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Updated: June 2, 2025
That's where Swiftwater would aim for till the blizzard was over." "Where is it?" demanded his friend. "Swing over to the right and follow the little gulch. I'll wait till you come back." Gordon dropped the gee-pole and started on the instant. Eagerness, anxiety, dread fought in his heart.
Then, from down the river, he heard the unmistakable jingle of dog-bells. Peering out, he saw a sled round the bend. Only one man was with it, straining at the gee-pole and urging the dogs along. The effect on Smoke was one of shock, for it was the first human he had seen since he parted from Shorty three weeks before. His next thought was of the potential murderer concealed on the opposite bank.
Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat. High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled.
The man pulled out a healthy gold sack the size of a small sausage and knocked it negligently against the gee-pole. Rasmunsen felt a strange trembling in the pit of his stomach, a tickling of the nostrils, and an almost overwhelming desire to sit down and cry. But a curious, wide-eyed crowd was beginning to collect, and man after man was calling out for eggs.
Buck heard them go and raised his head to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in the rear. As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones.
Bill mushed behind, guided by the gee-pole. The white-draped trees they had known so well spoke no word of farewell. Could they win through? Were they to know the hardship of the journey, starvation and bitter cold, only to find death in some still, enchanted glen of the forest that stretched in front? Was fate still jesting with them, whispering hope only to shatter them with defeat?
"Whoa!" Smoke yelled at the dogs, throwing his weight back on the gee-pole to bring the sled to a halt. "What's eatin' you now?" Shorty complained. "They ain't no water under that footing." "No; but look at that trail cutting out to the right," Smoke answered. "I thought nobody was wintering in this section."
A gee-pole: stout pole projecting forward from one side of the front end of the sled, by which the sled is steered. On the river, where was a packed trail and where snowshoes were unnecessary, the dogs averaged six miles an hour. To keep up with them, the two men were compelled to run.
So we took the pick of the dogs and the best of the grub, and struck the trail, we three, Passuk, Long Jeff, and I. "Well, ye have broken virgin snow, labored at the gee-pole, and are not unused to the packed river-jams; so I will talk little of the toil, save that on some days we made ten miles, and on others thirty, but more often ten.
Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could, which was not in the least well. "An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption behind them," affirmed a second of the men. "Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!" he shouted. "Mush on there!"
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