from the side.
Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part of the camp,
hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts
rolled back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only
for a moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub,
upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee,
terrified into bravery, sprang through the savage circle and fled away
over the ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the
team behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them, out of
the tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident
intention of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of
huskies, there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock
of Spitz s charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.
Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the
forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not
one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some were wounded
grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky
added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an
eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to
ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they
limped warily back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men
in bad tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had
chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact,
nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had
eaten a pair of Perrault s moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the
leather traces, and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois s
whip. He broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his
wounded dogs.
Ah, my frien s, he said softly, mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many
bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t ink, eh, Perrault?
The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail
still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break
out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses
into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling
painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered,
and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.
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