"He couldn't of!" argued Waseche. "It's plumb onpossible, with them there three ol' dawgs. An' he'd of neveh got past Eagle—Fiddle Face, an' Joe, an' Jim Sontag, they wouldn't of let him by—not fo' to go to the Lillimuit, they wouldn't—not in a hund'ed yea's."
The dogs swerved, bringing the outfit to an abrupt halt on the brink of a yawning fissure. Waseche Bill scowled at the delay.
"Sho' some crevasse," he growled, as he peered into the depths of the great ice crack fifty feet wide, which barred his path. Suddenly his eye lighted and he swung the dogs to the southward where, a quarter of a mile away, a great white snow bridge spanned the chasm in a glittering arch. Seizing his axe, he chopped two parallel trenches in the ice close to the end of the bridge. Into these eight-inch depressions he worked the runners of the heavily loaded sled, taking care that the blunt rear end of the runners rested firmly against the vertical ends of the trenches. Uncoiling a long babiche line, he tied one end to the tail rope of the anchored sled and, after making the other end fast about his waist, ventured cautiously out upon the snow bridge. Foot by foot he advanced, testing its strength. The bridge was wide and thick, and evidently quite old and firm, but Waseche Bill was a man who took no foolish risks.
Men who seek gold learn to face danger bravely—it is part of the day's work—for death dogs close upon the trail of the men of the North and must be reckoned with upon short notice. Every tillicum in the White Country, if he would, could tell of hairbreadth escapes, and of times when a clear brain and iron nerve alone stood between him and the Great Beyond. But of these things they rarely speak—for they know of the others, like Sam Morgan, whose work is done, and whose names are burned into the little wooden crosses that dot the white snow of Aurora Land; and whose memory remains fresh in the haunts of the sourdoughs, where their deeds are remembered long and respected when the flash bravado of the reckless tin-horn is scorned and forgotten.
Satisfying himself that the bridge would bear the weight of the outfit, Waseche Bill untied the rope and headed the dogs across at a run.
The surface of the glacier became rougher as he advanced and Waseche was kept busy at the gee-pole as the dogs threaded their way between ice hummocks and made long detours to avoid cracks and fissures, so that the winter sun was just sinking behind the mountains when the man at last found himself upon the edge of the glacier, at a point some distance above the cave where Connie Morgan had sought shelter from the storm. He looked out over the undulating ridges of snow waste that stretched away toward a nearby spur of the mountains. Intently he scanned each nook and byway of the frozen desert, but not a moving object, not a single black dot that might by any stretch of the imagination be construed as a living thing, rewarded his careful scrutiny. Gradually his eyes focused upon the point where the mountains dipped toward the great ice field.
"Yonde's the mouth of the canyon I headed into befo' the blizza'd. I'd bet a blue one the old dawg's trailed me in." Filling his lungs Waseche sent call after call quavering through the still, keen air, but the only answer was the hollow echoing of his own voice as it died away in the mountains. A mile to the eastward he worked his outfit into the valley, following the devious windings of a half-formed lateral moraine, and headed the dogs for the mouth of the canyon.
He searched in vain for tracks as he entered the narrow pass. The snow was smooth and untrampled as the driving wind of the blizzard had left it.
"Sho' is queeah," he muttered. "Sweah to goodness, I hea'd that Boris dawg—I'd know that howl if I hea'd it in Kingdom Come—an' I know it now! I wondeh," he mused, as the team followed the devious windings of the canyon, "I wondeh if this heah Lillimuit is a kind of spirit land like folks says. Did I really heah the ol' dawg howl, or has the big Nawth got me, too, like it done got Carlson, an' the rest? 'Cause if they was a dawg wheah's his tracks? An' if it was a ghost dawg, how could he howl?" The sled dogs paused, sniffing excitedly at the snow, and Waseche Bill leaped forward. Before the mouth of an ice-cavern were many tracks, and the man stared dumbfounded.
"Fo' the love of Mike!" he cried excitedly. "It's the kid!" He dropped to his knees and patted affectionately the impressions of the tiny mukluks. "Boy! Boy! Yo' li'l ol' sourdough, yo' li'l pa'dner—How'd yo' get heah? Yo' done come, jes' as Joe 'lowed yo' would—yo' doggone li'l tillicum! Come all alone, too! Jes' wait 'til I catch holt of yo'—an' McDougall's dawgs! No one in Alaska could a loaned them malamutes offen Mac, 'cept yo'—theah's ol' Scah Foot, that lost two toes in the wolf-trap!" The man leaped to the sled and cracked his whip.