“What do you mean by having breakfast at such an unearthly hour?” grumbled Alex, tumbling out of his bunk and fumbling for his trousers. “Why, the cabin’s as dark as pitch.”
Clay snapped on the electric lights. “We are late getting up this morning. Remember, young man, this is the season when the days grow short and we’ve got to make every minute of daylight count. Get up and thank your lucky star that you’ve got a partner good enough to get up before you, warm the cabin up, fry ham and eggs, and cook coffee for you.”
The mention of food sent Alex tumbling into his clothes, an example his companions were not slow to follow.
By the time they had finished eating, a wan light was stealing into the cabin windows. The last mouthful swallowed, they hurried up for a look at the river. It was a sheet of solid white from shore to shore. They all felt a feeling of gratitude that they had won to the little cove and were not penned up out there in that desolate waste exposed to the full fury of every gale. They now had time to note more closely the place in which their winter was to be passed. It was a tiny cove well protected from wintry blasts. On one side of them rose the big mountain; on the other side lofty crumbling cliffs protected them from the raw west winds, while back of them the ground rose in a gradual slope, densely covered by cottonwoods and spruces.
“The first thing to do is to get out our snow shoes and practice breaking trails,” Clay declared. “We have got to harden our muscles and get used to it before we start out on the trading trips.”
All of the boys, but Ike, had had on snow shoes before, but this task of breaking trail for the dogs was a new trick to them and they could not quite get the hang of it until the little Esquimau lad gravely strapped on a pair and showed them how the big webbed shoe must be lifted carefully up, straight up, until it cleared the surface, so that no snow should be tumbled into the packed place, then how it must be shoved cautiously ahead while the same careful uplifting must be repeated by the other foot. Ike’s first experiment plunged him into a snow drift, leaving only his big snow shoes waving madly above the surface.
“Fadder, fadder,” cried Abe in delight. “If you want to walk on your hands tie the shoes on them.”
Clay and Case grinned at each other. It was the first time either of them had heard the lad laugh. Clearly, under the nourishing food and kind treatment he was receiving, Abe was certainly picking up.
The unaccustomed trail breaking brought into play muscles the boys never dreamed they possessed, and after a few hours’ practice, Clay called a halt. “We don’t want to try it too long at a time. Tomorrow we will do a little more and keep it up that way until we can do an all-day stunt. Then we will be fit to start out on our trading trips.”
About noon the Yukon Kid hove in sight and with but little pressure, was induced to stay to dinner and rest up his tired dogs, which he had evidently been pushing hard.