“Then what—?”
“There are some foreigners, quite a lot of them, all through the North, Syrians, Russians, and Japs. They are gamblers by trade. They’re getting up books on the race. They’re gambling heavily on Smitty to win. And father says there’s nothing they won’t do.”
“All right, I’ll tell Jodie.”
“That,” Florence thought, as she made her way home, “is all the more reason why we should have another team in the field. But where is it to come from?” Where indeed? In these days when both passengers and freight are carried by airplanes, really fine dog teams are becoming all too rare in the North. This Florence had learned from Tom Kennedy’s own lips.
Strangely enough, as if an answer to a prayer, in the van of a storm, the very team blew into town that same afternoon. Florence first saw them as they came tumbling over a high snow bank at the outskirts of the city. The sled as well as its driver piled up with the dogs. When Florence had helped them to right themselves, she found herself staring in admiration at a beautiful Eskimo girl, garbed in a handsome fawn skin parka, and at the grandest team of gray Siberian wolfhounds she had ever seen.
“Your dogs?” she managed to ask.
“No—me,” the girl showed all her fine teeth in a smile. “My brother’s dogs. Il-ay-ok my brother.”
“You mean Mr. Il-ay-ok is your brother?” Like a flash Florence saw the little man dressed in white man’s clothes on the dock at Anchorage.
“Il-ay-ok my brother,” the girl nodded.
“And these are his dogs?”