Thus began a grim game in which Bassett was persecution personified, a Nemesis unshakable. He passed them on Lake Linderman, welcomed them at Bennett Post, and once more showed them the tail of his sled halfway down to West Arm on Bennett Lake.
That night they spent much like the preceding one, feeding a gigantic fire, drinking inconceivable quantities of hot water and gnawing mangy dried salmon purchased at a Stick Indian tee-pee on Lake Bennett’s shore.
Thenceforward Bassett’s hand as well as the hand of every other man was against them up the chain of lakes. The white breed of the land was a hunt-pack turned upon them, and though by virtue of stray Indian camps they survived through Caribou Crossing, Tagish Post and McClintock Post to Whitehorse, Bassett beat them in the end.
For on the Fifty-mile River beyond the Whitehorse camp his dog-sled passed them once again, and the next far post was Selkirk at the Pelly’s mouth.
“Jose, how many miles to Selkirk?” asked Blera as they stared after the vanishing outfit.
“More’n two hundred and fifty,” answered Jose dejectedly. “Bassett’s got us, sure.”
“No, he hasn’t, then!” Blera’s blue eyes flashed in the frost, and she shook her fur-gantleted hand in Bassett’s wake. “He’s aiming to starve us out on the river-stretch and make us quit it again, but it’ll take a sore sight more than him to do it!”
“How you meaning? We can’t make Selkirk on hot water and dog-feed.”
“I know that, but there’s the Dalton Trail.”
“By thunder! Say, I hadn’t figured on that track! But it’ll do. Blera, you’re sure a—a—a winner. I know there’s a Stick village at the mouth of the Klokhok—old Tutchi’s Village. I’ve been in it often. The beggars is rich. They’re lousy with dogs, and we’ll dicker for some and go down the Middle Fork of the Nordenskold. After that, Dawson’s dead easy with dogs. And in Dawson we’ll lie low till we get a chance to square up with Mister Bassett. Come on!”