Chapter V. The Toil of Trace and Trail

Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail,with Buck and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. Theywere in a wretched state, worn out and worn down. Buck's onehundred and forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen.The rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively lostmore weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, in his lifetimeof deceit, had often successfully feigned a hurt leg, was nowlimping in earnest. Sol-leks was limping, and Dub was sufferingfrom a wrenched shoulder-blade. They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left inthem. Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodiesand doubting the fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing thematter with them except that they were dead tired. It was not thedead-tiredness that comes through brief and excessive effort, fromwhich recovery is a matter of hours; but it was the dead-tirednessthat comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage ofmonths of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, noreserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the lastleast bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, wastired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less thanfive months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, duringthe last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days'rest. When they arrived at Skaguay they were apparently on theirlast legs. They could barely keep the traces taut, and on thedown grades just managed to keep out of the way of the sled. "Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged them as theytottered down the main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'. Den weget 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 inthe nature of reason and common justice they deserved an intervalof loafing. But so many were the men who had rushed into theKlondike, and so many were the sweethearts, wives, and kin thathad not rushed in, that the congested mail was taking on Alpineproportions; also, there were official orders. Fresh batches ofHudson Bay dogs were to take the places of those worthless for thetrail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and, since dogscount for little against dollars, they were to be sold. Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found howreally tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of thefourth 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-coloredman, with weak and watery eyes and a mustache that twistedfiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply droopinglip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty, witha big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about him on abelt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the mostsalient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--acallowness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out ofplace, and why such as they should adventure the North is part ofthe mystery of things that passes understanding. Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man andthe Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and themail-train drivers were passing out of his life on the heels ofPerrault and Francois and the others who had gone before. Whendriven with his mates to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshodand slovenly affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed,everything in disorder; also, he saw a woman. "Mercedes" the mencalled her. She was Charles's wife and Hal's sister--a nicefamily party. Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take downthe tent and load the sled. There was a great deal of effortabout their manner, but no businesslike method. The tent wasrolled into an awkward bundle three times as large as it shouldhave been. The tin dishes were packed away unwashed. Mercedescontinually fluttered in the way of her men and kept up anunbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put aclothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should goon the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered itover with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlookedarticles which could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, andthey unloaded again. Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinningand winking at one another. "You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "andit's not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't totethat tent along if I was you." "Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in daintydismay. "However in the world could I manage without a tent?" "It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather," theman replied. She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the lastodds 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 meeklyto say. "I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mitetop-heavy." Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as hecould, which was not in the least well. "An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with thatcontraption behind them," affirmed a second of the men. "Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold ofthe 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 fewmoments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled. "The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried, preparing to lash outat them with the whip. But Mercedes interfered, crying, "Oh, Hal, you mustn't," as shecaught 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 ofthe trip, or I won't go a step." "Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother sneered; "and Iwish you'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you'vegot 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 ofpain written in her pretty face. "They're weak as water, if you want to know," came the reply fromone 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 Mercedessaid, "Oh!" in pain and sorrow at the oath. But she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defenceof her brother. "Never mind that man," she said pointedly."You're driving our dogs, and you do what you think best withthem." Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselvesagainst the breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, gotdown low to it, and put forth all their strength. The sled held asthough it were an anchor. After two efforts, they stood still,panting. The whip was whistling savagely, when once more Mercedesinterfered. She dropped on her knees before Buck, with tears inher eyes, and put her arms around his neck. "You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically, "why don't youpull hard?--then you wouldn't be whipped." Buck did not like her,but he was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as partof the day's miserable work. One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppresshot speech, now spoke up:-- "It's not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for thedogs' sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mightylot by breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throwyour weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break itout." A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following theadvice, Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to thesnow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and hismates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundredyards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the mainstreet. It would have required an experienced man to keep thetop-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man. As they swungon the turn the sled went over, spilling half its load through theloose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The lightened sledbounded on its side behind them. They were angry because of theill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck wasraging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Halcried "Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He tripped and waspulled off his feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and thedogs dashed on up the street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay asthey scattered the remainder of the outfit along its chiefthoroughfare. Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up thescattered belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load andtwice the dogs, if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was whatwas said. Hal and his sister and brother-in-law listenedunwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goodswere turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods on the LongTrail is a thing to dream about. "Blankets for a hotel" quoth oneof the men who laughed and helped. "Half as many is too much; getrid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those dishes,--who'sgoing to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think you'retravelling on a Pullman?" And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground andarticle after article was thrown out. She cried in general, andshe cried in particular over each discarded thing. She claspedhands about knees, rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. Sheaverred she would not go an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. Sheappealed to everybody and to everything, finally wiping her eyesand proceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that wereimperative necessaries. And in her zeal, when she had finishedwith her own, she attacked the belongings of her men and wentthrough them like a tornado. This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still aformidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening andbought six Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the originalteam, and Teek and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapidson the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But theOutside dogs, though practically broken in since their landing,did not amount to much. Three were short-haired pointers, one wasa Newfoundland, and the other two were mongrels of indeterminatebreed. They did not seem to know anything, these newcomers. Buckand his comrades looked upon them with disgust, and though hespeedily taught them their places and what not to do, he could notteach them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace andtrail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they werebewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment inwhich they found themselves and by the ill treatment they hadreceived. The two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones werethe only things breakable about them. With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn outby twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook wasanything but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful.And they were proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, withfourteen dogs. They had seen other sleds depart over the Pass forDawson, or come in from Dawson, but never had they seen a sledwith so many as fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic travelthere was a reason why fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, andthat was that one sled could not carry the food for fourteen dogs.But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had worked the tripout with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days,Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and noddedcomprehensively, it was all so very simple. Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There wasnothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows.They were starting dead weary. Four times he had covered thedistance between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that,jaded and tired, he was facing the same trail once more, made himbitter. His heart was not in the work, nor was the heart of anydog. The Outsides were timid and frightened, the Insides withoutconfidence in their masters. Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two menand the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as thedays went by it became apparent that they could not learn. Theywere slack in all things, without order or discipline. It tookthem half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morningto break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenlythat for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping andrearranging the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. Onother days they were unable to get started at all. And on no daydid they succeed in making more than half the distance used by themen as a basis in their dog-food computation. It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But theyhastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer whenunderfeeding would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestionshad 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 rationwas too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes,with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, couldnot cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from thefish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck andthe huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poortime, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely. Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact thathis dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered;further, that for love or money no additional dog-food was to beobtained. So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried toincrease the day's travel. His sister and brother-in-law secondedhim; but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their ownincompetence. It was a simple matter to give the dogs less food;but it was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while theirown inability to get under way earlier in the morning preventedthem from travelling longer hours. Not only did they not know howto 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 afaithful worker. His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated andunrested, went from bad to worse, till finally Hal shot him withthe big Colt's revolver. It is a saying of the country that anOutside dog starves to death on the ration of the husky, so thesix Outside dogs under Buck could do no less than die on half theration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first, followed by thethree short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging moregrittily on to life, but going in the end. By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southlandhad fallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour andromance, Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh fortheir manhood and womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over thedogs, being too occupied with weeping over herself and withquarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel was the onething they were never too weary to do. Their irritability aroseout of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it,outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which comesto men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speechand kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They hadno inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; theirmuscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; andbecause of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words werefirst on their lips in the morning and last at night. Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. Itwas the cherished belief of each that he did more than his shareof the work, and neither forbore to speak this belief at everyopportunity. Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimeswith her brother. The result was a beautiful and unending familyquarrel. Starting from a dispute as to which should chop a fewsticks for the fire (a dispute which concerned only Charles andHal), 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 ofsociety plays his mother's brother wrote, should have anything todo with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passescomprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend inthat direction as in the direction of Charles's politicalprejudices. And that Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue shouldbe relevant to the building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only toMercedes, who disburdened herself of copious opinions upon thattopic, and incidentally upon a few other traits unpleasantlypeculiar to her husband's family. In the meantime the fireremained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs unfed. Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She waspretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days.But the present treatment by her husband and brother waseverything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless.They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was hermost essential sex-prerogative, she made their lives unendurable.She no longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore andtired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty andsoft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a lusty laststraw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals. Sherode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stoodstill. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleadedwith her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven witha recital of their brutality. On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. Theynever did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiledchild, and sat down on the trail. They went on their way, but shedid not move. After they had travelled three miles they unloadedthe sled, came back for her, and by main strength put her on thesled again. In the excess of their own misery they were callous to thesuffering of their animals. Hal's theory, which he practised onothers, was that one must get hardened. He had started outpreaching it to his sister and brother-in-law. Failing there, hehammered it into the dogs with a club. At the Five Fingers thedog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to trade thema few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's revolver thatkept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor substitutefor food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from thestarved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozenstate it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dogwrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritiousleathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating andindigestible. And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team asin a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longerpull, he fell down and remained down till blows from whip or clubdrove him to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had goneout of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp anddraggled, or matted with dried blood where Hal's club had bruisedhim. His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the fleshpads had disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his framewere outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled infolds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking, only Buck's heart wasunbreakable. The man in the red sweater had proved that. As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They wereperambulating skeletons. There were seven all together, includinghim. In their very great misery they had become insensible to thebite of the lash or the bruise of the club. The pain of thebeating was dull and distant, just as the things their eyes sawand their ears heard seemed dull and distant. They were not halfliving, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bonesin which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a halt was made,they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the sparkdimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whipfell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they totteredto their feet and staggered on. There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could notrise. Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe andknocked Billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut thecarcass 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 tothem. 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 andtrail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with whichto pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and whowas now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; andBuck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcingdiscipline or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half thetime and keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feelof his feet. It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans wereaware of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It wasdawn by three in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine atnight. The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostlywinter silence had given way to the great spring murmur ofawakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught withthe joy of living. It came from the things that lived and movedagain, things which had been as dead and which had not movedduring the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines.The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubsand vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang inthe nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawlingthings rustled forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckerswere booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels werechattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowldriving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air. From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the musicof unseen fountains. AU 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-holesformed, fissures sprang and spread apart, while thin sections ofice fell through bodily into the river. And amid all thisbursting, rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazingsun 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 swearinginnocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggeredinto John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When theyhalted, the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struckdead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton.Charles sat down on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly andpainstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking.John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle hehad made from a stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gavemonosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice.He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that itwould not be followed. "They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of thetrail and that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Halsaid in response to Thornton's warning to take no more chances onthe rotten ice. "They told us we couldn't make White River, andhere we are." This last with a sneering ring of triumph in it. "And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom'slikely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luckof fools, could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn'trisk my carcass on that ice for all the gold in Alaska." "That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said Hal. "All thesame, 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 betweena fool and his folly; while two or three fools more or less wouldnot alter the scheme of things. But the team did not get up at the command. It had long sincepassed into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. Thewhip flashed out, here and there, on its merciless errands. JohnThornton compressed his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl tohis feet. Teek followed. Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pikemade painful efforts. Twice he fell over, when half up, and onthe third attempt managed to rise. Buck made no effort. He layquietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into him again andagain, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several timesThornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. Amoisture came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, hearose and walked irresolutely up and down. This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficientreason to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for thecustomary club. Buck refused to move under the rain of heavierblows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he barely able toget 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 strongupon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not departedfrom him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under hisfeet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, outthere ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him.He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gonewas he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continuedto fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and wentdown. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though froma great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The lastsensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, thoughvery 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 wasinarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thorntonsprang upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurledbackward, as though struck by a failing tree. Mercedes screamed.Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did notget up because of his stiffness. John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, tooconvulsed with rage to speak. "If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managedto say in a choking voice. "It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as hecame back. "Get out of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going toDawson." Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention ofgetting out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife.Mercedes screamed. cried, laughed, and manifested the chaoticabandonment of hysteria. Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with theaxe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He rapped hisknuckles again as he tried to pick it up. Then he stooped, pickedit up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck's traces. Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full withhis sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead tobe of further use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later theypulled out from the bank and down the river. Buck heard them goand raised his head to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at thewheel, and between were Joe and Teek. They were limping andstaggering. Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal guided atthe 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 searchhad disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state ofterrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dogand man watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, theysaw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, withHal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's scream came totheir ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back,and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humansdisappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. Thebottom 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.