t was
under way. Those who were able, crawled or staggered in the collecting
of firewood. Long, Indian fires were built that accommodated all.
Shorty, aided by a dozen assistants, with a short club handy for the
rapping of hungry knuckles, plunged into the cooking. The women devoted
themselves to thawing snow in every utensil that could be mustered.
First, a tiny piece of bacon was distributed all around, and, next, a
spoonful of sugar to cloy the edge of their razor appetites. Soon, on a
circle of fires drawn about Shorty, many pots of beans were boiling,
and he, with a wrathful eye for what he called renigers, was frying and
apportioning the thinnest of flapjacks.

"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 t