Adventure Magazine Cover, April 1916 — page 154: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

152 of dogs, and it was not a race which could be won by hanging back, husbanding the huskies and drawing away in the stretch run. There was no stretch run, or rather, it was all stretch run, a grueling drive from start to finish. The man who hung back only increased one hundredfold his chances of being jammed in the crush, and the more outfits he let go ahead of him the tighter he was bottled up. So the motto of every contestant was: more room in front. With voice and whip they hastened to apply it, but the swiftest in application were Sark and Bassett. Their dogs were big, one hundred and forty pound Mackenzie River huskies, in prime condi- tion and right on their mettle. It was fierce joy to the brutes to fly through the frosty atmosphere. The position of their drivers under the circumstances was not to be con- sidered bad. Excepting Jess Tolume’s claim for which no one was running, Bassett’s was the fifteenth legal claim from the mouth. Given a fair showing in the staking, his po- sition would have been even better, but the rough passage he got enabled twenty teams to lead him in the take-off. Yet Tom, knowing the stamina of his ani- mals, dared a sprint at the start. He un- loosed a fierce lope that pulled down the teams ahead, and before they reached the mouths of McKinnon and Quartz Creeks, on opposite limits of Indian River, they had shown brushes to two racing outfits and were pushing three more to the limit of their speed. From Quartz onward Bassett, whose wind had now come back, took his turn at the tail rope while Sark rested at full length upon the sled and drove. This work in the rear was exhausting. The pace was so fast that Tom was pounding along with gargan- tuan strides. Of course there were times when he hauled up on the tail rope and knelt on the rear of the sledge for a rest, but these were only moments of respite and recuperation, breaks in the steady grind that made a fresh renewal of the strenuous toil possible. The creek mouths were milestones in their whizzing flight, signs for the partners to ex- change places and spell each other. On under the play of the aurora and the blaze of the stars they sped, grim eyes focused on the teams ahead, and team by team they left them behind. At Ruby Creek they passed another out- Adventure fit; between Ruby and Ophir they led two more. On to Nine-mile Creek another pair succumbed. At Bertha Creek the number of spans ahead had been cut by desperate driving from thirteen to ten, and by the time they slewed out of the mouth of Indian River onto the Yukon, Tom and Eric had lopped off four more. “Six ahead yet, Eric,” calculated Bas- sett. ‘‘Casino and his five follerers. I’ve watched the ones we passed. They’re ex- clusively outsiders. Casino and Company’s all to the velvet yet.” ‘“‘And going strong,” returned Sark, from his kneeling position on the tail of the sled. ‘‘Tt’s the early start they had.” — ‘Sure, pardner. The reason of their bein’ in the lead of the bunch of stakers from our claim down to the mouth kin be seen in their manner of stakin’. They concentrated. They disposed of my competition. The com- petition of the three outsiders wasn’t fierce enough to count. So they jist ambled along in peace, and the six of ’em, unannoyed, staked as a single unanimous spirit. On the other fifteen claims below, things wasn’t unanimous. ‘Thar every man was com- petin’ aginst every other man, fightin’, hold- in’, delayin’ and bein’ delayed and lettin’ Casino and Company steal the lead. But thar’s two places races is won, Eric. They’re won at the finish as well as at the start. now’s the time we got to do our darnedest to be in the competition at the end.”’ “Go to it, then. Six to one is still pretty big odds, but we can sure pare it down a little as we go.” But the paring down was no easy matter. Here on the Yukon the river’s width was greater, and to the casual mind driving ap- peared all the easier. Yet such was not the case. One reason was that ice-jams pre- dominated and constrained travel to well- defined routes. A second reason was that the stars and the aurora had paled, blan- keting the land with a gloom which was the true herald of the coming dawn, and render- ing fast journeying doubly dangerous. While a third reason obtained in the fact that the larger river space gave better op- portunity for the jockeying which inevita- bly occurred in races of this kind, and which had not been indulged in on Indian River simply because to indulge in it would have been to court disaster and sled-wreck too early in the game. CoMmichoooks They queered me at the start, so . (CO