The old man nodded affirmation: “Ye’re right. A prize in any contest is fair earnt as long as the outcome ain’t decided by luck alone. ’Tis what I told Burr MacShane.” “That’s the idee,” agreed Enright, emphatically, “I know’d you well enough to be sure you’d take the sensible way of seein’ it. So I says to the boys, ‘I’ll jist slip down to Gordon’s an’ find out fer sure if they’ll be up fer Chris’mus, and if he’ll let his dogs enter the race.’ You see, this here Dalzene party, he don’t know nothin’ about Miss Lou’s team, an’ he thinks he’s saw the general run of Koyukuk dogs, an’ he knows it’s too late fer us to run in any reg’lar racin’ team from over Nome way, an’ that’s why he’s bettin’ so high.” Enright paused, filled his pipe, and blowing a cloud of blue smoke ceilingward, continued: “Now, here’s where the politics comes in. We all know that big ten team of Miss Lou’s ain’t never be’n raced, but we’ve got the hunch that they kin clean up anything this side of Nome. Us not bein’ religious, an’ not havin’ no scruples about bettin’ a little now an’ then, jist by way of amusement, you might say, we’ll jist cover Dalzene’s pile, an’ if we kin clean him out--bust him, it’ll be a plumb religious move, ’cause he won’t be able to get holt of so much hooch to peddle to the pore Injuns. Ain’t that right, Gordon?” “Aye, ye’re right,” affirmed the old man, judicially, “Don’t it tell in the Gude Book how the Lord overturned the tables of the money changers, an’ scourged them wi’ scourges? He done it because they was ungodly men, an’ a generation of vipers, so any act that will be as a scourge to the ungodly will be counted as righteousness. Ye’ve more religion between ye than I thought, Pete Enright.” “Sure we have, B’iler--a damn sight more than we thought, ourselves. But, it’s like the itch, if you’ve got it, it’ll show up, sometime. But, as I was sayin’, the way to work it is like this: I’ll take the six dogs that Miss Lou’s goin’ to fetch up to sell, an’ pull out fer Nolan in the mornin’.” “Oh, not those dogs!” cried the girl, “They’re good dogs, but they haven’t worked together long enough. They couldn’t win a race against a team that knew how to work together.”