CHAPTER VII.

Where the heavy trail from Sixty Mile forged toward Indian River, Rex Britton halted his dog-train and eyed with an odd glance, half relief, half reproach, the dog-sled which was now rapidly approaching from the rear.

"Humph!" he growled through his fur hood, "the gentleman of the rear-guard has a conscience after all. He apparently knows the unwritten law of the Yukon that travellers take turns in breaking the trail."

A fresh fall of snow had buried the Dawson route, and, unlucky as usual, Britton had found it his task to pack the loose stuff all the way from the Big Salmon. The other dog-train that had mushed behind him since morning had not offered to do its duty till now. The four o'clock gray was showing in the sky. Night lurked in the river shadows. Britton breathed his dogs a little longer and waited.

The sled behind was drawn by a five-dog team like his own, but the huskies appeared far fresher.

"Been nursing them while I've done the work!" was his exclamation-"mighty good driver, too. By George, it's a woman!"

Britton's wide eyes strained to catch the detail of the figure. As the distance lessened, his supposition was proven true. He saw the novel sight of a five-dog team being urged at full speed over that lonely trail by a mere slip of a girl.

"Gaucho, you lean beggar!" he cried to his leader. With a jump the animal tautened the traces to the shrill menace of the lash. The runners coughed a little in the sagging snow, and Britton was off down the slope.

"You see it's a girl, you old wolf," he whimsically explained. "We can't let her break a trail. No-not if we were dropping!"

Nevertheless his team travelled in a surly fashion. The skin on the backs of their necks crinkled at the shriek of his whip. They snarled and fought in their harness despite the punishment which followed. The rear sled gained steadily. Soon a voice like a clear silver bell hailed Britton.

"Wait!" she commanded. "I'll take my turn. Your dogs are weakening. I should have come to the front sooner, only I must travel all night and need to spare my team."

"I'm all right," Britton shouted back. "Laurance's cabin is my stop. The huskies will last."

"I insist," the girl cried, urging her animals so that they nosed the packs on Britton's sleigh.

"And I refuse," he called over his shoulder. "You shouldn't be on this trail anyway. It's not safe to travel alone. You're surely not mad enough to attempt a night trip?"

The girl straightened her shoulders haughtily, and the face, framed in a white-furred hood, took on a dignity which would have been lost on the man had not the physical beauty of the countenance forced its impression.

"Let me pass!" she tersely commanded, pulling her dogs into the powdery snow at one side of Britton's packed trail.

"Pass me, then," he said, a little nettled, and forced his team to topmost speed.

Invited into a race, the girl soon showed the mettle of herself and of her animals. Before Britton reached the river-arm, she drew abreast. The trail sloped downward, and the dogs had but little to stay their lope. The two teams raced side by side, the leaders snapping at each other.

"They'll fight in a minute and pile us both up," the girl cried excitedly.

Britton, gazing on her face, was struck with an old, poignant pain. For a second, he thought it was Maud Morris. The features were there; the same teeth, the same rose-hued cheeks, the same sunny hair about the temples! The resemblance was remarkable, and, forgetting the swift descent, Britton stared.

Gaucho, over-zealous to maim the rival leader, stumbled, and a spill seemed imminent, but Britton's skilful lash sorted him out, thereby increasing the momentum of the train till the teams rushed neck and neck again.

"It's a dead heat," he said grimly. "We had better slacken speed before we cross the ice or neither sleigh will go any farther."

"Agreed," smiled the hooded beauty, reining in. Her color was heightened by the ride, and, as she pushed the furry fringes from her mouth to admit of freer breathing, Britton could have sworn it was the face of Maud Morris. Only, the eyes had a serene depth of expression which bespoke soul and purity. Therein lay the difference!

"Say," he began, confusedly, "you're like-you're the perfect mould of someone I know. Her name is Morris. Ah! I have it now! Such likeness can't exist without sisterhood. You're a sister of Maud Morris!" His voice was intense in its eagerness.

"I am not!" came the decidedly staccato answer, tinged with contempt. "Be careful," she added warningly. "There's a jam on this arm." They were sweeping the frozen river-bed, bumping over the jutting ice-boulders piled chaotically in a bend of the stream.

Britton took the lead, swinging briskly across the jam. The girl shouted a warning at his evident carelessness.

"Do be cautious," she begged. "The fresh snow masks the water-holes in treacherous bridges, and the current here is very swift."

Britton loped on without heed. The girl screamed, a second later. Without warning one runner of the foremost sled cut across a snow-arched slush-hole. Britton pitched backwards, splashing through the sloppy mask as a stone drops through scummy ooze.

The girl was at the place in three dog-leaps. A dull blotch of open water showed where the man had disappeared. She jerked her sled sidewise, as an anchor for her weight, grasped a runner with one hand, and lowered her body as far as possible, searching with despairing glances for a reappearing head. She gave a low cry of agony when nothing showed, and began probing wildly with her whip. Its butt-end fell across the taut ropes of Britten's sled, and, looking up, the girl saw the dogs in a heap, well-nigh strangled with the tension on the collars. There was something on the other end!

She grasped the ropes and pulled with all the strength of one arm. After what seemed an age of straining, Britton's black gauntlet pierced the slush. The lines were twisted tightly round his wrist, and the girl frantically seized it. However, the effort was useless. By the passiveness of the limb she knew him to be either stunned or drowned, and past helping himself, while her strength could not stir him.

Relaxing her grip, she pulled herself up the side of the hole, ran to Britton's team, and lashed it into activity in spite of the cramping collars. In terror the huskies responded with their supreme efforts, but they could not draw out their master.

In hysterical sobbing now the girl brought her own dogs, hitched them ahead, and slashed the double team till the cruel whip flayed their hides. To her blows she added prayers breathed between terrified sobs.

At last the string of tortured dogs broke out the sagging, anchoring thing, and Britton's senseless body rolled into view with startling suddenness. The animals, at the quick release, dragged it clear of the river before the girl could stop them.

Laurance's cabin showed just around the bend. In a new lease of strength the feminine rescuer rolled the man's body on his sleigh. Calling to her own team to follow, she made a dash for the shelter of the cabin.

The headland reeled away; the ice-gaps ran past till she drew up with a swirl in front of Laurance's. A group of suspicious huskies, guarding the door, howled dubiously and charged on the strange teams. The girl cracked skulls here and there in a frantic fashion. The fear that they might spring on the inert man possessed her, but in a second the clamor reached Laurance by his fire.

The door clanged back. Several oaths, puncturing the icy air like pistol-cracks, were swallowed in a ridiculous gurgle when the old Klondiker recognized the strange form as that of a woman.

"He's drowned!" she screamed. "Help him, for God's sake!"

"Who?" bellowed Laurance, rushing out and kicking dogs right and left. "By me oath, it's Britton, Rex Britton! Where'd you come on him, eh?"

"He fell in the river-jam!" she cried in unsuppressed irritation. "Don't talk-don't question! Do something! It's time that counts. You're losing time, man!" Her voice filed off in an upper break which told of racked nerves.

Laurance gripped Britton in his arms and made the house with some little difficulty. Rex was a heavy man, and a bulky fellow seems twice his own weight when the muscles are so lax.

"I don't think he's drowned near so much as stunned," Laurance observed, as he laid the body in a bunk behind the stove. "Something's hit him a hefty blow there." He touched Britton's forehead where a dark bruise showed.

"Nary a drown," he continued triumphantly, as he ran a hand under thick Arctic clothing to feel the breast. "His heart's a-beatin'. His ribs heave some, too. Nary a drown, I tell you. The crack on the coco done the job, miss. I'll bring him round all up-to-date in a minnit or two."

The girl's convulsive sobbing made Laurance look up in surprise.

"Don't you go for to take on so," he begged. "You go quiet your nerves and make summat hot in the kitchen room, for the cook's away. I'll dry-fix Britton, and he'll drink pints of scaldin' tea when he wakes."

The girl obeyed, eager to do anything that would help. She busied herself over the tea-making, and warmed some soup, made from moose shoulder, which she found in the rough cupboard. At intervals, however, her anxiety overcame her, and she called to Laurance in the next room with questions as to Britton's condition. Reassuring replies came back in the Klondiker's quaint vocabulary, replies that made her smile when she could take her mind off Britton's danger, since Laurance declared there was no need to fear.

By the time she had the tea and soup ready, Laurance came into the kitchen.

"He's come to-sort of dazed, though," was his announcement. "Got them things hot?"

"Steaming!" she answered, turning from the stove. The action brought her face in close range of Laurance's eyes. The tears were dried, disfiguring sobs gone. The sparkle of the eye and the fire-tinged cheek made a rare sight. The old Klondiker gazed for a speechless minute, while the girl's color deepened.

"Say, now," he stammered at last, "if I'd never set eyes on the Rose of the Yukon, I'd take me oath as you was her. Blast me if you don't resemble her like a twin. Where're you from?"

"Dawson!-don't bother me," the girl replied quickly. "You are sure he will be perfectly safe? I wouldn't like to think-you see, I believe it was my fault. I tempted him to race. He will take no harm?"

"Nary a bit," said Laurance, promptly. "He'll be as right as a trivet when he gets outside a good hot meal."

"Then give him these as soon as you like!" She indicated the tea and soup, and added: "I'll thank you to tell him I'm sorry I was the cause of his accident. Just tell him I'm sorry."

Laurance caught up the boiling liquids in their respective vessels and darted into the next room. Rex Britton's senses were gradually steadying themselves. The hollow, rocky feeling was passing away. In a dry suit of Laurance's he half reclined on the Alaska bunk, while the Klondiker proceeded to administer to his needs by dipping out the necessary nourishment.

"Where's the girl?" asked Britton, awkwardly.

"Out in the kitchen! Say, isn't she a Jim-Cracker from Jim-Crackerville, eh? What's her name?"

"Don't know!" said Rex. "Why didn't you ask her?"

"Bless me,-I-forgot," admitted Laurance. "However, son, seein' as you're summat interested, I'll attend to this here enquiry-"

A jingle of bells and the movement of a dog-train outside clattered an interruption.

"Hello!" exclaimed Laurance, jumping up. "Someone else blew in, eh? Must be me day at home." He crossed quickly to the door and flung it open.

"Who's arrived?" demanded Britton.

"H-l!" cried Laurance, in a non-committal fashion, and dashed into the yard.

Vociferous shouting drifted in to Britton, and when the Klondiker reappeared, he asked with a shade of anxiety: "Anything wrong out there?"

"She's gone," spluttered Laurance. "She's hiked with that bloody fast team of hers."

Britton leaped from the bunk to the doorway. Around the bend of the trail the girl's outfit was disappearing. Full of a strange thrill of disappointment and sense of indignity, he turned the blame on Laurance.

"You blasted fool!" he roared, angrily.

"'Tain't my fault," the Klondiker threw back. "How'd I know she was goin' to vamoose? Must ha' thought we wasn't respectable inhabitants."

"She said she intended to travel by night," explained Britton. "I told her it wasn't safe, but she laughed. I'm going after her!"

Jim Laurance put his back to the door with a certain grim determination.

"No, you ain't," he said, quietly. "Sift some sense into your cracked head. Them dogs are gee-whiners. Yours wouldn't catch 'em in a year. No, siree! That girl knows what she's a-doin'. She's been on trails afore this, and don't you forgit it."

Britton sat down upon his bunk again, convinced of the futility of trying to overtake the splendid team of the unknown beauty. Laurance came back from the door and replenished the fire. His friend drank the rest of the soup and tea in an absent manner.

"How do you shape?" asked Jim.

"Better," Rex grunted.

"Feel like a square meal? It'll skeer off the cold better'n slops. They're all right to prick your blood up, but they don't last like a stomachful of bull moose. Heh?"

"Hardly," Britton agreed. "Bring out your solid grub."

Laurance dived into the kitchen, returning with a big platter of moosemeat and a tremendous slab of pilot bread. He put on a fresh pot of tea, and they fell to, munching in silence while dark crept under the door and into the cabin corners.