remembered the scrimmage in the creek bed at Three Below Discovery, and understood.  Shorty’s advice had been sound.

“What’s happened?” Smoke asked, as he began to pull ahead.

“I don’t know,” Arizona Bill answered.  “I think I threw my shoulder out in the scrapping.”

He dropped behind very slowly, though when the last relay station was in sight he was fully half a mile in the rear.  Ahead, bunched together, Smoke could see Big Olaf and Von Schroeder.  Again Smoke arose to his knees, and he lifted his jaded dogs into a burst of speed such as a man only can who has the proper instinct for dog-driving.  He drew up close to the tail of Von Schroeder’s sled, and in this order the three sleds dashed out on the smooth going below a jam, where many men and many dogs waited.  Dawson was fifteen miles away.

Von Schroeder, with his ten-mile relays, had changed five miles back and would change five miles ahead.  So he held on, keeping his dogs at full leap.  Big Olaf and Smoke made flying changes, and their fresh teams immediately regained what had been lost to the Baron.  Big Olaf led past, and Smoke followed into the narrow trail beyond.

“Still good, but not so good,” Smoke paraphrased Spencer to himself.

Of Von Schroeder, now behind, he had no fear; but ahead was the greatest dog-driver in the country.  To pass him seemed impossible.  Again and again, many times, Smoke forced his leader to the other’s sled-tail, and each time Big Olaf let out another link and drew away.  Smoke contented himself with taking the pace, and hung on grimly.  The race was not lost until one or the other won, and in fifteen miles many things could happen.

Three miles from Dawson something did happen.  To Smoke’s surprise, Big Olaf rose up and with oaths and leather proceeded to fetch out the last ounce of effort in his animals.  It was a spurt that should have been reserved for the last hundred yards instead of being begun three miles from the finish.  Sheer dog-killing that it was, Smoke followed.  His own team was superb.  No dogs on the Yukon had had harder work or were in better condition.  Besides, Smoke had toiled with them, and eaten and bedded with them, and he knew each dog as an individual and how best to win in to the animal’s intelligence and extract its last least shred of willingness.