sight around a bend, the man rose to his feet, threw the cartridge from the chamber of his rifle, and walked back to camp. That evening he tossed Skookum a ball of rice and tallow, and next morning he proffered another fish which the great dog took from his hand in the sullen manner of the previous day with his eyes on the inch-thick club. Despite the fact of the strong cold, Dalzene decided to attempt the twenty mile stretch of treeless waste that lay between him and the South Fork of the Koyukuk which must be crossed in order to reach the head of Dall River. “I’ll rest easier when I’m a little further off the Koyukuk,” he grumbled, “There’s timber where the Jim River runs into the South Fork, an’ I kin rest up fer the forty mile pull to the cabin.” What to do with Skookum was a problem. He hated to add the dog’s weight to his load in the deep snow, and yet he knew that the great brute was not sufficiently cowed to allow him to harness him into the team. “Guess I’ve got to tackle it. Might’s well git it over with now as any time. My own leader’ll foller along.” In the tent, he made a muzzle out of babiche. It was a cruel muzzle, known as a “persuader,” or twitch, and used only by the more brutal of the dog-mushers of the North. It consisted of two loops about the jaws, one a fixed loop, held in place by lines running to the collar, and the other a running loop at the end of a long twitch line playing through a small fixed loop, or eyelet in one of the lines to the collar. Thus a jerk on the twitch line in the hand of the driver would cause the running loop to bite cruelly into the dog’s jaws. The refined deviltry of the twitch consists in administering the jerk at a moment when the laboring animal’s sweat-dripping tongue lolls from between his teeth. And Dalzene was a past master in the refinement of cruelty, as witness the devilish cunning with which he affixed the muzzle. Approaching close to the end of the chain he tossed a running noose about the dog’s neck and by main force dragged the struggling, choking brute in a circle that narrowed as the chain wound about the tree. With the dog’s body hard against the tree a few tightly drawn turns of the babiche line held the animal helpless until the muzzle was in place. Cutting the noose, he released the babiche line, and unwound the chain by dragging the dog around the tree by the twitch. After which he picked up his club and approached the muzzled Skookum, who when he saw the man was well within reach of the chain, launched himself at his face. The thick club descended with a muffled thud along the dog’s ribs. A single whimper of pain escaped him as he fell into the snow to be viciously jerked to his feet by the twitch. Eyes glaring, Skookum crouched at the end of the twitch line and Dalzene laughed as a drop of blood from the dog’s mouth reddened the snow. “Guess that’ll learn you they ain’t no pretty faced gal a-handlin’ you now! I’ve got you an’--I’ll git her, too! Some