第19章 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL(3)

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, and 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 in the work, nor was the heart of any dog.The Outsiders were timid and frightened, the Insiders 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 Outsider 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 is 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 traveling 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 gentleness 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 quarreling 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, out-distanced 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.