At night they crouched over a small fire, wrapped in their robes, drinking flour broth and thawing bacon on the ends of sticks; and in the morning darkness, without a word, they arose, slipped on their packs, adjusted head-straps, and hit the trail.
The last miles into Selkirk, Daylight drove the Indian before him, a hollow-cheeked, gaunt-eyed wraith of a man who else would have lain down and slept or abandoned his burden of mail.
At Selkirk, the old team of dogs, fresh and in condition, were harnessed, and the same day saw Daylight plodding on, alternating places at the gee-pole, as a matter of course, with the Le Barge Indian who had volunteered on the way out.
Daylight was two days behind his schedule, and falling snow and unpacked trail kept him two days behind all the way to Forty Mile.
And here the weather favored.
It was time for a big cold snap, and he gambled on it, cutting down the weight of grub for dogs and men.
The men of Forty Mile shook their heads ominously, and demanded to know what he would do if the snow still fell.
"That cold snap's sure got to come," he laughed, and mushed out on the trail.
A number of sleds had passed back and forth already that winter between Forty Mile and Circle City, and the trail was well packed.
And the cold snap came and remained, and Circle City was only two hundred miles away.
The Le Barge Indian was a young man, unlearned yet in his own limitations, and filled with pride.
He took Daylight's pace with joy, and even dreamed, at first, that he would play the white man out.
The first hundred miles he looked for signs of weakening, and marveled that he saw them not.
Throughout the second hundred miles he observed signs in himself, and gritted his teeth and kept up.
And ever Daylight flew on and on, running at the gee-pole or resting his spell on top the flying sled.
The last day, clearer and colder than ever, gave perfect going, and they covered seventy miles.
It was ten at night when they pulled up the earth-bank and flew along the main street of Circle City; and the young Indian, though it was his spell to ride, leaped off and ran behind the sled.
It was honorable braggadocio, and despite the fact that he had found his limitations and was pressing desperately against them, he ran gamely on.
CHAPTER VI
A crowd filled the Tivoli—the old crowd that had seen Daylight depart two months before; for this was the night of the sixtieth day, and opinion was divided as ever as to whether or not he would compass the achievement.
At ten o'clock bets were still being made, though the odds rose, bet by bet, against his success.
Down in her heart the Virgin believed he had failed, yet she made a bet of twenty ounces with Charley Bates, against forty ounces, that Daylight would arrive before midnight.
She it was who heard the first yelps of the dogs.
"Listen!" she cried.
"It's Daylight!"
There was a general stampede for the door; but where the double storm-doors were thrown wide open, the crowd fell back.
They heard the eager whining of dogs, the snap of a dog-whip, and the voice of Daylight crying encouragement as the weary animals capped all they had done by dragging the sled in over the wooden floor.
They came in with a rush, and with them rushed in the frost, a visible vapor of smoking white, through which their heads and backs showed, as they strained in the harness, till they had all the seeming of swimming in a river.
Behind them, at the gee-pole, came Daylight, hidden to the knees by the swirling frost through which he appeared to wade.
He was the same old Daylight, withal lean and tired-looking, and his black eyes were sparkling and flashing brighter than ever.
His parka of cotton drill hooded him like a monk, and fell in straight lines to his knees. Grimed and scorched by camp-smoke and fire, the garment in itself told the story of his trip.
A two-months' beard covered his face; and the beard, in turn, was matted with the ice of his breathing through the long seventy-mile run.
His entry was spectacular, melodramatic; and he knew it.
It was his life, and he was living it at the top of his bent.
Among his fellows he was a great man, an Arctic hero.
He was proud of the fact, and it was a high moment for him, fresh from two thousand miles of trail, to come surging into that bar-room, dogs, sled, mail, Indian, paraphernalia, and all.
He had performed one more exploit that would make the Yukon ring with his name—he, Burning Daylight, the king of travelers and dog-mushers.
He experienced a thrill of surprise as the roar of welcome went up and as every familiar detail of the Tivoli greeted his vision—the long bar and the array of bottles, the gambling games, the big stove, the weigher at the gold-scales, the musicians, the men and women, the Virgin, Celia, and Nellie, Dan MacDonald, Bettles, Billy Rawlins, Olaf Henderson, Doc Watson,—all of them.
It was just as he had left it, and in all seeming it might well be the very day he had left.
The sixty days of incessant travel through the white wilderness suddenly telescoped, and had no existence in time. They were a moment, an incident.
He had plunged out and into them through the wall of silence, and back through the wall of silence he had plunged, apparently the next instant, and into the roar and turmoil of the Tivoli.
A glance down at the sled with its canvas mail-bags was necessary to reassure him of the reality of those sixty days and the two thousand miles over the ice.
As in a dream, he shook the hands that were thrust out to him.
He felt a vast exaltation.
Life was magnificent.
He loved it all.
A great sense of humanness and comradeship swept over him.
These were all his, his own kind.
It was immense, tremendous.
He felt melting in the heart of him, and he would have liked to shake hands with them all at once, to gather them to his breast in one mighty embrace.