resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep
the traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had
he mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him.
Francois's whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored
Buck by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through Sheep Camp, past
the Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts
hundreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which
stands between the salt water and the fresh and guards
forbiddingly the sad and lonely North. They made good time down
the chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct volcanoes,
and late that night pulled into the huge camp at the head of Lake
Bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were building boats
against the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made his hole
in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all too
early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.

That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the
next day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail,
worked harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault
travelled ahead of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to
make it easier for them. Francois, guiding the sled at the gee-
pole, sometimes exchanged places with him, but not often.
Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself on his knowledge of
ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall ice was very
thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all.

Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces.