AST DAY]

We left Beaver at eleven P. M. on Friday night, hoping in two long
all-night runs to cover the eighty miles and reach Fort Yukon by Sunday
morning. Here was the first trail since we left Stephen's Village and
the first fairly good trail since we left Tanana, for there had been
some recent travel between Fort Yukon and Beaver. Here for the first
time we had no need of snow-shoes, and when they have been worn
virtually all the winter through and nigh a couple of thousand miles
travelled in them, walking is strange at first in the naked moccasin. It
is a blessed relief, however, to be rid of even the lightest of trail
snow-shoes. We stepped out gaily into a beautiful clear night, with a
sharp tang of frost in the air, and even the dogs rejoiced in the
knowledge that the end of the journey was at hand. All night long we
made good time and kept it up without a stop until eight o'clock in the
morning, when we reached an inhabited but just then unoccupied cabin and
ate supper or breakfast as one chooses to call it and went to bed,
having covered fully half the distance to Fort Yukon. About noon we were
rudely awakened by one of the usual Alaskan accompaniments of
approaching summer. The heat of the sun was melting the snow above us,
and water came trickling through the dirt roof upon our bed. We moved to
a dry part of the cabin and slept again until the evening, and at nine
P. M. entered upon what we hoped would be our last run.

But once more our plans to spend Sunday were frustrated. The trail led
through dry sloughs from which the advancing thaw had removed the snow
in great patches. Sometimes the sled had to be hauled over bare sand;
sometimes wide detours had to be made to avoid such sand; sometimes
pools of open water covered with only that night's ice lay across our
path. By eight o'clock in the morning we estimated that we were not more
than seven or eight miles from Fort Yukon. But already the snow grew
soft and our feet wet, and the dogs were very weary with the eleven
hours' mushing. It would take a long time and much toil to plough
through slush, even that seven or eight miles. So I gave the word to
stop, and we made an open-air camp on a sunny bank, and after breakfast
we covered our heads in the blankets from the glare of the sun, and
slept till five. Then we ate our last trail meal, and were washed up and
packed up and hitched up an hour and more before the snow was frozen
enough for travel. A couple