Smoke and Shorty Author:Jack London Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE MISTAKE OF CREATION " Whoa ! " Smoke yelled at the dogs, throwing his weight back on the gee-pole to bring the sled to a halt. " What's the matt... more »er with you now ? " Shorty complained. " There ain't no water under that footing." " No; but look at that trail cutting out to the right," Smoke answered. " I thought nobody was wintering in this section." The dogs, on the moment they stopped, dropped in the snow and began biting out the particles of ice from between their toes. This ice had been water five minutes before. The animals had broken through a skein of ice, snow-powdered, which had hidden the spring water that oozed out of the bank and pooled on top of the three-foot winter crust of Nordbeska River. " First I heard of anybody up the Nordbeska," Shorty said, staring at the all butobliterated track, covered by two feet of snow, that left the bed of the river at right angles and entered the mouth of a small stream flowing from the left. "Mebbe they're hunters, and pulled their freight long ago." Smoke, scooping the light snow away with mittened hands, paused to consider, scooped again- and again paused. " No," he decided. ' There's been travel both ways, but the last travel was up that creek. Whoever they are, they're there now. There's been no travel for weeks. Now what's been keeping them there all the time ? That's what I want to know." " And what I want to know is where are we going to camp to-night," Shorty said, staring disconsolately at the skyline in the south-west, where the mid-afternoon twilight was darkening into night. " Let's follow the track up the creek," was Smoke's suggestion. " There's plenty of dead timber. We can camp any time." " Sure, we can camp any time, but we've got to travel most of the time if we ain't goin' to sta...« less