The Toil of Trace and Trail

Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with Buck andhis mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched state, wornout and worn down. Buck’s one hundred and forty pounds had dwindled toone hundred and fifteen. The rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, hadrelatively lost more weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, in his lifetimeof deceit, had often successfully feigned a hurt leg, was now limping inearnest. Sol-leks was limping, and Dub was suffering from a wrenchedshoulder-blade.

They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left in them. Theirfeet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling the fatigueof a day’s travel. There was nothing the matter with them except thatthey were dead tired. It was not the dead-tiredness that comes through briefand excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours; but it was thedead-tiredness that comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage ofmonths of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength tocall upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, everyfibre, every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In lessthan five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during the lasteighteen hundred of which they had had but five days’ rest. When theyarrived at Skaguay they were apparently on their last legs. They could barelykeep the traces taut, and on the down grades just managed to keep out of theway 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 coveredtwelve hundred miles with two days’ rest, and in the nature of reason andcommon justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But so many were the menwho had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were the sweethearts, wives, andkin that had not rushed in, that the congested mail was taking on Alpineproportions; also, there were official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogswere to take the places of those worthless for the trail. The worthless oneswere to be got rid of, and, since dogs count for little against dollars, theywere to be sold.

Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how really tired andweak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two men from the Statescame along and bought them, harness and all, for a song. The men addressed eachother as “Hal” and “Charles.” Charles was amiddle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a mustachethat twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply droopinglip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty, with a bigColt’s revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about him on a belt thatfairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the most salient thing abouthim. It advertised his callowness—a callowness sheer and unutterable.Both men were manifestly out of place, and why such as they should adventurethe North is part of the mystery of things that 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 and François andthe others who had gone before. When driven with his mates to the newowners’ camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent halfstretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a woman.“Mercedes” the men called her. She was Charles’s wife andHal’s sister—a nice family party.

Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent andload the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner, but nobusinesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle three times aslarge 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 unbrokenchattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put a clothes-sack on thefront of the sled, she suggested it should go on the back; and when they hadput it on the back, and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, shediscovered overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else but in that verysack, and they unloaded again.

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

“You’ve got a right smart load as it is,” said one of them;“and it’s not me should tell you your business, but Iwouldn’t tote that 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 coldweather,” the man replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds and ends ontop 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 manhastened meekly to say. “I was just a-wonderin’, that is all. Itseemed a mite top-heavy.”

Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could, whichwas 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 of thegee-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 few moments, thenrelaxed. They were unable to move the sled.

“The lazy brutes, I’ll show them,” he cried, preparing tolash out at them with the whip.

But Mercedes interfered, crying, “Oh, Hal, you mustn’t,” asshe caught 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 of thetrip, or I won’t go a step.”

“Precious lot you know about dogs,” her brother sneered; “andI wish you’d leave me alone. They’re lazy, I tell you, andyou’ve got to whip them to get anything out of them. That’s theirway. You ask any one. Ask one of those men.”

Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of pain writtenin her pretty face.

“They’re weak as water, if you want to know,” came the replyfrom one of the men. “Plum tuckered out, that’s what’s thematter. 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 defence of herbrother. “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 themselves against thebreast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it, and putforth all their strength. The sled held as though it were an anchor. After twoefforts, they stood still, panting. The whip was whistling savagely, when oncemore Mercedes interfered. 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, “whydon’t you pull hard?—then you wouldn’t be whipped.”Buck did not like her, but he was feeling too miserable to resist her, takingit as part of the day’s miserable work.

One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress hot 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 mighty lot bybreaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight againstthe gee-pole, right and left, and break it out.”

A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice, Halbroke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The overloaded andunwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically under therain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply intothe main street. It would have required an experienced man to keep thetop-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man. As they swung on the turnthe sled went over, spilling half its load through the loose lashings. The dogsnever stopped. The lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They wereangry because of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buckwas raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried“Whoa! whoa!” but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled offhis feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up thestreet, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder of theoutfit along its chief thoroughfare.

Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered belongings.Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs, if they ever expectedto reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his sister and brother-in-lawlistened unwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goodswere turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods on the Long Trail is athing to dream about. “Blankets for a hotel” quoth one of the menwho laughed and helped. “Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throwaway that tent, and all those dishes,—who’s going to wash them,anyway? Good Lord, do you think you’re travelling on a Pullman?”

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes criedwhen her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article after article wasthrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in particular over eachdiscarded thing. She clasped hands about knees, rocking back and forthbroken-heartedly. She averred she would not go an inch, not for a dozenCharleses. She appealed to everybody and to everything, finally wiping her eyesand proceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were imperativenecessaries. And in her zeal, when she had finished with her own, she attackedthe belongings of her men and went through them like a tornado.

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a formidable bulk.Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six Outside dogs. These,added to the six of the original team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies obtainedat the Rink Rapids on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But theOutside dogs, though practically broken in since their landing, did not amountto much. Three were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and theother two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to knowanything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them with disgust,and though he speedily taught them their places and what not to do, he couldnot teach them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace and trail. Withthe exception of the two mongrels, they were bewildered and spirit-broken bythe strange savage environment in which they found themselves and by the illtreatment they had received. The two mongrels were without spirit at all; boneswere the only things breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out bytwenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anything butbright. 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 othersleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from Dawson, but never hadthey seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic travelthere was a reason why fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, and that wasthat one sled could not carry the food for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Haldid not know this. They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to adog, so many dogs, so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shouldersand nodded comprehensively, it was all so very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was nothinglively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were starting deadweary. 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 oncemore, made him bitter. His heart was not in the work, nor was the heart of anydog. The Outsides were timid and frightened, the Insides without confidence intheir 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 becameapparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, withoutorder or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, andhalf the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion soslovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping andrearranging the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On other days theywere unable to get started at all. And on no day did they succeed in makingmore than half the distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-foodcomputation.

It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they hastened itby overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. TheOutside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by chronic famine to makethe most of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, theworn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was toosmall. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in herpretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving thedogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it wasnot food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they weremaking 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 washalf gone and the distance only quarter covered; further, that for love ormoney no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So he cut down even theorthodox ration and tried to increase the day’s travel. His sister andbrother-in-law seconded him; but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit andtheir own incompetence. It was a simple matter to give the dogs less food; butit was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability toget under way earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longerhours. Not only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know howto work themselves.

The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, always gettingcaught and punished, he had none the less been a faithful worker. His wrenchedshoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from bad to worse, till finallyHal shot him with the big Colt’s revolver. It is a saying of the countrythat an Outside dog starves to death on the ration of the husky, so the sixOutside dogs under Buck could do no less than die on half the ration of thehusky. The Newfoundland went first, followed by the three short-hairedpointers, the two mongrels hanging more grittily on to life, but going in theend.

By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland had fallenaway from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance, Arctic travelbecame to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood. Mercedesceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied with weeping over herself andwith quarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel was the one thingthey were never too weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery,increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience ofthe trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet ofspeech and 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 muscles ached,their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this they becamesharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning andlast at night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. It was thecherished belief of each that he did more than his share of the work, andneither forbore to speak this belief at every opportunity. Sometimes Mercedessided with her husband, sometimes with her brother. The result was a beautifuland unending family quarrel. Starting from a dispute as to which should chop afew sticks for the fire (a dispute which concerned only Charles and Hal),presently would be lugged in the rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles,cousins, people thousands of miles away, and some of them dead. ThatHal’s views on art, or the sort of society plays his mother’sbrother wrote, should have anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks offirewood, passes comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tendin that direction as in the direction of Charles’s political prejudices.And that Charles’s sister’s tale-bearing tongue should be relevantto the building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdenedherself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a few othertraits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband’s family. In the meantime thefire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance—the grievance of sex. She was prettyand soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the presenttreatment by her husband and brother was everything save chivalrous. It was hercustom to be helpless. They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to herwas her most essential sex-prerogative, she made their lives unendurable. Sheno longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore and tired, shepersisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty and soft, but she weighed onehundred and twenty pounds—a lusty last straw to the load dragged by theweak and starving animals. She rode for days, till they fell in the traces andthe sled stood still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleadedwith 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 never did itagain. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat down on thetrail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After they had travelledthree miles they unloaded the sled, came back for her, and by main strength puther on the sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of theiranimals. Hal’s theory, which he practised on others, was that one mustget hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and brother-in-law.Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club. At the Five Fingersthe dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to trade them a fewpounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt’s revolver that kept the bighunting-knife company at Hal’s hip. A poor substitute for food was thishide, just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen sixmonths back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron,and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin andinnutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating andindigestible.

And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in anightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he fell downand remained down till blows from whip or club drove him to his feet again. Allthe stiffness and gloss had gone out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hungdown, limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood where Hal’s club hadbruised him. His muscles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh padshad disappeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlinedcleanly through 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 very greatmisery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of theclub. The pain of the beating was dull and distant, just as the things theireyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and distant. They were not halfliving, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in whichsparks of life fluttered faintly. When a halt was made, they dropped down inthe traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out.And when the club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, andthey tottered to their feet and staggered on.

There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise. Halhad traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee on the headas he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the harness and dragged itto one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and they knew that this thing wasvery close to them. On the next day Koona went, and but five of them remained:Joe, too far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only halfconscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed,still faithful to the toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had solittle strength with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far thatwinter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; andBuck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline orstriving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trailby the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware of it.Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in themorning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long day was ablaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great springmurmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with thejoy of living. It came from the things that lived and moved again, things whichhad been as dead and which had not moved during the long months of frost. Thesap was rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in youngbuds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang inthe nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustledforth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in theforest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked thewild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of unseenfountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon was strainingto break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away from beneath; the sunate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprang and spread apart, while thinsections of ice fell through bodily into the river. And amid all this bursting,rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through thesoft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, thewoman, and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing innocuously,and Charles’s eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into JohnThornton’s camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted, the dogsdropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyesand looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log to rest. He sat downvery slowly and painstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal did the talking.John Thornton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he had made froma stick of birch. He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and,when it was asked, terse advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice inthe certainty that it 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.“They told us we couldn’t make White River, and here we are.”This last with a sneering ring of triumph in it.

“And they told you true,” John Thornton answered. “Thebottom’s likely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blindluck of fools, could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn’t riskmy carcass on that ice for all the gold in Alaska.”

“That’s because you’re not a fool, I suppose,” saidHal. “All the same, we’ll go on to Dawson.” He uncoiled hiswhip. “Get up there, Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush on!”

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool and hisfolly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the scheme ofthings.

But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed into thestage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed out, here andthere, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed his lips. Sol-lekswas the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed. Joe came next, yelping withpain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he fell over, when half up, and on thethird attempt managed to rise. Buck made no effort. He lay quietly where he hadfallen. The lash bit into him again and again, but he neither whined norstruggled. Several times Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed hismind. A moisture came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he aroseand walked irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to driveHal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club. Buck refused tomove under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates,he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not toget up. He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had been strong upon himwhen he pulled in to the bank, and it had not departed from him. What of thethin and rotten ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that hesensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master wastrying to drive him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so fargone was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fallupon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly out.He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that hewas being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer feltanything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon hisbody. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was inarticulate andmore like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who wieldedthe club. Hal was hurled backward, as though struck by a falling tree. Mercedesscreamed. Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not getup because of his stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too convulsedwith rage to speak.

“If you strike that dog again, I’ll kill you,” he at lastmanaged to say in a choking voice.

“It’s my dog,” Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouthas he came back. “Get out of my way, or I’ll fix you. I’mgoing to Dawson.”

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting out ofthe way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed,and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria. Thornton rapped Hal’sknuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He rapped hisknuckles again as he tried to pick it up. Then he stooped, picked it uphimself, and with two strokes cut Buck’s traces.

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his sister, orhis arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of further use in haulingthe sled. A few minutes later they pulled out from the bank and down the river.Buck heard them go and raised his head to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks wasat the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering.Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charlesstumbled along in the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly handssearched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed nothing morethan many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter ofa mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, theysaw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clingingto it, jerk into the air. Mercedes’s scream came to their ears. They sawCharles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of icegive way and dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to beseen. The bottom 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.