Update: Lance Mackey reached Kaltag at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, stayed all of seven minutes and headed out onto the trail for Unalakleet. Jeff King followed him into the Yukon River village about an hour behind, but stayed more than four hours until 3:44 a.m.before leaving for the Bering Sea coast. Not too far behind, Paul Gebhardt passed through Kaltag and was out at 5:50 a.m.

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GALENA -- Along the snow-covered highway that is the frozen Yukon River, Jeff King -- four-time champion of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race -- and his team of hounds stalked Lance Mackey Saturday night.

Mackey, the defending Iditarod champ and the king of the Yukon Quest four-years running, has led this race since Cripple, a remote checkpoint on the taiga of the vast and unpeopled Interior midway through the race.

When the race left behind the low-rolling hills at the Yukon River village of Ruby on Friday, Denali Park's King was 2 1/2 hours behind Mackey. By the time the two race leaders rolled into Nulato 100 miles downriver, King was within two hours.

But the size of the gap is misleading.

The King team, according to checkpoint times and GPS satellites tracking the mushers, is consistently about 1 mph or more faster. That means King can slowly close the gap while giving his team more rest at every checkpoint.

Mushers in a chase pack of at least a half-dozen teams was forming Saturday to reel in the leaders. They understood King's position.

"I guess Jeff's starting to pull away, which is nothing new," said Zack Steer from Sheep Mountain. "That gets old after a while."

A third-place finisher who went into this race with high hopes, Steer had hoped to be at or near the front Saturday. Instead, he was with the gang of pursuers hours behind Mackey and King.

Still, he couldn't help but express his admiration for the aging King, who refuses to buckle before Father Time. King became, at 50, the oldest musher to win the race two years ago. He went into this competition unabashedly raving about how bifocals have improved his life.

While fellow four-time champ Doug Swingley from Lincoln, Mont., another 50-something driver, decided to bow out this year, King remains focused.

Before the race, King admitted that the demands of training an Iditarod team get burdensome at times, but he added, "This is my job."

He approaches that job as the perfectionist he is.

"The guy's working his (butt) off," Steer said. "So give him his due."

Not that Steer or any of the other mushers are very happy.

"How did we fall so behind?" four-time champ Martin Buser asked Steer at the halfway point of Cripple.

"All of a sudden, we were eight hours behind," Steer said.

"At Nikolai (as the race rolled out of the Alaska Range and into the Interior), we were one hour behind these guys. By the time we were at Cripple, we were eight hours behind.

"We still haven't figured it out. I'll have to look at the timesheets. (I) guess they're not resting as much."

That's risky in warm weather.

Noting the unusually warm, 20- to 40-degree weather in which this race has been contested, musher Ray Redington Jr. observed the leaders "are taking a chance, but they know how to run their dogs. If you want to keep up with them, you have no other choice but to keep running.

"It's a tough deal. We're doing the best we can."

Every musher has had concerns about the heat since the start. Mushers from the northern part of state where dogs have physiologically adapted to life in subzero cold are especially hampered. Given enough time, the dogs can readjust their internal thermostats, but the transition takes time.

"It's just been a lot of careful dog driving, just keeping them slow," said Iditarod veteran Ed Iten from Kotzebue, a regular top-10 finisher. "I don't have any choice. If I go any other pace, I won't have a dog team. I'm happy getting to the (Yukon) river with 16 dogs. If we get to the (Bering Sea) coast and get some cooler weather, we'd really make up some ground."

Though running among the top 10 at Ruby, Iten didn't have high hopes for catching Mackey or King.

"They got a big jump," he said. "Unless they push each other until they just run out of gas ... (But) they're both very experienced mushers so it's unlikely. They could slow themselves by cutting rest to the point where we start making up an hour. It could add up by Elim. (But) it'll take a while."

It was, he admitted, largely wishful thinking.

"(I) talked to Mitch (Seavey from Sterling) and Paul (Gebhardt from Kasilof), who spent the last couple weeks driving their dogs on the Peninsula in the heat of the day in 40 degrees to get used to it,'' Iten said. "We didn't have that option.

"I'd give an eye tooth for a big gust of wind. A steady breeze down the river would really help us right now."

But there was no breeze. There really wasn't even the cool that the National Weather Service forecast. Temperatures remained in the mid-30s Saturday.

The warmth was better for the dog drivers than the dogs.

"I'm enjoying the dogs, and I'm so happy to be out here," said DeeDee Jonrowe, the leader at halfway and winner of the halfway prize of gold nuggets. "I'm having a really good run."

Jonrowe crashed out last year on the way to Puntilla Lake early in the race. Being forced off the trail by injury in 2007, she said, made her more appreciative of the Iditarod experience.

"It wasn't (fun) last year and I miss the villages terribly," she said.

A two-time Iditarod runner-up still behind a fast dog team, Jonrowe was racing hard Saturday night but had no real shot at victory.

The race had become Mackey's to lose, and the biggest question focused on whether he would try to hold the lead or let King pass.

It is always easier in a race to be the one to follow than the one to lead -- particularly when there has been recent snowfall.

Mackey won the Quest by running at the front. His first, and so-far only, Iditarod victory was a come-from-behind charge. Only he can decide which strategy may work.