begin to undo the sled-lashings and Smoke attack
the dead spruce with an ax; whereupon the animals dropped in the snow
and curled into balls, the bush of each tail curved to cover four padded
feet and an ice-rimmed muzzle.

The men worked with the quickness of long practice. Gold-pan,
coffee-pot, and cooking-pail were soon thawing the heaped frost-crystals
into water. Smoke extracted a stick of beans from the sled. Already
cooked, with a generous admixture of cubes of fat pork and bacon, the
beans had been frozen into this portable immediacy. He chopped off
chunks with an ax, as if it were so much firewood, and put them into
the frying-pan to thaw. Solidly frozen sourdough biscuits were likewise
placed to thaw. In twenty minutes from the time they halted, the meal
was ready to eat.

"About forty below," Shorty mumbled through a mouthful of beans. "Say--I
hope it don't get colder--or warmer, neither. It's just right for trail
breaking."

Smoke did not answer. His own mouth full of beans, his jaws working,
he had chanced to glance at the lead-dog, lying half a dozen feet
away. That gray and frosty wolf was gazing at him with the infinite
wistfulness and yearning that glimmers and hazes so often in the eyes of
Northland dogs. Smoke knew it well, but never got over the unfathomable
wonder of it. As if to shake off the hypnotism, he set down his plate
and coffee-cup, went to the sled, and began opening the dried-fish sack.

"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 co