“Oh, that’s it, is it? Damn you! You’d eat a man up if you onct got goin’. Well, I kin take that out of you!” For a full minute the man stood eyeing the dog, while his brain worked rapidly. Then, swiftly he returned to the corner of the roadhouse and peered down the street. No one was in sight. From the direction of the saloon came the muffled tinkle of the dance hall piano. It would be late this night when the men of Nolan would seek their beds. They were celebrating his defeat--spending his money! Gordon was in bed with a stiffened knee. The girl was absorbed in her book. All Nolan was occupied in its own affairs. The dogs had long since been fed. No one would visit the kennels until morning--and by morning he could be far to the southward--even far off the Koyukuk--the Fort Hamlin short cut! He knew the trail, forgotten these several years. In the morning pursuit would be too late. The only team on the Koyukuk that would have any chance to overtake him would be demoralized for want of a leader--and, once on the Yukon--they would search for him at Rampart City--but, they wouldn’t find him! To hell with Rampart! To hell with his squaw! He was going to haul out anyway pretty soon. That missionary from Fairbanks, damn him, was stirring up the authorities down to Fort Gibbon in regard to his hooch-running activities, but more especially in regard to the parentage of certain half-breed children who had been abandoned to the care of their mothers in the miserable cabins of the native village. The hooch-running they could hardly prove--he was wise enough for that--but the half-breed children, if the squaws who had received nothing but abuse at his hands, should talk, would be more awkward. He could hole up for a while in an abandoned cabin he knew on the head of Dall River, where he had a _cache_ of grub and dog feed to last a month, and when the pursuit from Nolan had swept by down the Koyukuk and the Chandalar, he could cross the Koyukuk and hit straight for Nome.