out 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.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out by
twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anything
but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And they were
proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. They
had seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from
Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. In
the nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs should
not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the food
for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had
worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs,
so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded
comprehensively, it was all so very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was
nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were
starting dead weary. Four times he had cover