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Updated: June 2, 2025
Behind, on the surface he packed, strained the string of six dogs, the steam-jets of their breathing attesting their labor and the lowness of the temperature. Between the wheel-dog and the sled toiled Shorty, his weight divided between the guiding gee-pole and the haul, for he was pulling with the dogs.
Macdonald was glad enough to reach the Narrows, where he could turn from the river and cut across to hit the trail of the men he was following. He had about five miles to go before he would reach the Smith Crossing road and every foot of it he would have to break trail for the dogs. This was slow business, since he had no partner at the gee-pole.
The great woods thinned out and the way they followed took an upward swing, whilst a steady wind with the knife-edge cold of the North began to blow in their faces. Stane at the gee-pole of the sledge, bent his head before the sharp particles of ice-like snow that it brought with it, and grew anxious lest they should be the vanguard of a storm.
Shorty snorted his unutterable disgust, and silence obtained for another quarter of an hour. "There's the beginning of your trouble," Smoke said, halting on his snow-shoes and staring at an object that lay on one side of the old trail. Shorty left the gee-pole and joined him, and together they gazed down on the body of a man beside the trail. "Well fed," said Smoke.
Its body proved an efficient brake, and the two other teams, still abreast, dashed ahead into the darkness for the narrow way. Smoke heard the crash and uproar of their collision, released his wheeler, sprang to the gee-pole, and urged his team to the right into the soft snow where the straining animals wallowed to their necks.
Throw your weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out." A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main street.
Every mind was occupied with Johnny. We were two weeks overstayed of the time we had told him to expect our return, and we knew not what might have happened to the boy. The four of us on one rope, Karstens leading and Walter at the gee-pole, we went down the first sharp descents of the glaciers without much trouble, the new, soft snow making a good brake for the sled.
It came from the shelter of a bluff directly ahead. The leading dog floundered. Then the brute fell with a fierce yelp, and sprawled in the snow while the others swept over his inert body. The man in the sled strove to brake the sled with the "gee-pole" which he snatched to his aid. There was a moment of desperate struggle.
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. This meant longer hours of travel, and Daylight, for good measure and for a margin against accidents, hit the trail for twelve hours a day.
The two men took turns in harnessing themselves to the sledge with Mack. The girl followed at the gee-pole. May-may-gwán showed the endurance of a man. She made no complaint. Always she followed, and followed with her mind alert. Where Dick shut obstinately his faculties within the bare necessity of travel, she and her other companion were continually alive to the possibilities of expedient.
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