“By having an Indian boy run ahead of the dogs and of course the dogs ran after him. It was the white man that put an intelligent dog ahead of the team to lead them. You must have noticed to-day that our lead dogs, ’Frisco and Sate, did mighty little real pulling but they kept the other dogs spread out and pulling their level best. And it’s the leaders who ho and mush and gee and haw when we yell at them and impart our orders to the other dogs of the teams. It’s always the white man who puts the finishing touches on things he finds.”
“We’ll put the finishin’ touches on them sacks o’ gold, I’m sayin’,” Bill rejoined and then calming down a bit he added, “when we finds ’em.”
The fire had burned low and the boys got into their sleeping bags, when they followed their dogs into the shadowy land of dreams. But while the dogs dreamed of getting their fill of fish just once, their young masters dreamed of enough yellow gold to last them for all time.
CHAPTER VII
IN WINTER QUARTERS
The barking and howling of the dogs woke the boys from a sound sleep. They quickly got out of their sleeping bags to see what it was all about and when they looked out of the tent they saw a pack of fourteen huskies with their mouths wide open and looking for all the world as though they were laughing, except when they were in the act of straining their vocal cords to make a noise.
If they could have talked the boys would have heard them say, “here, you sleepy fellows, get a move on yourselves, for we’ve got to do twenty miles to-day.” The handsome brutes were as playful and joyous as any of their tribe this side of the happy hunting grounds where all good canines go to when they die and where the “toil of the trace and trail” are not known.
On second thought, though, it may just be that they were not so particularly anxious to get into the harness again as it was that they had fond recollections of the dried fish they had eaten the night before, and that they were more than ready now for another helping of the same hyperbolical breakfast food.
While Jack fed them more generous portions of fish than they had ever known before, Bill proceeded to get their own breakfasts, of crisp bacon, real bread made by that heathen Chinese, Sing Nook, back there at Circle, and coffee with condensed milk and sugar in it. What more could they—could anyone—want? The boys couldn’t imagine.
Now as long as they had followed the river their course had been due east and they didn’t have to worry about going in the right direction but when they reached the end of it their course lay northeast, which is, naturally, forty-five degrees between the points of the compass known as due north and due east. To follow this course they produced their compasses and while both Jack and Bill were perfectly familiar with the use of the instruments something seemed to be wrong with them, for instead of the needles pointing to the north as do all good compasses, they pointed almost due east, or to be exact they pointed to east by north, which is eleven and one-fourth degrees north of due east.
“It’s twelve o’clock by both your watch and mine and there’s the sun overhead on the meridian, so north must be up there and here’s these bloomin’ compasses a-pointin’ to the east,” complained Bill. “Here we are a thousand miles from nowhere and we don’t even know the blinkin’ north when we sees it.”