For more than an hour they talked of the wonderful sight, and Phil told what he could remember of the gigantic hairy mammoth discovered frozen in a Siberian glacier, and so perfectly preserved that sledge-dogs were fed for weeks on its flesh.
As they talked their fire burned low, and the outside cold creeping stealthily into camp turned their thoughts to fur-lined sleeping-bags. So they slept, and dreamed of prehistoric monsters; while Musky, Luvtuk, Amook, and their comrades restlessly sniffed and gnawed at the ancient bones of this strange encampment, and wondered at finding them so void of flavor.
Glad as our sledge travellers would have been to linger for days and fully explore the mysteries of that great moss-hidden cavern, they dared not take the necessary time. It was already two weeks since they had left the mining-camp, winter was waning, and they must leave the river ere spring destroyed its icy highway. So they were off again with the first gray light of morning, and two days later found them at the mouth of the Pelly River, the upper Yukon's largest tributary, and two hundred and fifteen miles from Forty Mile.
One evening they spent in the snug quarters of Harper, the Pelly River trader, who was the last white man they could hope to meet before reaching the coast.
From the Pelly River trader our travellers gained much valuable information concerning the routes they might pursue and the difficulties they had yet to encounter. They had indeed heard vaguely of the great cañon of the Yukon, through which the mad waters are poured with such fury that they can never freeze, of the rocky Five Fingers that obstruct its channel, the Rink and White Horse rapids, and the turbulent open streams connecting its upper chain of lakes; but until this time they had given these dangers little thought. Now they became real, while some of them, according to the trailer, were impassable save by weary detours through dense forests and deep snows that they feared would delay them beyond the time of the river's breaking up.
"What, then, can we do?" asked Phil.
"I'll tell you," replied the trader. "Leave the Yukon at this point; go about fifty miles up the Pelly, and turn to your right into the Fox. Ascend this to its head, cross Fox Lake, Indian Trail Lake, Lost Lake, and three other small lakes. Then go down a creek that empties into the Little Salmon, and a few miles down that river to the Yukon. In this way you will have avoided the Five Fingers and the Rink Rapids, and found good ice all the way. After that keep on up the main river till you pass Lake Le Barge. There again leave the Yukon, this time for good by the first stream that flows in on your right. It is the Tahkeena, and will lead you to the Chilkat Pass, which is some longer, but no worse than the Chilkoot. Thus you will avoid most of the rough ice, the great cañon, and all the rapids."
"But we shall surely get lost," objected Phil.
"Not if you can hire Cree Jim who lives somewhere up on the Fox River to go with you, for he is the best guide in the country."
So the next morning Phil and his companions again set forth, this time up the Pelly River, with all their hopes for safety and a successful termination to their journey centred upon the finding and hiring of Cree Jim, the guide.