The Call of the Wild, Page 5

  Chapter V. The Toil of Trace and Trail

  Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with Buckand his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretchedstate, worn out and worn down. Buck's one hundred and forty poundshad dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The rest of his mates, thoughlighter dogs, had relatively lost more weight than he. Pike, themalingerer, who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often successfullyfeigned 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 doublingthe fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter with themexcept that they were dead tired. It was not the dead-tiredness thatcomes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is amatter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through theslow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was nopower of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It hadbeen 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 lessthan five 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 their last legs.They could barely keep the traces taut, and on the down grades justmanaged to keep out of the way of the sled.

  "Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged them as they tottereddown the main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get one longres'. Eh? For sure. One bully long res'."

  The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they hadcovered twelve hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the nature ofreason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But somany were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were thesweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the congestedmail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were official orders.Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the places of thoseworthless 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 reallytired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, twomen from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for asong. The men addressed each other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles wasa middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and amustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to thelimply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen ortwenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped abouthim on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was themost salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--a callownesssheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and whysuch as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of thingsthat passes understanding.

  Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and theGovernment agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-traindrivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault andFrancois and the others who had gone before. When driven with his matesto the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tenthalf stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw awoman. "Mercedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife and Hal'ssister--a nice family party.

  Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tentand load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner,but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundlethree times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packedaway unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men andkept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they puta clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go onthe back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it overwith a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles whichcould abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.

  Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning andwinking at one another.

  "You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "and it'snot me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tentalong 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 manreplied.

  She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds andends 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 tosay. "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 contraptionbehind them," affirmed a second of the men.

  "Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of thegee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!" heshouted. "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 out atthem with the whip.

  But Mercedes interfered, crying, "Oh, Hal, you mustn't," as she caughthold of the whip and wrenched it from him. "The poor dears! Now youmust promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of the trip, or Iwon't go a step."

  "Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother sneered; "and I wishyou'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got to whipthem to get anything out of them. That's their way. You ask any one. Askone of those men."

  Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of painwritten in her pretty face.

  "They're weak as water, if you want to know," came the reply from oneof the men. "Plum tuckered out, that's what's the matter. They need arest."

  "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 ofher brother. "Never mind that man," she said pointedly. "You're drivingour dogs, and you do what you think best with them."

  Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselves against thebreast-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 ananchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting. The whip waswhistling savagely, when once more Mercedes interfered. She dropped onher knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms aroundhis neck.

  "You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically, "why don't you pullhard?--then you wouldn't be whipped." Buck did not like her, but hewas feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day'smiserable work.

  One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress hotspeech, 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 bybreaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weightagainst 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. Theoverloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates strugglingfrantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the pathturned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have requiredan experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was notsuch a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over, spillinghalf its load through the loose lashings. The dogs n
ever stopped. Thelightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry becauseof the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck wasraging. 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 hisfeet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up thestreet, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainderof the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.

  Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scatteredbelongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs,if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal andhis sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, andoverhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men laugh,for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. "Blanketsfor a hotel" quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. "Half asmany is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all thosedishes,--who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you thinkyou're travelling on a Pullman?"

  And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedescried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and articleafter article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried inparticular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees,rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not goan inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and toeverything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out evenarticles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal,when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of hermen and went through them like a tornado.

  This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still aformidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought sixOutside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teekand Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the recordtrip, brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, thoughpractically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Threewere short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the othertwo were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to knowanything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them withdisgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what notto do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindlyto trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they werebewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in whichthey found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. Thetwo mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only thingsbreakable about them.

  With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out bytwenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anythingbut bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And they wereproud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. Theyhad seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in fromDawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. Inthe nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs shouldnot drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the foodfor fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They hadworked 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 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 werestarting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between SaltWater and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was facingthe same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not inthe work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid andfrightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters.

  Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and thewoman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went byit became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in allthings, without order or discipline. It took them half the night topitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and getthe sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day theywere occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they didnot make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get startedat all. And on no day did they succeed in making more than half thedistance used by the men 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 when underfeedingwould commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trainedby chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites.And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Haldecided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And tocap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaverin her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, shestole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food thatBuck and the 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 that hisdog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further,that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. Sohe cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day'stravel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they werefrustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was asimple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible tomake the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under wayearlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Notonly did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know how towork themselves.

  The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, alwaysgetting caught and punished, he had none the less been a faithfulworker. His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went frombad to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's revolver. Itis a saying of the country that an Outside dog starves to death on theration of the husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck could do no lessthan die on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first,followed by the three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hangingmore grittily on to life, but going in the end.

  By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland hadfallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance,Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood andwomanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupiedwith weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband andbrother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do.Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubledupon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail whichcomes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speechand kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had noinkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their musclesached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of thisthey became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips inthe morning and last at night.

  Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. It wasthe cherished belief of each that he did more than his share of thework, and neither forbore to speak this belief at every opportunity.Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimes with her brother.The result was a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting froma dispute as to which should chop a few sticks for the fire (a disputewhich concerned only Charles and Hal), presently would be lugged in therest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousandsof miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal's views on art, or thesort of society plays his mother's brother wrote, should haveanything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passescomprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in thatdirection as in the direction of Charles's political prejudices. Andthat Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to thebuilding of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mer
cedes, who disburdenedherself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon afew other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In themeantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogsunfed.

  Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She waspretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. Butthe present treatment by her husband and brother was everything savechivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Uponwhich impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered the dogs, andbecause she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. Shewas pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--alusty 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 stoodstill. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her,entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital oftheir brutality.

  On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They neverdid it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and satdown on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. Afterthey had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back forher, and by main strength put her on the sled again.

  In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering oftheir animals. Hal's theory, which he practised on others, was that onemust get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister andbrother-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 squawoffered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt'srevolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poorsubstitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from thestarved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state itwas more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it intohis stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings andinto a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.

  And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as ina nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, hefell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove himto his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of hisbeautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or mattedwith dried blood where Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles hadwasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, sothat each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanlythrough the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It washeartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the redsweater had proved that.

  As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulatingskeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their verygreat misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or thebruise 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 anddistant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simplyso many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When ahalt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and thespark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whipfell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered totheir 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 Billeeon the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of theharness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, andthey knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koonawent, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant;Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enoughlonger to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toilof trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength withwhich to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and whowas now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck,still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline orstriving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keepingthe 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 awareof it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by threein the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole longday was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given wayto the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from allthe land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things thatlived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had notmoved 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 vineswere putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, andin the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth intothe sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in theforest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honkedthe wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split theair.

  From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music ofunseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukonwas straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate awayfrom beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprangand spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily intothe river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakeninglife, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, likewayfarers 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 staggered intoJohn Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted,the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedesdried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a logto rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly what of his greatstiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the lasttouches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittledand listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terseadvice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty thatit would not be followed.

  "They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail andthat the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal said in responseto Thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. "Theytold us we couldn't make White River, and here we are." This last with asneering ring of triumph in it.

  "And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom's likelyto 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 onthat 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 fooland his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter thescheme of things.

  But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passedinto the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashedout, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressedhis lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed.Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice hefell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buckmade no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit intohim again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several timesThornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisturecame into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walkedirresolutely up and down.

  This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reasonto 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 uponhim. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, hehad made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impendingdoom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, andit had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he hadfelt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close athand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drivehim. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone washe, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall uponhim, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearlyout. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he wasaware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. Heno longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact ofthe club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so faraway.

  And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that wasinarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprangupon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, asthough struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked onwistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of hisstiffness.

  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 managed to sayin a choking voice.

  "It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he cameback. "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 gettingout 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 knifeto 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'straces.

  Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with hissister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be offurther use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled outfrom the bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his headto see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between wereJoe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding theloaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along inthe rear.

  As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindlyhands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosednothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, thesled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling alongover 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'sscream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step torun back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humansdisappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom haddropped out of the trail.

  John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

  "You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.