“Me for the big cookin’,” was his farewell to Smoke.  “You just keep a-hikin’.  Trot all the way there an’ run all the way back.  It’ll take you to-day an’ to-morrow to get there, and you can’t be back inside of three days more.  To-morrow they’ll eat the last of the dog-fish, an’ then there’ll be nary a scrap for three days.  You gotta keep a-comin’, Smoke.  You gotta keep a-comin’.”

Though the sled was light, loaded only with six dried salmon, a couple of pounds of frozen beans and bacon, and a sleeping-robe, Smoke could not make speed.  Instead of riding the sled and running the dogs, he was compelled to plod at the gee-pole.  Also, a day of work had already been done, and the freshness and spring had gone out of the dogs and himself.  The long arctic twilight was on when he cleared the divide and left the Bald Buttes behind.

Down the slope better time was accomplished, and often he was able to spring on the sled for short intervals and get an exhausting six-mile clip out of the animals.  Darkness caught him and fooled him in a wide-valleyed, nameless creek.  Here the creek wandered in broad horseshoe curves through the flats, and here, to save time, he began short-cutting the flats instead of keeping to the creek-bed.  And black dark found him back on the creek-bed feeling for the trail.  After an hour of futile searching, too wise to go farther astray, he built a fire, fed each dog half a fish, and divided his own ration in half.  Rolled in his robe, ere quick sleep came he had solved the problem.  The last big flat he had short-cut was the one that occurred at the forks of the creek.  He had missed the trail by a mile.  He was now on the main stream and below where his and Shorty’s trail crossed the valley and climbed through a small feeder to the low divide on the other side.

At the first hint of daylight he got under way, breakfastless, and wallowed a mile upstream to pick up the trail.  And breakfastless, man and dogs, without a halt, for eight hours held back transversely across the series of small creeks and low divides and down Minnow Creek.  By four in the afternoon, with darkness fast-set about him, he emerged on the hard-packed, running trail of Moose Creek.  Fifty miles of it would end the journey.  He called a rest, built a fire, threw each dog its half-salmon, and thawed and ate his pound of beans.  Then he sprang on the sled, yelled, “Mush!” and the dogs went out strongly against their breast-bands.

“Hit her up, you huskies!” he cried.  “Mush on!  Hit her up for grub!  And no grub short of Mucluc!  Dig in, you wolves!  Dig in!”

Midnight had gone a quarter of an hour in the Annie Mine.  The main room was comfortably crowded, while roaring stoves, combined with lack of ventilation, kept the big room unsanitarily warm.  The click of chips and the boisterous play at the craps-table furnished a monotonous background of sound to the equally monotonous rumble of men’s voices where they sat and stood about and talked in groups and twos and threes.  The gold-weighers were busy at their scales, for dust was the circulating medium, and even a dollar drink of whiskey at the bar had to be paid for to the weighers.