“There you go dreaming that same stuff again. It would be a great show for the New Yorkers who don’t know how to travel except on trolleys, and trains and in motor cars and hearses. But by the time we get back it will be well along toward the middle of summer so I guess we’ll have to call that little day dream of yours off.”
“Can’t youse even let a fellow dream out loud onct in a while?” Bill inquired petulantly. “It don’t cost nothin’.”
“Go on and rave then, I don’t care,” said Jack.
“Well then, just imagine it was winter in Noo York an’ us a-drivin’ our dog teams up the Avenoo with moosehide sacks o’ gold piled on our sleds like cordwood.”
“Why, we wouldn’t get from Thirty-third Street to Forty-second before there’d be Wild West doings and a dozen gangs of gunmen, any one of which would be as bad or worse than Soapy Smith’s, would be holding us up and taking our sacks of gold away from us,” Jack told him.
“An’ what would the perlice be doin’ all this time?” asked Bill innocently.
“Oh, they’d be directing the traffic and showing the hold-up men which way to go to keep from being run over by the many motor cars,” Jack replied with all seriousness.
Bill blinked his eyes.
“An’ I suppose we’d be standin’ by with our hands in our pockets lookin’ on. Mush, you huskies, mush!” yelled Bill gruffly and with that the conversation lagged.
All that day they traveled leisurely along and when night came on they had only done some twenty miles. As usual the boys looked after the dogs’ feet and fed them a stinting portion of fish, when they at once dug into the snow with the openings on the south side. Jack and Bill had no intention of making a snow igloo for, like their dogs, they had grown fat upon the good things of the land and in consequence they were not as alert and spry as they had been.