CHAPTER 2

The great breast and

heavy fore legs were no more than in proportion with the rest of the

body, where the muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Menfelt these muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went

down to two to one.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king

of the Skookum Benches. "I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before

the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands."

Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.

"You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested. "Free play

and plenty of room."

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers

vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a

magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too

large in their eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two

hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was

his wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. "As

you love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck

whined with suppressed eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing

mysterious. It seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet,

Buck seized his mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his

teeth and releasing slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms,

not of speech, but of love. Thornton stepped well back.

"Now, Buck," he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several

inches. It was the way he had learned.

"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took

up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty

pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp

crackling.

"Haw!" Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the manœuvre, this time to the left. The crackling

turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and

grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were

holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact."Now, MUSH!"

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw

himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole

body was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the

muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His

great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his

feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in

parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward.

One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled

lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it

never really came to a dead stop again . . . half an inch . . . an inch . . .

two inches. . . . The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained

momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment

they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging

Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and

as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred

yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he

passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing

himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air.

Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling

over in a general incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head,

and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him

cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and

lovingly.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the Skookum Bench king. "I'll give

you a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir—twelve hundred, sir."

Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were

streaming frankly down his cheeks. "Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench

king, "no, sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir."

Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back

and forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers

drew back to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet

enough to interrupt.Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for

John Thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off

certain debts and to journey with his partners into the East

after a fabled lost mine, the history of which was as old as the history of

the country. Many men had sought it; few had found it; and more than a

few there were who had never returned from the quest. This lost mine

was steeped in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the

first man. The oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him. From

the beginning there had been an ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying

men had sworn to it, and to the mine the site of which it marked,

clinching their testimony with nuggets that were unlike any known grade

of gold in the Northland.

But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were

dead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a

dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve

where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sledded

seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,

passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart

itself became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked

the backbone of the continent.

John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the

wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the

wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased.

Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course ofthe day's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on

travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come to

it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of

fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and

the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.

To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and

indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they

would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they

would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes

through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by

the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they

feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune

of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs,

rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown

rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.

The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through

the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been

if the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer

blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between

the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid

swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked

strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could

boast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad

and silent, where wild-fowl had been, but where then there was no life

nor sign of life—only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in

sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely

beaches.

And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails

of men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed

through the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near.

But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained

mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained

mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a

hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton

found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson BayCompany gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was

worth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all—no hint as

to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun

among the blankets.

Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they

found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where

the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-

pan. They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them

thousands of dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every

day. The gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag,

and piled like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like

giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they

heaped the treasure up.

There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat

now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing

by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more

frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking

by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he

remembered.

The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched

the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands

clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and

awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness

and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea,

where the hairy man gathered shell-fish and ate them as he gathered, it

was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs

prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the forest

they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they were alert

and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and nostrils

quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy

man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the

ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet

apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his grip. In

fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground

They were

perambulating skeletons. There were seven all together, including him.

In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the

lash or the bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and

distant, just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull

and distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were

simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.

When a halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs,

and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the

club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they

tottered to their feet and staggered on.

There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not

rise. Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked

Billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the

harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and

they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona

went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant;

Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious

enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the

toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with

which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who

was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck,

still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or

striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the

trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were

aware of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by

three in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole

long day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given

way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose

from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things

that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which

had not moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the

pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs

and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the

nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled

forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and

knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and

overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning

wedges that split the air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of

unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The

Yukon was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate

away from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures

sprang and spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily

into the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of

awakening life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing

breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and

the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing

innocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into

John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted,

the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead.

Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down

on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly, what of his

great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last

touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled

and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse

advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that it

would not be followed."They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail

and that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal said in response

to Thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. "They

told us we couldn't make White River, and here we are." This last with a

sneering ring of triumph in it.

"And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom's

likely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck of

fools, could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass

on that ice for all the gold in Alaska."

"That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said Hal. "All the

same, we'll go on to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. "Get up there,

Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush on!"

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a

fool and his folly, while two or three fools more or less would not alter

the scheme of things.

But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed

into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed

out, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed

his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed. Joe

came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he fell

over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buck made

no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into him again

and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times Thornton

started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture came into

his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked

irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to

drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club.

Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell

upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them,

he had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of

impending doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to

the bank, and it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten

ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster

close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying todrive him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone

was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall

upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly

out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was

aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He

no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of

the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far

away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was

inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang

upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as

though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on

wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his

stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too

convulsed with rage to speak.

"If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say

in a choking voice.

"It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he

came back. "Get out of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going to Dawson."

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of

getting out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes

screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of

hysteria. Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking

the knife to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick

it up. Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut

Buck's traces.

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his

sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of further

use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out from the

bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his head to see.

Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were Joe and

Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the

loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in

the rear.As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough,

kindly hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had

disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible

starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched

it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop

down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the

air. Mercedes's scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and

make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and

dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen.

The bottom had dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

"You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.HEN John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December,

his partners had made him comfortable and left him to get

well, going on themselves up the river to get out a raft of saw-

logs for Dawson. He was still limping slightly at the time he rescued

Buck, but with the continued warm weather even the slight limp left

him. And here, lying by the river bank through the long spring days,

watching the running water, listening lazily to the songs of birds and the

hum of nature, Buck slowly won back his strength.

A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles,

and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his

muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For

that matter, they were all loafing,—Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and

Nig,—waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to

Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with

Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first advances.

She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a mother cat

washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's wounds.

Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast, she

performed her self-appointed task, till he came to look for her

ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly,

though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and

half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature. To

Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They

seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buckgrew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in

which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion

Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love,

genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never

experienced at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara

Valley. With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a

working partnership; with the Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous

guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified

friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration,

that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.

This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he

was the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a

sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as if

they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw

further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit

down for a long talk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his

delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between

his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him back

and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names.

Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of

murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart

would be shaken out of his body, so great was its ecstasy. And when,

released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his

throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained

without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, "God! you

can all but speak!"

Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. He would

often seize Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the

flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And as Buck

understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this

feigned bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck's love was expressed in adoration.

While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or

spoke to him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont

to shove her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge tillpetted, or Nig, who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's

knee, Buck was content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour,

eager, alert, at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon

it, studying it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression,

every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he

would lie farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the

man and the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the

communion in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze would draw

John Thornton's head around, and he would return the gaze, without

speech, his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get

out of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it

again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he had

come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be

permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as

Perrault and François and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in

the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times he

would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent,

where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's breathing.

But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed

to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which

the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active.

Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he

retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in

from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog of the soft

Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization.

Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but

from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant;

while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection.

His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he

fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too

good-natured for quarrelling,—besides, they belonged to John Thornton;

but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly

acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life

with a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned wellthe law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew

back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned

from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and

knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while

to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial

life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for

death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate,

down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had

drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him

throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the

tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-

breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the

shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and

prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he

drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the

sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing

his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and

dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff

of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind

and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a

call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously

thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and

the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on,

he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call

sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained the

soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton

drew him back to the fire again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing.

Chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all,

and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away.

When Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected

raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to

Thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, acceptingfavors from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of

the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking

simply and seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy

by the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did

not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He,

alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer

travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton

commanded. One day (they had grub-staked themselves from the

proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana)

the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away,

straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John

Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless

whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the

experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he commanded, sweeping his

arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with

Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them

back into safety.

"It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their

speech.

Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too.

Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."

"I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's

around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck.

"Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution, "not mineself either."

It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions

were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had

been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton

stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in

a corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton

struck out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was

sent spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail

of the bar.

Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp,

but a something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck'sbody rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man

saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled

backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth

from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time the

man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open.

Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a

surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling

furiously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of

hostile clubs. A "miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the

dog had sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his

reputation was made, and from that day his name spread through every

camp in Alaska.

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in

quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow

poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans

and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from

tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent by

means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the bank,

worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his

master.

At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks

jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton

poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in his

hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did, and was

flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when Hans

checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted over

and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer out

of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a

stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.

Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred

yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt

him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his

splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress

down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where

the wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by therocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck

of the water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful,

and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously

over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing

force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and

above the roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!"

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling

desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's

command repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head

high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank.

He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the

very point where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.

They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the

face of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast

as they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was

hanging on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing

the boat to Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it should

neither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into

the stream. He struck out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream.

He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him

and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried

helplessly past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat.

The rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was

jerked under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body

struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned,

and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into

him and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down.

The faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they

could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his

extremity. His master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He

sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of

his previous departure.

Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he

struck out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculatedonce, but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the

rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on

till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with

the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him

coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole

force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both

arms around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree,

and Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling,

suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other,

dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they

veered in to the bank.

Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled

back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was

for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting

up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes.

Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over

Buck's body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken

ribs.

"That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here." And camp

they did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so

heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the

totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to

the three men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and

were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where

miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in

the Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite

dogs. Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and

Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour

one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds

and walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for his dog; and a

third, seven hundred.

"Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck can start a thousand

pounds.""And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?"

demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.

"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John

Thornton said coolly.

"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could

hear, "I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it is." So

saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna sausage

down upon the bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He

could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had

tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand

pounds. Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled him. He had great

faith in Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting

such a load; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes

of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no

thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.

"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks

of flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let

that hinder you."

Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced

from face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of

thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start it

going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time

comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him

to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.

"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the

side of Matthewson's. "Though it's little faith I'm having, John, that the

beast can do the trick."

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test.

The tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to

see the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men,

furred and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance.

Matthewson's sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been

standing for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixtybelow zero) the runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men

offered odds of two to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble

arose concerning the phrase "break out." O'Brien contended it was

Thornton's privilege to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break

it out" from a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase

included breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A

majority of the men who had witnessed the making of the bet decided in

his favor, whereat the odds went up to three to one against Buck.

There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.

Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now

that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team

of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the task

appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant.

"Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you another thousand at that

figure, Thornton. What d'ye say?"

Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was

aroused—the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize the

impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called Hans

and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three

partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their

fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly

against Matthewson's six hundred.

The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own

harness, was put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the

excitement, and he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for

John Thornton. Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went

up. He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh,

and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many

pounds of grit and virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk.

Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was,

half bristled and seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess

of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. He became more morose and irritable, and when camp

was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of

the harness and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-up

time in the morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden

stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with

pain. The driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers

became interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-time, and over

their last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a

consultation. He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed

and prodded till he cried out many times. Something was wrong inside,

but they could locate no broken bones, could not make it out.

By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was

falling repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and

took him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled.

His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled. Sick

as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling while

the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when he

saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the

pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear

that another dog should do his work.

When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the

beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and

trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving to

leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the while

whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed tried

to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging

lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run

quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but

continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was

most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell,

howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.

With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along

behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds

to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered amoment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he

returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with

remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in

surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He

called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of

Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his

proper place.

He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed.

His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being

denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known,

where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were

cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die

anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he

was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more

than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt.

Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the

sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.

But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place

for him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up

time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on his

feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly

toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would

advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching

movement, when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again

for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw

of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they

could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a

belt of river timber.

Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his

steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot

rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells

tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and

every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river treesHIRTY days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail,

with Buck and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They

were in a wretched state, worn out and worn down. Buck's one

hundred and forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The

rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively lost more weight

than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often

successfully feigned a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was

limping, and Dub was suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade.

They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left in

them. Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and

doubling the fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter with

them except that they were dead tired. It was not the dead tiredness that

comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a

matter of hours; but it was the dead tiredness that comes through the

slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no

power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had been

all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, was

tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less than five months

they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during the last eighteen

hundred of which they had had but five days' rest. When they arrived at

Skaguay, they were apparently on their last legs. They could barely keep

the traces taut, and on the down grades just managed to keep out of the

way of the sled."Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged them as they

tottered down the main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get

one long res'. Eh? For sure. One bully long res'."

The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they

had covered twelve hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the nature

of reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But

so many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many

were the sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the

congested mail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were

official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the

places of those worthless for the trail. The worthless ones were to be got

rid of, and, since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be

sold.

Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how

really tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day,

two men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all,

for a song. The men addressed each other as "Hal" and "Charles."

Charles was a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery

eyes and a mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the

lie to the limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of

nineteen or twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife

strapped about him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt

was the most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness—a

callowness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of

place, and why such as they should adventure the North is part of the

mystery of things that passes understanding.

Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and

the Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the

mail-train drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and

François and the others who had gone before. When driven with his

mates to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly

affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, every thing in disorder; also,

he saw a woman. "Mercedes" the men called her. She was Charles's

wife and Hal's sister—a nice family party.Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down

the tent and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their

manner, but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an

awkward bundle three times as large as it should have been. The tin

dishes were packed away unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in

the way of her men and kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance

and advice. When they put a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she

suggested it should go on the back; and when they had put it on the

back, and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, she discovered

overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else but in that very

sack, and they unloaded again.

Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning

and winking at one another.

"You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "and it's

not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tent along

if I was you."

"Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty

dismay. "However in the world could I manage without a tent?"

"It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather," the man

replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds

and ends on top the mountainous load.

"Think it'll ride?" one of the men asked.

"Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded rather shortly.

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the man hastened meekly to

say. "I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy."

Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he

could, which was not in the least well.

"An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption

behind them," affirmed a second of the men.

"Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the

gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!"

he shouted. "Mush on there!"

The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few

moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled."The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried, preparing to lash out at

them with the whip.

But Mercedes interfered, crying, "Oh, Hal, you mustn't," as she

caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from him. "The poor dears!

Now you must promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of the

trip, or I won't go a step."

"Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother sneered; "and I

wish you'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got to

whip them to get anything out of them. That's their way. You ask any

one. Ask one of those men."

Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of

pain written in her pretty face.

"They're weak as water, if you want to know," came the reply from

one of the men. "Plum tuckered out, that's what's the matter. They need

a rest."

"Rest be blanked," said Hal, with his beardless lips; and Mercedes

said, "Oh!" in pain and sorrow at the oath.

But she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defence of

her brother. "Never mind that man," she said pointedly. "You're driving

our dogs, and you do what you think best with them."

Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselves against

the breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it,

and put forth all their strength. The sled held as though it were an

anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting. The whip was

whistling savagely, when once more Mercedes interfered. She dropped

on her knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms

around his neck.

"You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically, "why don't you

pull hard?—then you wouldn't be whipped." Buck did not like her, but

he was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day's

miserable work.

One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress

hot speech, now spoke up:—

"It's not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for the dogs'

sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by breakingout that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight against the

gee-pole, right and left, and break it out."

A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the

advice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow.

The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates

struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the

path turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have

required an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal

was not such a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over,

spilling half its load through the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped.

The lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry

because of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck

was raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried

"Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his

feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the

street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder

of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.

Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered

belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs, if

they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his

sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and

overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men

laugh, for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about.

"Blankets for a hotel" quoth one of the men who laughed and helped.

"Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and

all those dishes,—who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do

you think you're travelling on a Pullman?"

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.

Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and

article after article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in

particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees,

rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go

an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to

everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even

articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal,when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of her

men and went through them like a tornado.

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a

formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six

Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek and

Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip,

brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though

practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Three

were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other two

were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know

anything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them

with disgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what

not to do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly

to trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they were

bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in

which they found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received.

The two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only things

breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out

by twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was

anything but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And

they were proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen

dogs. They had seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or

come in from Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as

fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why

fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could

not carry the food for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know

this. They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so

many dogs, so many days, Q. E. D. Mercedes looked over their

shoulders and nodded comprehensively, it was all so very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was

nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were

starting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between

Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was

facing the same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not inthe work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid and

frightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters.

Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men

and the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days

went by it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in

all things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch

a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the

sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were

occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did not

make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started at all. And

on no day did they succeed in making more than half the distance used

by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation.

It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they

hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding

would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been

trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious

appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled

weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled

it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a

quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more,

she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that

Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making

poor time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely.

Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact that his

dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further,

that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So he

cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day's travel.

His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were frustrated by

their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a simple matter to

give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to make the dogs travel

faster, while their own inability to get under way earlier in the morning

prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not only did they not

know how to work dogs, but they did not know how to work themselves.

The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, always

getting caught and punished, he had none the less been a faithful worker.His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from bad to

worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's revolver. It is a saying

of the country that an Outside dog starves to death on the ration of the

husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less than die on

half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first, followed by

the three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging more grittily

on to life, but going in the end.

By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland had

fallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance,

Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and

womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too

occupied with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her

husband and brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too

weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it,

doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail

which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of

speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They

had no inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their

muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because

of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their

lips in the morning and last at night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance.

It was the cherished belief of each that he did more than his share of the

work, and neither forbore to speak his belief at every opportunity.

Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimes with her

brother. The result was a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting

from a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks for the fire (a

dispute which concerned only Charles and Hal), presently would be

lugged in the rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people

thousands of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal's views on

art, or the sort of society plays his mother's brother wrote, should have

anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes

comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in that

direction as in the direction of Charles's political prejudices. And that

Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to the buildingof a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdened

herself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a few

other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the

meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs

unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance—the grievance of sex. She was

pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the

present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save

chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon

which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex-

prerogative, she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered

the dogs, and because she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on

the sled. She was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and

twenty pounds—a lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and

starving animals. She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the

sled stood still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded

with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a

recital of their brutality.

On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They

never did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat

down on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After

they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back for her,

and by main strength put her on the sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering

of their animals. Hal's theory, which he practised on others, was that one

must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and

brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club.

At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw

offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's

revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor

substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the

starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it was

more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his

stomach, it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a

mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in

a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he

fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him to

his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his beautiful

furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or matted with dried

blood where Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted away

to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and

every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that

was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's

heart was unbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that.

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates