“Which way do we go?” Sandy called to him.
Still breathing as easily as if he had taken a short walk around the block, Charley answered, “All go to Skagway. We take middle trail. More snow, but less up and down.” Having made up his mind, Charley shouted to the dogs: “Mush! Mush! Mush, huskies!” And they were off again.
A short time later they left the trail and went skimming down a windswept slope that stretched away into a barren icy plain. Now Charley hopped onto the back of the sled and rode like a Roman charioteer, shouting encouragement to the dogs in Indian. Although there was no broken trail, the sled rode solidly on the surface of the old snow crusted over thickly by the 50-below-zero cold.
“This is really living!” Jerry exulted, his voice trailing off eerily in the slipstream behind the sled. At noon they stopped to rest the dogs in the lee of a rock overhang. Sandy broke out a thermos of steaming coffee and sandwiches, and Charley threw the huskies some chunks of lean dry meat.
“How far do you think we’ve come so far?” Jerry asked.
Charley shrugged. “Twenty, maybe twenty-five mile.”
“Say, that’s pretty good.” He looked back in the direction they had come from. “Where do you suppose those other guys are?”
Charley finished his sandwich, rumpled up the wax-paper wrapping and set a match to it, warming his hands over the brief torch it created. He motioned to the west. “Some follow other trail. Maybe a few stay just in back of us. Let us break new trail for them. Then when our dogs tired, they fresh and catch us.” He cupped one hand to his ear. “Listen!”
The boys held their breaths for a minute, straining to hear. They could just make out the sound of barking dogs floating on the wind in the distance.
“He’s right,” Jerry said indignantly. “That’s a sneaky thing to do.”