“What you want is an outfit for about eight months but you couldn’t begin to pack it on your backs or haul it on sleds,” the old outfitter explained; “such an outfit would weigh in the neighborhood of eight hundred or a thousand pounds, and a man can’t carry more than fifty pounds or haul more than one hundred pounds on a stretch. What you ought to have is a couple of dog-sleds.”
“Perzactly!” agreed Bill, “and the question now is can we get the dogs.”
“There are some very likely dogs in and around Circle that I might be able to pick up for you and I’ll see the men who own them over at the Palace to-night. I’ll go ahead and outfit you on the strength of your being able to get the dogs.”
“Good!” ejaculated Jack.
“First of all the things you’ll wear,” the old trader struck out genially and his eyes twinkled more merrily than ever for here was big business staring him in the face—a volume of it such as he had not transacted since the palmy days of Circle these many years agone.
The boys were all attention.
“You’ll want a couple of suits of waterproof underwear, a Mackinaw coat and breeches for early winter and spring; a caribou skin coat with the fur on which has a hood fixed to it; a pair of moosehide or bearskin breeches, a couple of pairs of moccasins and muk-luks apiece and about a dozen pairs of German sox.”
“Whoa, Buddy,” sang out Bill, “I wouldn’t wear a pair o’ them Boche socks if I had to go barefoot, see?”
“That’s only the name of them, boy; why they make them down there in Dawson,” explained Mr. Jack, the storekeeper.
“Well, I might wear ’em in a pinch then,” said Bill.