“Here you are.” With one swift movement he cast away the paper wrapping and threw a gorgeous white fox fur about her neck. “And there you are,” he stood back admiringly. “Queen of the ball!”
“Jodie! Is it mine?” her eyes shone.
“Sure ’nuff. Present from the gang. Great stuff, I’d say—dog-musher one day, queen of the ball the next. Nothing like contrast in this jolly old world of ours.”
Jodie was not wrong. The winter nights are long in Alaska, but not too long for a jolly good time. A waxed floor, a peppy ten-piece orchestra, including two Eskimo drummers, a joyous company and sixteen hours of darkness, who could ask for more? Florence did not ask. She made the most of every fleeting hour. For, she thought in one sober moment, before another forty-eight hours have flown, we’ll be on the trail once more.
And so they were, off on the long trek that, they hoped, would bring them to the lost gold mine and to the end of good old Tom Kennedy’s lifelong dream.
They trailed away into the cold, gray dawn, two teams and four people—Tom Kennedy, Florence, Jodie, and At-a-tak. Not only had the Eskimo girl gladly loaned the gray team for the occasion, but she had offered to accompany them as seamstress for their native clothing.
Not a word was said as the city faded into the distance and blue-gray hills loomed ahead. They were off on the great quest, man’s age-long search for gold.
They had been trotting along behind their sleds for some ten miles when, as it will on Arctic trails, the wind began pelting them with hard particles of snow. This time, however, that wind was with them.
“Ah,” Jodie breathed joyously, “twenty below zero and the wind at our backs! What time we shall make!”
“But look at the whirl of that snow!” Florence was alarmed. “We’ll lose the trail.”