Sick as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling
while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when
he saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the
pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not
bear that another dog should do his work.
When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the
beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him
and trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side,
striving to leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled,
and all the while whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain.
The half-breed tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no
heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike
harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where
the going was easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft
snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell,
and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds
churned by.
With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along
behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the
sleds to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver
lingered a moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then
he returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with
remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped
in surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He
called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both
of Sol-leks s traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in
his proper place.
He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed. His
comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied
the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where
dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut
out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he
was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more
than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt.
Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the
sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.
37