第54章

They topped a small jam and struck the smooth-going below.Big Olaf was barely fifty feet ahead.A sled shot out from the side and drew in toward him, and Smoke understood Big Olaf's terrific spurt.He had tried to gain a lead for the change.This fresh team that waited to jerk him down the home stretch had been a private surprise of his.Even the men who had backed him to win had had no knowledge of it.

Smoke strove desperately to pass during the exchange of sleds.Lifting his dogs to the effort, he ate up the intervening fifty feet.With urging and pouring of leather, he went to the side and on until his lead-dog was jumping abreast of Big Olaf's wheeler.On the other side, abreast, was the relay sled.At the speed they were going, Big Olaf did not dare the flying leap.If he missed and fell off, Smoke would be in the lead and the race would be lost.

Big Olaf tried to spurt ahead, and he lifted his dogs magnificently, but Smoke's leader still continued to jump beside Big Olaf's wheeler.For half a mile the three sleds tore and bounced along side by side.The smooth stretch was nearing its end when Big Olaf took the chance.As the flying sleds swerved toward each other, he leaped, and the instant he struck he was on his knees, with whip and voice spurting the fresh team.The smooth pinched out into the narrow trail, and he jumped his dogs ahead and into it with a lead of barely a yard.

A man was not beaten until he was beaten, was Smoke's conclusion, and drive no matter how, Big Olaf failed to shake him off.No team Smoke had driven that night could have stood such a killing pace and kept up with fresh dogs--no team save this one.Nevertheless, the pace WAS killing it, and as they began to round the bluff at Klondike City, he could feel the pitch of strength going out of his animals.Almost imperceptibly they lagged, and foot by foot Big Olaf drew away until he led by a score of yards.

A great cheer went up from the population of Klondike City assembled on the ice.Here the Klondike entered the Yukon, and half a mile away, across the Klondike, on the north bank, stood Dawson.An outburst of madder cheering arose, and Smoke caught a glimpse of a sled shooting out to him.He recognized the splendid animals that drew it.They were Joy Gastell's.And Joy Gastell drove them.The hood of her squirrel- skin parka was tossed back, revealing the cameo-like oval of her face outlined against her heavily-massed hair.Mittens had been discarded, and with bare hands she clung to whip and sled.

"Jump!" she cried, as her leader snarled at Smoke's.

Smoke struck the sled behind her.It rocked violently from the impact of his body, but she was full up on her knees and swinging the whip.

"Hi! You! Mush on! Chook! Chook!" she was crying, and the dogs whined and yelped in eagerness of desire and effort to overtake Big Olaf.

And then, as the lead-dog caught the tail of Big Olaf's sled, and yard by yard drew up abreast, the great crowd on the Dawson bank went mad.It WAS a great crowd, for the men had dropped their tools on all the creeks and come down to see the outcome of the race, and a dead heat at the end of a hundred and ten miles justified any madness.

"When you're in the lead I'm going to drop off!" Joy cried out over her shoulder.

Smoke tried to protest.

"And watch out for the dip curve half way up the bank," she warned.