"That WAS a hunch!"

He lay down again, pulled the edge of the robe around his neck and over
his ear-flaps, closed his eyes, and this time fell asleep.

[5] Parka: a light, hooded, smock-like garment made of cotton drill.

CHAPTER V

At Sixty Mile they restocked provisions, added a few pounds of letters
to their load, and held steadily on. From Forty Mile they had had
unbroken trail, and they could look forward only to unbroken trail
clear to Dyea. Daylight stood it magnificently, but the killing pace
was beginning to tell on Kama. His pride kept his mouth shut, but the
result of the chilling of his lungs in the cold snap could not be
concealed. Microscopically small had been the edges of the lung-tissue
touched by the frost, but they now began to slough off, giving rise to
a dry, hacking cough. Any unusually severe exertion precipitated
spells of coughing, during which he was almost like a man in a fit.
The blood congested in his eyes till they bulged, while the tears ran
down his cheeks. A whiff of the smoke from frying bacon would start
him off for a half-hour's paroxysm, and he kept carefully to windward
when Daylight was cooking.

They plodded days upon days and without end over the soft, unpacked
snow. It was hard, monotonous work, with none of the joy and
blood-stir that went with flying over hard surface. Now one man to the
fore in the snowshoes, and now the other, it was a case of stubborn,
unmitigated plod. A yard of powdery snow had to be pressed down, and
the wide-webbed shoe, under a man's weight, sank a full dozen inches
into the soft surface. Snowshoe work, under such conditions, called
for the use of muscles other than those used in ordinary walking. From
step to step the rising foot could not come up and forward on a slant.
It had to be raised perpendicularly. When the snowshoe was pressed
into the snow, its nose was confronted by a vertical wall of snow
twelve inches high. If the foot, in rising, slanted forward the
slightest bit, the nose of the shoe penetrated the obstructing wall and
tipped downward till the heel of the shoe struck the man's leg behind.
Thus up, straight up, twelve inches, each foot must be raised every
time and all the time, ere the forward swing from the knee could begin.

On this partially packed surface followed the dogs, the man at the
gee-pole, and the sled. At the best, toiling as only picked men could
toil, they made no more than three miles an hour