第22章

But the team did not get up at the command.It had long since passed into the stage where blows were required to rouse it.The whip flashed out, here and there, on its merciless errands.John Thornton compressed his lips.Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet.Teek followed.Joe came next, yelping with pain.Pike made painful efforts.Twice he fell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise.Buck made no effort.He lay quietly where he had fallen.The lash bit into him again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled.Several times Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind.A moisture came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage.He exchanged the whip for the customary club.

Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him.Like his mates, he barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up.He had a vague feeling of impending doom.This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not departed from him.What of the thin and rotten ice he had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him.He refused to stir.So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was he, that the blows did not hurt much.And as they continued to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered and went down.It was nearly out.He felt strangely numb.As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten.The last sensations of pain left him.He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body.But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who wielded the club.Hal was hurled backward, as though struck by a failing tree.Mercedes screamed.Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too convulsed with rage to speak.

"If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say in a choking voice.

"It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came back."Get out of my way, or I'll fix you.I'm going to Dawson."Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting out of the way.Hal drew his long hunting-knife.Mercedes screamed.cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria.Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground.He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck's traces.

Hal had no fight left in him.Besides, his hands were full with his sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of further use in hauling the sled.A few minutes later they pulled out from the bank and down the river.Buck heard them go and raised his head to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek.They were limping and staggering.Mercedes was riding the loaded sled.Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones.By the time his search had disclosed nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a quarter of a mile away.Dog and man watched it crawling along over the ice.Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air.Mercedes's scream came to their ears.They saw Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans disappear.A yawning hole was all that was to be seen.The bottom had dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

"You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.