第10章 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST(2)

Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky added to the team at Yea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout the night.At daybreak they limped warily back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers.Fully half their grub supply was gone.The huskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings.In fact, nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them.They had eaten a pair of Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip.He broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.

"Ah, my friends," he said softly, "mebbe it make you mad dog, those many bites.Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! What you think, eh, Perrault?"The courier shook his head dubiously.With four hundred miles of trail still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break out among his dogs.Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open.Its wild water defied the frost, and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held at all.Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles.And terrible they were, for every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man.A dozen times, Perrault, nosing the way, broke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across the hole made by his body.

But a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him.It was because nothing daunted him that he had been chosen for government courier.He took all manner of risks, resolutely thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from dim dawn to dark.He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt.Once, the sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and all but drowned by the time they were dragged out.The usual fire was necessary to save them.They were coated solidly with ice, and the two men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close that they were singed by the flames.

At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around.But behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled was Francois, pulling till his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape except up the cliff.Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while Francois prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to the cliff crest.Francois came up last, after the sled and load.Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out.The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to make up lost time, pushed them late and early.The first day they covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon;the third day forty miles, which brought them well up toward the Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies.

His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave dweller or river man.All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog.Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which Francois had to bring to him.Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck.This was a great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge without them.later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out footgear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, dolly, who had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad.She announced her condition by a long, heart-breaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck.He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic.Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great was her madness.He plunged through the wooded breast of the island, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and in desperation started to cross it.And all the time, though he did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind.Francois called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in that Francois would save him.the dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.