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Page 56
"Doc," he murmured admiringly. "You can sure go some."
The weary black eyes, under heavy lids, acknowledged the compliment.
"But that ain't the question. Rocky is clawed something scand'lous. As I
said before, I helped sew up his in'ards. Doc...." He shook the man,
whose eyes had again closed. "I say, Doc! The question is: can you go
some more?--hear me? I say, can you go some more?"
The weary dogs snapped and whimpered when kicked from their sleep. The
going was slow, not more than two miles an hour, and the animals took
every opportunity to lie down in the wet snow.
"Twenty miles of it, and we'll be through the gorge," Daw encouraged.
"After that the ice can go to blazes, for we can take to the bank, and
it's only ten more miles to camp. Why, Doc, we're almost there. And when
you get Rocky fixed up, you can come down in a canoe in one day."
But the ice grew more uneasy under them, breaking loose from the
shore-line and rising steadily inch by inch. In places where it still
held to the shore, the water overran and they waded and slushed across.
The Little Peco growled and muttered. Cracks and fissures were forming
everywhere as they battled on for the miles that each one of which meant
ten along the tops.
"Get on the sled, Doc, an' take a snooze," Daw invited.
The glare from the black eyes prevented him from repeating the
suggestion.
As early as midday they received definite warning of the beginning of
the end. Cakes of ice, borne downward in the rapid current, began to
thunder beneath the ice on which they stood. The dogs whimpered
anxiously and yearned for the bank.
"That means open water above," Daw explained. "Pretty soon she'll jam
somewheres, an' the river'll raise a hundred feet in a hundred minutes.
It's us for the tops if we can find a way to climb out. Come on! Hit her
up I! An' just to think, the Yukon'll stick solid for weeks."
Unusually narrow at this point, the great walls of the canyon were too
precipitous to scale. Daw and Linday had to keep on; and they kept on
till the disaster happened. With a loud explosion, the ice broke asunder
midway under the team. The two animals in the middle of the string went
into the fissure, and the grip of the current on their bodies dragged
the lead-dog backward and in. Swept downstream under the ice, these
three bodies began to drag to the edge the two whining dogs that
remained. The men held back frantically on the sled, but were slowly
drawn along with it. It was all over in the space of seconds. Daw
slashed the wheel-dog's traces with his sheath-knife, and the animal
whipped over the ice-edge and was gone. The ice on which they stood,
broke into a large and pivoting cake that ground and splintered against
the shore ice and rocks. Between them they got the sled ashore and up
into a crevice in time to see the ice-cake up-edge, sink, and
down-shelve from view.
Meat and sleeping furs were made into packs, and the sled was abandoned.
Linday resented Daw's taking the heavier pack, but Daw had his will.
"You got to work as soon as you get there. Come on."
It was one in the afternoon when they started to climb. At eight that
evening they cleared the rim and for half an hour lay where they had
fallen. Then came the fire, a pot of coffee, and an enormous feed of
moosemeat. But first Linday hefted the two packs, and found his own
lighter by half.
"You're an iron man, Daw," he admired.
"Who? Me? Oh, pshaw! You ought to see Rocky. He's made out of platinum,
an' armour plate, an' pure gold, an' all strong things. I'm mountaineer,
but he plumb beats me out. Down in Curry County I used to 'most kill the
boys when we run bear. So when I hooks up with Rocky on our first hunt I
had a mean idea to show 'm a few. I let out the links good an' generous,
'most nigh keepin' up with the dawgs, an' along comes Rocky a-treadin'
on my heels. I knowed he couldn't last that way, and I just laid down
an' did my dangdest. An' there he was, at the end of another hour,
a-treadin' steady an' regular on my heels. I was some huffed. 'Mebbe
you'd like to come to the front an' show me how to travel,' I says.
'Sure,' says he. An' he done it! I stayed with 'm, but let me tell you I
was plumb tuckered by the time the bear tree'd.
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