Toma doubled up in a paroxysm of laughter.
“I think that very good joke on that Indian. Mebbe him find out it bad thing to steal.”
“I don’t know about that. He looks as if he were beyond redemption.”
Toma cracked his whip, and the huskies sprang forward, scrambling up an incline. It was steep here, so Dick got out and trotted behind. The exercise warmed his feet and sent the blood racing through his body.
When he tumbled back on the sledge again, Toma half-turned and with the butt of his whip pointed excitedly at the dogs.
“Look!” he cried.
The sudden change in the behavior of the huskies was very noticeable. Their ears were pricked higher. The leader, a beautiful long-haired malemute, so much resembling a wolf that it was almost impossible to tell the difference, had commenced to whine softly, straining at her harness in fitful, nervous leaps.
“Somebody close ahead,” Toma whispered. “We see ’em pretty quick now.”
Dick leaned forward and picked up his rifle, and commenced fumbling with the breech. His expression had grown suddenly tense. He rose to a position on his knees, swaying there from the motion of the sleigh, his gaze set unwaveringly, expectantly, on the trail ahead.
At a furious rate of speed, they descended another slope, then, more slowly, began circling up around the next hill, emerging to a sparsely wooded area, which, in turn, at the farther side, dropped abruptly to a deep tree-covered valley.