udices. And
that Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to the
building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdened
herself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a
few other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the
meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs
unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She was
pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But
the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save
chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon
which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,
she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered the dogs, and
because she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She
was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a
lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals.
She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood
still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her,
entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of
their brutality.

On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They never
did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat
down on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After
they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back for
her, and by main strength put her on the sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of
their animals. Hal's theory, which he practised on others, was that one
must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and
brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club.
At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw
offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's
revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor
substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the
starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it
was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into
his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and
into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.

And through it all Buck staggered along at the