More hard work
Thirty days after leaving Dawson City, the t
eam arrived back in Skagway. They were
very, very tired. Buck now weig
hed only fifty kilogram
s, and the other dogs
were also very
thin.
They were not ill; they just needed a long
, long rest. But at Skagway there were
mountains of lette
rs waiting to go north, so the men
had to buy new, strong dogs. The old
ones, now useless fo
r work, were sold.
Two American men, called Hal
and Charles, bought Buck and hi
s team, togeth
er with the
harness. Charles was forty years old, with li
ght hair and watery bl
ue eyes. Hal was a young
man of twenty with a big shin
y gun and a big knife in his be
lt. These things
, more than
anything, showed how young he wa
s. Both men were
clearly new to the
north, and its hard
and dangerous life.
They took the
dogs back to thei
r untidy camp, where a woma
n was waiting. This was
Mercedes - Charles's wife and Hal's sister.
Buck watched the men ta
ke down the tent and load all their luggage on the sledge. They
didn't know how to do it sens
ibly, and every time they put something on the sledge, v
Mercedes moved it. Often they had to take
things off the sledge and start again.
Three men came up and
watched, laughing.
'You've got a heavy load on that sledge,' said
one of them. 'Why don
't you leave the tent
here in Skagway?'
'How could we live without a
tent?' asked Merced
es, throwing up her
hands in the air.
'It's spring now. You won't have any more cold weather.'
'I must have a tent,' she answered, and help
ed Charles and Hal with
the last few boxes.
'Do you think that lo
ad will stay on?' asked another man.
'Why shouldn't it?' asked Charles.
'Well, it's a bit heavy on top. Do you thin
k your dogs will be ab
le to pull that?'
'Of course they will,' said Ha
l. The sledge was now
ready to go. 'Come on, dogs, pull!' he
shouted.
The dogs pulled as hard as they
could, but the sled
ge did not move.
'The lazy animals!' shouted
Hal, picking up his whip.