midnight
Me for the red flare every time . '' The day had been clear and cold , but a blanket of cloud formed across the face of the sky and the night came on warm and dark , with the hint of snow impending . The thermometer registered fifteen below zero , and in the Klondike-winter fifteen below is esteemed very warm . At a few minutes before midnight , leaving Shorty with the dogs five hundred yards down the creek , Smoke joined the racers on Number Three . There were forty-five of them waiting the start for the thousand-thousand dollars Cyrus Johnson had left lying in the frozen gravel . Each man carried six stakes and a heavy wooden mallet , and was clad in a smock-like parka of heavy cotton drill . Lieutenant Pollock , in a big bearskin coat , looked at his watch by the light of a fire .