Connie Morgan in Alaska

by James B. Hendryx

"Mush! Mush!" he cried, and the dogs bounded forward upon the trail of the boy.

Waseche Bill traversed this same canyon on the day before the blizzard. He, too, had run up against the dead end, and it was while retracing his steps that he had discovered the sheep trail, by means of which he gained the surface of the glacier a mile back from the termination of the gorge. He grinned broadly as his sled shot past the foot of this trail, entirely obliterated, now, by the new-fallen snow.

"I got yo', now, kid," he chuckled. "Holed up like a silveh tip 'till the sto'm blowed by, didn't yo', pa'dner? But I got yo' back ag'in, an' from now on, me an' yo' sticks togetheh. I done the wrong thing—to go' way—but yo' so plumb li'l, I fo'got yo' was a sho' nuff man."

His soliloquy was cut short by the sudden stopping of the sled as it bumped upon the heels of the "wheel" dogs, and for the next few minutes the man was busy with whip and mukluks straightening out the tangle of fighting animals. Dashing in the darkness between a huge granite block and the wall of the glacier, they had brought up sharply against the new-formed ice barrier that completely blocked the trail.

Slashing right and left with his heavy whip, and kicking vigorously and impartially, he finally succeeded in subduing the fighting dogs and removing the tangled harness. And then he stared dumbly at the great mass of broken ice that buried the trail of the boy. In the darkness he could form no conception of the extent of the barrier. Was it a detached fragment? Or had the whole side of the glacier split away and crashed into the canyon? Before his eyes rose the picture of a small body crushed and mangled beneath thousands of tons of ice, and for the first time in his life Waseche Bill gave way to his emotions. Sinking down upon the sled he buried his face in his hands and in the darkness, surrounded by the whimpering dogs, his great shoulders heaved to the violence of his sobs.

The great mass of ice that split from the glacier's side, while presenting an unscalable face to the imprisoned boy, was by no means so formidable a barrier when approached from the opposite side.

Waseche Bill was not the man to remain long inactive. After a few moments he sprang to his feet and surveyed the huge pile of ice fragments. By the feeble light of the stars he could see that the walls of the canyon towered high above the top of the mass. Tossing his dogs an armful of frozen fish, he caught up the coil of babiche rope and stepped to the foot of the obstruction.

"I cain't wait till mawnin'," he muttered, "I got to find out if the kid is safe. Reckon I c'n make it, but I sho' do wish they was mo' light."

It was not a difficult climb for a man used to the snow trails, and a half hour later Waseche Bill stood at the top and, with a long sigh of relief, gazed into the depths beyond the barrier.