第17章 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL(1)

Thirty 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 fiber, every cell, was tired, dead tired.And there was reason for it.In less than five months they had traveled twenty-five hundred miles, during the last eighteen hundred of which they 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 last.Den we get one long rest.

Eh? For sure.One bully long rest."

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 Francois 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, everything 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 it put on the back, and covered it over with a couple of the 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 its 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 wondering, 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.

"And 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 breastbands, 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.