The next stop, twenty miles along the homeward trek, brought bad news—Jodie was falling behind, already he had lost twenty minutes.
“It’s his dogs,” Florence explained to the sympathizing trail-house keeper. “They’re not right.”
“Anything happens in dis race,” encouraged her host, “yust anyting at all. You yust keep pushin’ dem sled handles.”
“I’ll keep pushing,” she smiled. She was thinking not of herself but of Jodie. How was it all to end?
Hours later she found herself approaching “Twenty-Mile House,” the last stop before the home stretch. Jodie was now quite definitely out of the race. But—she squared her shoulders at the thought—Smitty Valentine, her closest opponent, was twenty minutes behind her. A slim lead this, but if only she could hold it. If—
Of a sudden, Gray Chief, her leader, gave a yelp of pain, then began hopping along on three feet. Time after time the brave fellow put that foot to the snow, only to lift it again.
In consternation she stopped the dogs to race ahead and examine that foot.
“Not a scratch,” she murmured. “Just one of those things that happen to a dog in a race.” Drawing her sheath knife, she cut the leader’s draw rope, then, lifting him in her arms, carried him back to deposit him on the sled. He whined piteously, but, with almost human wisdom, appeared to know that for the time at least, he was through.
“Must bring you all in,” the girl spoke to the dogs, there were tears in her voice. “Who could be cruel enough to leave you behind on the frozen trail?”
At Twenty-Mile House, with sinking heart, she learned that already her slim lead was lost.