James Beardsley Hendryx

“ Into a damp, soggy camp on the left bank of the Yukon near the mouth of Sixty Mile, where fifty rough men awaited the breaking up of the ice, swung a dog team. Now, in the land of the long, lone trails a dog team arouses small comment—but when the team is a ten-team, each dog of which is a superbly muscled, finely poised malamute—and when the musher is a small boy with a square-set jaw, who stops the team in its tracks with a single, short, sharp word—the outfit becomes, at once, a thing of much interest. ”

“ And as they gazed out over the field of grinding ice-cakes, a cry of horror arose from fifty throats:
“It’s a man!” “Ther’s a man out there!” Men rushed up and down the bank in their excitement, shouting useless advice, while others, seizing poles and ropes, dashed out upon an anchored floe whose outer edge extended to the middle of the river. ”

“ The voice of the boy cut thin and clear, and as the men sprang aside, Connie cracked his whip, threw himself upon the sled, and the ten great malamutes leaped straight for the river. Down the steep bank they plunged and out onto the anchored floe, with the empty toboggan whipping along behind at the end of the sixty-foot line. Straight as an arrow toward the outer edge of the floe swept the fastest dog team in all the North. ”