ally upon it. To my surprise it was a wolf
trail, beaten wide and flat by a thousand
feet.

We often heard timber wolves at night
and at one camp they howled around us
nearly all night. Early next morning we
stumbled upon a young freshly killed
moose not 200 yards from camp. We
sniffed nervously at the body, all our in-
stinct vividly crying “Danger! Wolf!”
But as long as we had the boss near us
with his rifle lying on top of the sleigh
ee beaded moosehide covering, we felt
safe.

That was the wildest country I’d ever
seen. As we crossed valleys and clam-
bered over mountain ranges, we were
sometimes forced to double-up—taking
one sleigh up a steep hillside at a time—
with all the dogs and both men straining
their utmost. For seven days we travelled
without seeing a human track or habita-
tion. The eighth day we made an ex-
tremely long pull—some 60 miles I be-

- lieve—and arrived at remote Lower Post

Same dam ib ater Stee ee. 1

on the Liard River late in the evening.
People and dogs lined the high bank as we
came in sight, how they knew we would
arrive there at that time I do not know.
Upper Liard River is really frontier
country-—at least it was at that time.
Many dog teams were at the Post, mostly
Indian; they looked pretty thin to me.
Tony, who was as good a worker as you'd
ever see, was suffering from a sore
shoulder where the harness pinched a bit,

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so we stayed an extra day or so to give it
a chance to heal. I saw a “loose leader”
for the first time down here. He, or bet-
ter yet, she, is a small dog who runs
ahead of the team—they use more dogs
to a team in the Liard country—and who
obeys the master’s orders. The other dogs

On patrol 1942-43, McDames Creek to the
Alaskan Highway via Blue and Rancheria
Rivers.

try to catch up to her, but as the loose
leader has no load, she can always remain
ahead of the team. The system is sup-
posed to work pretty well and gets more

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Operating Throughout British Columbia

Page Sixty-two

The Brewing Industry of

British Columbia

The Oldest Police Force in
Canada Through This Issue
of Its Official Organ
“THE SHOULDER STRAP”

speed out of the team according to an
Indian dog I talked to.

We returned to the home detachment
by a different route following Dease River
all the way. With warm weather ap-
proaching, the river showed black, dan-
gerous water in many places, while along
the shore the ice slanted treacherously
downwards necessitating a rope tied to
the sleigh held by a man on the river bank.
In places we were forced to take to the
dense spruce forests along the shore, and
as much of the snow had melted it was
very tough travelling. At one dangerous
place we had to cross open water on a
makeshift bridge of trees felled on the
spot and placed from the bank across to
river ice. We dogs made the tricky cros-
sing one at a time, then the sleigh was
carefully inched across by us fellows pul-
ling at a safe distance from the end of a
rope.

Care or FEET [MPERATIVE

The weather was very mild—in fact
our last day on the trail it rained buckets
—hbut we didn’t mind getting wet. We
splashed across streams overflowing the
ice several inches, but finally made the
warm safety of our kennels after the 300
mile patrol. But (and this is a very im-
portant but) “overflow” during the really
cold weather is particularly dangerous,
you can’t see the water under the snow
and first thing you know your paws are
wet and starting to freeze. The only thing

Salutes

THE SHOULDER STRAP