Pausing only long enough in the little room with its scrawling "No. 27" painted on the door to wriggle into his parka and snatch his cap from the bunk, he stole cautiously down the narrow passage leading to the rear of the ell, where a small door opened directly into the stockade. With feverish haste he harnessed the dogs and opened the gate. In the shadow of the building he paused and peered anxiously up and down the street. No one was in sight and, through the heavily frosted windows of the buildings, dull squares of light threw but faint illumination upon the deserted thoroughfare.
"Mush! Mush!" he whispered, swinging the long team out onto the hard-packed snow.
As he passed a store the door opened and a man stood outlined in the patch of yellow light. Connie's heart leaped to his throat, but the man only stared in evident surprise that any one would be hitting the trail at that time of night, and then the door closed and the boy breathed again. He wished that he could stop and lay in a supply of grub, but dared not risk it. Better pay twice the price to some prospector, or trapper, than risk being stopped.
Silently the sled glided over the smooth trail and slanted out onto the river with Boris, Mutt, and Slasher capering in its wake.
Connie had only a vague notion as to the location of the unknown Lillimuit. He knew that it lay somewhere among the unmapped headwaters of Peel River, and that he must head up the Tatonduk and cross a divide. Toward morning he halted at the mouth of a river that flowed in from the north-east. A little-used trail was faintly discernible and the boy called the old lead dog.
"Go find Waseche, Boris!" he cried, "go find him!" Notwithstanding the fact that Waseche's trail was nearly five days old, the old dog sniffed at the snow and, with a joyous yelp, headed up the smaller river.
The next morning there was consternation in Eagle, and a half-dozen dog sleds hit the trail. About ten miles up the Tatonduk, the men of Eagle met a half-breed trapper with an empty sled.
"Any one pass ye, goin' up?" asked Joe.
The trapper grinned.
"Yeste'day," he answered, "white man papoose"; he held his hand about four feet from the snow. "Ten-dog team—Mush! Mush! Mush! Go like de wolf! Stop on my camp. Buy all de grub. Nev' min' de cost—hur' up! He try for catch white man, go by four sleeps ago." Joe cracked his whip and the dogs leaped forward.