“Hey!” Shorty expostulated.  “What ‘r’ you doin’?”

“Breaking all law, custom, precedent, and trail usage,” Smoke replied.  “I’m going to feed the dogs in the middle of the day—­just this once.  They’ve worked hard, and that last pull to the top of the divide is before them.  Besides, Bright there has been talking to me, telling me all untellable things with those eyes of his.”

Shorty laughed skeptically.  “Go on an’ spoil ’em.  Pretty soon you’ll be manicurin’ their nails.  I’d recommend cold cream and electric massage—­it’s great for sled-dogs.  And sometimes a Turkish bath does ’em fine.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Smoke defended.  “And I won’t again.  But this once I’m going to.  It’s just a whim, I guess.”

“Oh, if it’s a hunch, go to it.”  Shorty’s tones showed how immediately he had been mollified.  “A man’s always got to follow his hunches.”

“It isn’t a hunch, Shorty.  Bright just sort of got on my imagination for a couple of twists.  He told me more in one minute with those eyes of his than I could read in the books in a thousand years.  His eyes were acrawl with the secrets of life.  They were just squirming and wriggling there.  The trouble is I almost got them, and then I didn’t.  I’m no wiser than I was before, but I was near them.”  He paused and then added, “I can’t tell you, but that dog’s eyes were just spilling over with cues to what life is, and evolution, and star-dust, and cosmic sap, and all the rest—­everything.”

“Boiled down into simple American, you got a hunch,” Shorty insisted.

Smoke finished tossing the dried salmon, one to each dog, and shook his head.

“I tell you yes,” Shorty argued.  “Smoke, it’s a sure hunch.  Something’s goin’ to happen before the day is out.  You’ll see.  And them dried fish’ll have a bearin’.”

“You’ve got to show me,” said Smoke.

“No, I ain’t.  The day’ll take care of itself an’ show you.  Now listen to what I’m tellin’ you.  I got a hunch myself out of your hunch.  I’ll bet eleven ounces against three ornery toothpicks I’m right.  When I get a hunch I ain’t a-scared to ride it.”

“You bet the toothpicks, and I’ll bet the ounces,” Smoke returned.

“Nope.  That’d be plain robbery.  I win.  I know a hunch when it tickles me.  Before the day’s out somethin’ ‘ll happen, an’ them fish’ll have a meanin’.”

“Hell,” said Smoke, dismissing the discussion contemptuously.

“An’ it’ll be hell,” Shorty came back.  “An’ I’ll take three more toothpicks with you on them same odds that it’ll be sure-enough hell.”

“Done,” said Smoke.

“I win,” Shorty exulted.  “Chicken-feather toothpicks for mine.”

An hour later they cleared the divide, dipped down past the Bald Buttes through a sharp elbow-canyon, and took the steep open slope that dropped into Porcupine Creek.  Shorty, in the lead, stopped abruptly, and Smoke whoaed the dogs.  Beneath them, coming up, was a procession of humans, scattered and draggled, a quarter of a mile long.