Suddenly, after hours of blind running, something black loomed up close beside him. Boston Roadhouse! Somehow he had missed Telephone Creek altogether, in the storm. Here he learned that neither Johnson nor Allen had been heard from since pulling out of Haven. Neither Telephone Creek nor Boston Roadhouse had seen either of them! MacShane fed his dogs and pulled out. Only one hundred and seven miles to go--and he was leading! Of course, there was a bare possibility that Johnson was still ahead, but if so, he was off the trail, and would be laboring under a severe handicap. “It was her taking the dogs over the trail that did it!” muttered MacShane, as he bored on through the storm. “Without that Skookum would never have found it. She didn’t drive the race--but if we come in first, By God, she _won it_!” Two hours later the snow-fog lightened. MacShane could see all the dogs, now. It was growing colder. Again his muscles were tiring. The sweat was pouring from his body into his mukluks. He sucked lemons continually. Hour after hour he held the dogs to their work, and when he judged he had made twenty-five miles from Boston Roadhouse, he halted the team, and fed them meal and tallow. Here, also he pulled the other young dog out of the harness and replaced him with the one which had rested. “Only about eighty miles to go, boys!” he cried, after fifteen minutes of rest, “Mush-a! Mush-a! We’ve got to win that money!” When MacShane staggered into Timber on the tail end of the blizzard, he had made three hundred and forty-eight miles in seventy-four hours and thirty minutes, with sixty-four miles to go. At Timber he learned that Johnson had reported into Boston Roadhouse an hour and ten minutes after he had pulled out, and had rested two full hours. Allen had withdrawn from the race after injuring three of his dogs when his team went over a cliff in the storm. He had returned to Haven. With a good three hours’ lead, MacShane slept for two hours and pulled out with the sun shining brightly. The thirty-four miles to Topkok was made without incident, MacShane urging his tired dogs, and his tired muscles to their utmost. At Topkok he learned that Johnson, with three dogs on his sled was barely holding his own, an hour and a quarter behind. Just out of Topkok, with thirty miles to go--MacShane took another dog onto the sled. One of the big malamutes had gone lame. From that time on, he drove a terrific trail, forcing the dogs to their limit. For he knew that Johnson would gain, as with three dogs on the sled, he still had fifteen dogs in harness, while he himself, had but ten.