matter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the
slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no
power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had
been 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 less
than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during
the 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 just
managed to keep out of the way of the sled.
Mush on, poor sore feets, the driver encouraged them as they tottered
down the main street of Skaguay. Dis is de las . Den we get one long
res . Eh? For sure. One bully long res .
The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they had
covered twelve hundred miles with two days rest, and in the nature of
reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But so
many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were
the sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the
congested mail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were
official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the
places of those worthless 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 really
tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two
men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for a
song. The men addressed each other as Hal and Charles. Charles was
a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a
mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the
limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or
twenty, with a big Colt s revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about
him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the
most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness a callowness
sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and why
such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of
things that passes understanding.
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