The wind came
in gusts. Sometimes the gale was so stiff that the dogs could scarcely
crawl forward against it; again there were moments of comparative
stillness, followed by squalls that slapped the driver in the face like
the whipping of a loose sail on a catboat.
High drifts made the trail difficult. Not once but fifty times Macdonald
left the gee-pole to break a way through snow-waves for the sled. The
best he could get out of his dogs was three miles an hour, and he knew
that there was not another team or driver in the North could have done
so well.
It was close to noon when he reached a division of the road known as the
Fork. One trail ran down to the river and up it to the distant creeks.
The other led across the divide, struck the Yukon, and pointed a way to
the coast. White drifts had long since blotted out the track of the sled
that had preceded him. Had the fugitives gone up the river to the creeks
with intent to hole themselves up for the winter? Or was it their
purpose to cross the divide and go out over the ice to the coast?
The pursuer knew that Gid Holt was wise as a weasel. He could follow
blindfolded the paths that led to every creek in the gold-fields.
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