s much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down
the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick
fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from
the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was
a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick
alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and
unseen.

At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between
his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his
hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.
And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many
gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the
eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their
bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.
And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the
fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to
rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his
neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the
half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon the
other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he
would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.

It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore
them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they
made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at
least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the
Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the
drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This
meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling
for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their
best for the animals.

Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the drivers
ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of
the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning
of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds
the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life
of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work and
maintaining discipline, though he, too, was ve