ken off the rivers and cut in the
protecting forest. But we had gone but a mile along this good trail
when our hearts sank, for we saw ahead of us a procession of army mules
packing supplies from Fort Gibbon to the telegraph repair parties. We
pulled out into the snow that the mules might pass, and the soldiers
said no word, for they knew just how we felt, until the last soldier
leading the last mule was going by, and he turned round and said: "And
her name was Maud!" It was in the height of Opper's popularity, his
"comic supplements" the chief dependence of the road-houses for
wall-paper. The reference was so apposite that we burst into laughter,
but there was nothing funny about the devastation that had been wrought.
That good trail was all gone--the bottom pounded out of it--and nothing
was left but a ploughed lane punched full of sink-holes. We had no
trouble following the trail on the river after this encounter, but it
had been almost as easy going to have struck out for ourselves in the
unbroken snow of the winter. It is hard to make outsiders understand how
a man who loves all animals may come to hate horses and mules,
particularly mules, in this country. Our travelling is above all a
matter of surface. Distance counts and weather counts, but surface
counts for more than either. See how fast we came across the Seward
Peninsula in the most distressing weather imaginable! A well-used dog
trail becomes so hard and smooth that it offers scarce any resistance to
the passage of the sled, and for walking or running over in moccasins or
mukluks is the most perfect surface imaginable. The more it is used the
better it becomes. But put a horse on that trail and in one passage it
is ruined. The iron-shod hoofs break through the crust at every step and
throw up the broken pieces as they are withdrawn. With mules it is even
worse; the holes they punch are deeper and sharper. Neither man nor dog
can pass over it again in comfort. One slips and slides about at every
step, the leg leaders and ankle sinews are strained, the soles of the
feet, though hardened by a thousand miles in moccasins, become sore and
inflamed, and at night there is a new sort of weariness that only a
horse-ruined trail gives. As a rule, the dog trail is of so little
service to the horse or mule that it were as cheap to break out a new
one in the snow, and it is this knowledge that exasperates the dog
musher. So there is not much love lost between the horse m