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 expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his
sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and
overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men
laugh, for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about.
Blankets for a hotel quoth one of the men who laughed and helped.
Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away 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
cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article after
article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in
particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees,
rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go
an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to
everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even
articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal,
when she had finished with her own, she attacked the 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 obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip,
brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though
practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much.
Three were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other
two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know
anything, 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 could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly to
trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they were
bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in which
they found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. The
two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only things
breakable about them.
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