"Six o'clock! Sufferin' cats! Three hours till daylight—Ain't yo got no pity on the ol' man?"
"Old man, nothing!" grinned Connie over the rim of his tin cup. "But if you wait for daylight to come down into the bottom of this well, you will be an old man before you get out."
Breakfast over, the two packed the outfit and, without harnessing the dogs, pulled the sled to the foot of the barrier. Here it was unloaded and the pack made into bundles suitable for hoisting. The sled was the heaviest piece and the only one that offered a serious problem. It was decided that Connie should remain below and make the things fast, while Waseche climbed to the top and did the hoisting. A sling was rigged from a strip of old blanket, by means of which the dogs could be lifted, by passing it under their bellies and fastening it to the rope at their backs. When all was ready Waseche grasped the swaying babiche line, by means of which he had lowered himself the previous evening.
"Cain't grip nothin' with mittens on," he grumbled, as he bared his hands to the intense cold. Next moment he was pulling himself jerkily upward, hand over hand, while Connie Morgan stood below and watched the indistinct outline of the man who swayed and dangled above him, for all the world like a giant spider ascending a thread of invisible web.
The rope twitched violently as the man drew himself onto the top of the barrier, and a few minutes later the regular taps of his ice axe sounded, as Waseche chopped his "heel holts" as close to the edge as safety permitted. The tapping ceased and the voice of the man rolled and reverberated between the walls of the cistern-like chasm.
"All set, kid!"
"Haul away!" and immediately the bale containing the two sleeping bags swung clear of the snow and was drawn upward, spinning and bumping the ice wall. Other bales followed and soon there remained only the dogs and the sled. After many unsuccessful efforts to induce the wolf-dogs to submit to the unaccustomed sling, Connie hit upon the expedient of harnessing them to the sled, for even McDougall's finely trained dogs, like all malamutes, were wolves at heart and were trustworthy and tractable only in harness. This accomplished, they submitted readily enough and, beginning with the "wheel dogs," one at a time, Connie passed the sling about them and cast off the harness at the same time. Waseche hauled them, snarling and biting at the encircling band, up the face of the perpendicular wall. Old Boris and good-natured Mutt submitted without a growl of protest; but it was different with the untamed savage Slasher. During the whole unusual proceeding the suspicious wolf-dog had bristled and growled, and several times it was only by the narrowest margin that Connie succeeded in averting a tragedy, as Slasher leaped with flashing fangs toward a sled dog dangling helplessly from the rope's end. At last Slasher alone remained. The boy called him. He came, with hair abristle, stepping slowly and stiffly. His eyes glared red, and way back in his throat rumbled long, low growls.
"Come on! You can't bluff me—you old grouch, you!" laughed the boy, and stooping, slipped a heavy collar about his neck. Passing a running noose about the long pointed muzzle, he secured the free end to the collar, and to make assurance doubly sure, he tied a strip torn from the old blanket tightly about the dog's jaws, affixed the sling, and gave the signal.
It was not for his own protection that the boy thus muzzled Slasher. In all the Northland he was the only person who did not fear the wild, vicious brute, for he knew that rather than harm him the malamute would have allowed himself to be torn in pieces. But he feared for Waseche Bill when he came to release him. Despite the fact that he had lived with Waseche for a year, the dog treated him no whit differently than he treated the veriest stranger. To one person in all the world—and only one—the wolf-dog owed allegiance, and that person was Connie Morgan—the first and only creature of the hated man tribe who had used him with fairness.