The Race for Number One

The glad light in her eyes seemed to promise a greater need than all the gold in the Mono claim. He was aware of a movement of her hand in her lap next to his.

Under the screen of the tablecloth he thrust his own hand across and met a firm grip of woman's fingers that sent another wave of warmth through him.


"What will Shorty say?" was the thought that flashed whimsically through his mind as he withdrew his hand.

He glanced almost jealously at the faces of Von Schroeder and Jones, and wondered if they had not divined the remarkableness and deliciousness of this woman who sat beside him.

He was aroused by her voice, and realized that she had been speaking some moments.

"So you see, Arizona Bill is a white Indian," she was saying. "And Big Olaf is--a bear wrestler, a king of the snows, a mighty savage.

He can out-travel and out-endure an Indian, and he's never known any other life but that of the wild and the frost."

"Who's that?" Captain Consadine broke in from across the table.

"Big Olaf," she answered. "I was just telling Mr Bellew what a traveller he is."

"You're right," the Captain's voice boomed. "Big Olaf is the greatest traveller in the Yukon.

I'd back him against Old Nick himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel. He brought in the government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilcoot and the third drowned in the open water of Thirty Mile."

III.

Smoke had travelled in a leisurely fashion up to Mono Creek, fearing to tire his dogs before the big race.

Also, he had familiarized himself with every mile of the trail and located his relay camps.

So many men had entered the race, that the hundred and ten miles of its course was almost a continuous village.

Relay camps were everywhere along the trail. Von Schroeder, who had gone in purely for the sport, had no less than eleven dog teams--a fresh one for every ten miles.

Arizona Bill had been forced to content himself with eight teams. Big Olaf had seven, which was the complement of Smoke.

In addition, over two-score of other men were in the running. Not every day, even in the golden north, was a million dollars the prize for a dog race. The country had been swept of dogs.

No animal of speed and endurance escaped the fine-tooth comb that had raked the creeks and camps, and the prices of dogs had doubled and quadrupled in the course of the frantic speculation.

Number Three Below Discovery was ten miles up Mono Creek from its mouth.

The remaining hundred miles was to be run on the frozen breast of the Yukon. On Number Three itself were fifty tents and over three hundred dogs.

The old stakes, blazed and scrawled sixty days before by Cyrus Johnson, still stood, and every man had gone over the boundaries of the claim again and again, for the race with dogs was to be preceded by a foot and obstacle race.

Each man had to re-locate the claim for himself, and this meant that he must place two centre-stakes and four corner-stakes and cross the creek twice, before he could start for Dawson with his dogs.

Furthermore, there were to be no 'sooners.' Not until the stroke of midnight of Friday night was the claim open for re-location, and not until the stroke of midnight could a man plant a stake.

This was the ruling of the Gold Commissioner at Dawson, and Captain Consadine had sent up a squad of mounted police to enforce it.

Discussion had arisen about the difference between sun-time and police-time, but Consadine had sent forth his fiat that police time went, and, further, that it was the watch of Lieutenant Pollock that went.

The Mono trail ran along the level creek-bed, and, less than two feet in width, was like a groove, walled on either side by the snow- fall of months.

The problem of how forty-odd sleds and three hundred dogs were to start in so narrow a course was in everybody's mind.

"Huh!" said Shorty. "It's goin' to be the gosh-dangdest mix-up that ever was. I can't see no way out, Smoke, except main strength an' sweat an' to plow through.

If the whole creek was glare-ice they ain't room for a dozen teams abreast.

I got a hunch right now they's goin' to be a heap of scrappin' before they get strung out. An' if any of it comes our way you got to let me do the punchin'."

Smoke squared his shoulders and laughed non-committally.

"No you don't!" his partner cried in alarm. "No matter what happens, you don't dast hit.

You can't handle dogs a hundred miles with a busted knuckle, an' that's what'll happen if you land on somebody's jaw."

Smoke nodded his head.

"You're right, Shorty. I couldn't risk the chance."

"An' just remember," Shorty went on, "that I got to do all the shovin' for them first ten miles an' you got to take it easy as you can. I'll sure jerk you through to the Yukon.

After that it's up to you an' the dogs. Say--what d'ye think Schroeder's scheme is?

He's got his first team a quarter of a mile down the creek an' he'll know it by a green lantern. But we got him skinned. Me for the red flare every time."

IV.

The day had been clear and cold, but a blanket of cloud formed across the face of the sky and the night came on warm and dark, with the hint of snow impending.

The thermometer registered fifteen below zero, and in the Klondike-winter fifteen below is esteemed very warm.

At a few minutes before midnight, leaving Shorty with the dogs five hundred yards down the creek, Smoke joined the racers on Number Three.

There were forty-five of them waiting the start for the thousand-thousand dollars Cyrus Johnson had left lying in the frozen gravel.

Each man carried six stakes and a heavy wooden mallet, and was clad in a smock-like parka of heavy cotton drill.

Lieutenant Pollock, in a big bearskin coat, looked at his watch by the light of a fire. It lacked a minute of midnight.

"Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and watched the second hand tick around.

Forty-five hoods were thrown back from the parkas. Forty-five pairs of hands unmittened, and forty-five pairs of moccasins pressed tensely into the packed snow.

Also, forty-five stakes were thrust into the snow, and the same number of mallets lifted in the air.

The shots rang out, and the mallets fell. Cyrus Johnson's right to the million had expired.

To prevent confusion, Lieutenant Pollock had insisted that the lower centre-stake be driven first, next the south-eastern; and so on around the four sides, including the upper centre-stake on the way.

Smoke drove in his stake and was away with the leading dozen. Fires had been lighted at the corners, and by each fire stood a policeman, list in hand, checking off the names of the runners.

A man was supposed to call out his name and show his face. There was to be no staking by proxy while the real racer was off and away down the creek.

At the first corner, beside Smoke's stake, Von Schroeder placed his.

The mallets struck at the same instant. As they hammered, more arrived from behind and with such impetuosity as to get in one another's way and cause jostling and shoving.

Squirming through the press and calling his name to the policeman, Smoke saw the Baron, struck in collision by one of the rushers, hurled clean off his feet into the snow.

But Smoke did not wait. Others were still ahead of him. By the light of the vanishing fire he was certain that he saw the back, hugely looming, of Big Olaf, and at the south-western corner Big Olaf and he drove their stakes side by side.

It was no light work, this preliminary obstacle race. The boundaries of the claim totalled nearly a mile, and most of it was over the uneven surface of a snow-covered, niggerhead flat.

All about Smoke men tripped and fell, and several times he pitched forward himself, jarringly, on hands and knees.

Once, Big Olaf fell so immediately in front of him as to bring him down on top.

The upper centre-stake was driven by the edge of the bank, and down the bank the racers plunged, across the frozen creek-bed, and up the other side. Here, as Smoke clambered, a hand gripped his ankle and jerked him back.

In the flickering light of a distant fire, it was impossible to see who had played the trick.

But Arizona Bill, who had been treated similarly, rose to his feet and drove his fist with a crunch into the offender's face.

Smoke saw and heard as he was scrambling to his feet, but before he could make another lunge for the bank a fist dropped him half-stunned into the snow.

He staggered up, located the man, half-swung a hook for his jaw, then remembered Shorty's warning and refrained.

The next moment, struck below the knees by a hurtling body, he went down again.

The Race for Number One 1| The Race for Number One 2 | The Race for Number One 3

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