“What’s the matter with you all Koyukuk malamutes? Broke? Cold feet? Or, what? I’ve still got twenty-five hundred dollars here that’s tryin’ to talk! Five-to-one that my team’ll come in first tomorrow! Who’s got five hundred dollars that ain’t workin’? Or, don’t yer six mangy curs you be’n floggin’ up an’ down the river look as good as they did yiste’day?” Jake Dalzene stood at the end of the bar in the Aurora Borealis, Nolan’s single saloon, a whisky glass in one hand and a roll of bills in the other, and blustered forth his challenge. No one accepted the bet. Old Man Gordon, knowing his limitations, and realizing that he must keep a clear head for the morrow, after three or four drinks, had retired to the roadhouse where he was passing the afternoon close beside the big stove, alternately dozing and reading from a dilapidated copy of _Lorna Doone_ that comprised the entire fictional section of the roadhouse library. The Aurora Borealis swarmed with the men from the creeks. The roulette wheel, and the faro layout were crowded to capacity, games of stud were in progress at the poker tables, from above stairs came the incessant din of the dance hall piano, and the ceiling boards creaked to the thumping and scraping of moccasined feet. At the bar, a group of sourdoughs heard the loud-bawled challenge of Dalzene, but heeded it not. Among them was Pete Enright, who had whispered the ill tidings that Old Man Gordon, and not his daughter, was to drive the dog race. Thereupon deep gloom had settled upon the camp, for not a man among them but knew the futility of argument with Old Man Gordon when his mind was made up, nor did a man among them have any faith in Gordon’s ability to drive the ten team to victory. “We all was sure hell-bent on makin’ it plain that there wasn’t to be no backin’ out,” dolefully reflected Angel Crabb. “I’ve got a thousan’ in good dust locked up in Clem’s safe there that yesterday sure looked like six thousand. An’ now it looks like a busted flush that had be’n draw’d to an’ missed.” “My five hundred don’t look that good,” opined Rim Rock Keets. “Busted flushes that wasn’t helped on the draw has be’n made to drag down the pot--but they ain’t no way to bluff through on a dog race.” “It ain’t so much the dust that’s botherin’ me,” confided Enright, “I got quite a heft of it put up, too. But, it’s the idee of this here low down scum comin’ up here an’ makin’ a killin’ off’n us Koyukukers. That--an’ knowin’ how bad Miss Lou feels about it. They ain’t none of us that feels as plum disapp’inted as what she does. Damn Old Man Gordon!” “We might git him stewed so bad he wouldn’t be fitten to drive no dogs tomorrow,” suggested a man from Sheep Creek.