ight long
the heavy snow continued.

So soon as we had struck our tent, crusted with ice, and had broken up
our wet camp next morning there was trouble about finding the trail.
Wide open spaces with never an indication of direction stretched before
us. Again and again we cast about, the boy to the left, I to the right,
to find some blaze or mark, but much of the course lay across open
country that bore none. And then I sorely regretted having let John go
back. Some miles before we came to a stop the previous evening, we
passed a native encampment with naught but women and children in it--the
men gone hunting. But we could not speak with them or get any
information from them, for our Kuskokwim interpreter was gone. And now
it seemed likely that we should lose our way in this wilderness. At last
we were entirely at a loss, the boy returning on the one side and I on
the other from wide detours, in which we had found no sign at all. The
snow still fell heavily; there lay more than a foot of it upon the late
crust; trail or sign of a trail, on the snow or above it, was not at
all.

[Sidenote: THE DOG GUIDES]

Then occurred one of the most remarkable things I have known in all my
journeyings. Straight ahead in the middle distance I spied two stray
dogs making a direct course towards us; not wandering about, but
evidently going somewhere. Now there are no such things as unattached
dogs in Alaska; any dog entirely detached from human ownership and some
sort of human maintenance would soon be a dead dog. The explanation,
full of hope, sprang at once to the boy's mind. The dogs must belong to
the native encampment some six miles back, and they had been to the
road-house for what scraps they could pick up, and were returning. It
was probably a daily excursion and they had doubtless followed their
accustomed trail. So it turned out. All the way to that road-house,
eight miles farther, we followed the trail left by those dogs, growing
fainter and fainter indeed as the new snow fell upon it, but still
discernible until we had almost reached the road-house. It led across
open swampy wastes, and presently across two considerable lakes, over
which we should never have been able to find our way, for the trail
swung to one hand or the other and did not leave the lake in the same
general direction by which it had reached it. Walter cut a bundle of
boughs and staked the trail out as we pursued it, lest we should return
this way, but fro