"Looks like a Sweepstakes team through the wrong end of the opry
glasses, don't it?" exclaimed Matt with justifiable pride to Black Mart
Barclay, who happened to be next him.
Mart scrutinized the entry closely. "Not so bad. Them Mego pups is
allers fair lookers an' fair go-ers, so fur's I ever heered t' the
contrary," he admitted grudgingly.
There was an air of repressed but pleasurable expectation about the
little "houn' dogs," as they patiently waited for their signal to go.
Their racing manners were absolutely above reproach. Unlike Nero, they
quite properly ignored the merely social side of the event, and were
evidently intent upon the serious struggle before them; and equally
unlike Queen and Baldy, they showed neither the peevishness of the one,
nor the apathy of the other.
By most people the race was practically conceded to Dan before the
start.
It seemed an endless time to George before it was his turn; but when he
finally stepped into place, the nervousness that had made the wait
almost unbearable disappeared completely. The hood of his fur parka had
dropped back, and his yellow hair, closely cropped that it should not
curl and "make a sissy" of him, gleamed golden in the sunlight above a
face that, usually rosy and smiling, was now pale and determined.
In that far world "outside," George Allan would have been at an age when
ringlets and a nurse-maid are just beginning to chafe a proud man's
spirit; but here in the North he was already "Some Musher,"[1] and was
eager to win the honors that would prove him a worthy son of the
Greatest Dog Man in Alaska.
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