' How many were there?"
"Let me see; there were fifty-four racing dogs, thirty-five freighters,
twenty-six belonging to the mail carriers, ten or twelve to casual
mushers, and I think about the same number to Eskimo trappers. And
all--men and dogs--in the one room, which, fortunately, was of pretty
good size."
"Scotty" laughed heartily at the remembrance. "We, who were driving the
Racing Teams, had put our leaders to bed in the few bunks there were;
for we could not afford to take any chances of our leaders scrapping in
such close quarters, and possibly being put out of commission. But an
Outsider, a government official, I think, who was on his way to Nome as
a passenger with the Mail Team, was pretty sore about it. Said 'it was a
deuce of a country where the dogs slept in beds and the men on the
floor.'"
"How perfectly ridiculous," said the Woman indignantly. "You might know
he was not an Alaskan. He was as bad as that squaw who wouldn't give you
her mukluks."
"What was that, Mr. Allan?" questioned the boy, eagerly.
"I'm afraid, Ben, that some of these incidents look a little
high-handed, as though everything was allowable in a race, regardless of
other people's rights; but they really don't happen often. This time I
tore one of my water boots on a stump going through the trees by
Council. At a near-by cabin I tried to buy a pair of mukluks a native
woman had on, as I saw they were about the size I needed. She refused to
sell, though I offered her three times their value.
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