“First off, his dog race talk wasn’t looked on none favorable. The boys figgerin’ that their teams wouldn’t stand no show again his’n. Then he pulls out a roll of cash money, in big bills, an’ starts in wantin’ to bet. He’s got the money all right, rolls of bills big enough to choke a moose in every pocket an’ plenty of dust besides. You see, bein’ in the business he’s in he don’t dare to trust no one with his money, never knowin’ when he’ll have to light out, nor how far he will have to go, so he packs it with him. Well, as I said, he flashes his roll an’ brags on his team an’ offers to bet the hull or any part of it on his dogs on any race from a mile to a hundred mile. ’Course he don’t git no takers, an’ so he heaves in some more hooch, an’ every time he takes a drink his dogs looks better to him, an’ every one else’s looks poorer. So he gits to offerin’ odds--two-to-one at first, an then three to one, an’ when I left camp it had got up to five-to-one that he could beat anything on the Koyukuk. “Well we’d got kind of tired of hearin’ him shootin’ off his mouth an’ so some of us got to kind of figgerin’ if we couldn’t bunch our dogs an’ pick us out a winnin’ team from the lot, seein’ how the odds was gittin’ pretty promisin’. But when we come to try ’em out we seen it wasn’t no go. The dogs wouldn’t work good together, the best ones bein’ mostly leaders that wouldn’t work nowheres but in the lead. “Then I thinks of you all. When I mentions your team they was a whoop from the boys, an’ every one of ’em agrees that if you’ll enter your team we could make a cleanin’ an’ at the same time learn that skunk a lesson not to come hornin’ in on the Koyukuk where folks like him ain’t wanted.” Old Man Gordon snorted contemptuously and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the stove: “If ye’re expectin’ me to risk gude gold on the outcome of a dog race, Pete Enright, ye’ve had ye’re trip fer nothin’. ’Twas better than eight year agone that Burr MacShane taught me the folly of riskin’ gude money on a thing that ain’t sure certain, an’ I’m savin’ my dust fer my b’iler.” “Sure, I know, Gordon. An’ we ain’t askin’ you to put up a cent. It’s like this, some of the boys says how Old B’iler Gordon wouldn’t allow no dogs of his’n to be run agin money, not even fer a prize, bein’ he’s plum religious, that way. But, I know’d better. I says to ’em, I says, ‘You all don’t know B’iler Gordon like I know him. Religious he is,’ I says, ‘an’ it’s a credit to him. If we all had more religion onto us than what we’ve got it wouldn’t hurt us none whatever. But, along with his religion B’iler has got a lot of common sense. If we put up a prize enough to make it worth while I bet he’ll not have no ’bjection to runnin’ his dogs, on account it ain’t gamblin’ when he don’t put up nothin’ agin the prize. It’s jist simply earnin’ the money by honest work.’ Ain’t I right, Gordon?”