|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 71
The next day, and the next, and the next brought a similar dispensation
to the dogs; no more. By this time the nightly feeding had become a
horrid and bloody battle.
"Nasty savage brutes!" said sponging Harry.
"Blood does tell," observed the oracular Beeching, himself by repute a
man of family. "They're every one of 'em mongrels."
The son of lordly Finn and queenly Desdemona attached no meaning to
these words, of course; but were it not for the discipline, the
generations of discipline in his blood, he could have strangled these
two muddlers for the tragic folly of their incompetence, the gross
exhibition of their slackness.
As the men themselves began to feel the belly-pinch, they brought up no
reserves of manhood, but, on the contrary, they took to cruelly beating
their now weakened team, when the dogs were safely tethered in the
traces, and to cowardly avoidance of the poor brutes at all other times.
Harry was quite unashamedly afraid to throw the dogs their beggarly half
or quarter ration; and but for Beeching, it may be the dogs had starved
while food still remained on the sled.
Maybe the fact that Beeching, with all his faults, had never reached
Harry's depths as a sponger, preserved him from this particular crime.
But he had small ground in that for self-gratulation, since it is a fact
remembered in the country that when he did eventually stagger down to
salt water with his sadly reduced team, the dogs had positively not had
their harness off for a week. Mr. Beeching and his precious partner had
been afraid to let their dogs out of the traces and the safe reach of
their whips!
The fatally unwise Gutty was the first to succumb. Fish downed him for a
morsel of food he had grabbed; and when the team had been over the spot
on which he fell, there simply was no Gutty left. Poll, the slighter of
the two bitches, died under Harry's whip--the haft of it--or she, like
Jinny, would have seen salt water, because their sex was their
protection--from their fellow-dogs, though not from the now starving and
insensate clowns who drove them.
Everything but the scant remains of the men's food had, of course, been
jettisoned before this. The dogs made a meal of the smart water-proof
sheets, and Jan ate Beeching's show pair of moccasins. The whole
business forms a wretched and shameful record that need not be
prolonged.
To be quite just, one should mention that Beeching was afoot (hammering
Jan's protruding haunches) when they staggered into the township on the
evening of the thirty-fifth day. Harry lay groaning on the sled, and had
been there, too lame to walk, he said, too despicable, perhaps, for
Death's consideration, for three days and more. The ten-dog team of
prime-conditioned animals of five weeks before consisted now of seven
gaunt, staggering creatures, each a bony framework, masked in dried
blood and bruises; each suffering jarring agony from every tremulous
step taken, and all together (as the market went) worth, it might be--to
a very speculative dog-doctor--say, ten dollars. The team had cost the
deplorable Beeching about three thousand.
But, as a matter of fact, Pad died in the moment of stoppage, and two of
his mates got their release while yet in the traces. Jan, Jinny, and two
others survived still at the bitter end of what was perhaps the most
wretchedly bungled trip ever made over that famous trail.
XXXII
JAN OBEYS ORDERS AT THE GREAT DIVIDE
Experienced observers contended that the most truly remarkable thing
about _Chechaquo_ Beeching was not, after all, his super-slackness or
his criminal stupidity, but his invincible luck.
Where many good men and true, infinitely capable and knowledgeable, had
starved, or failed to make a scavenger's wage, Beeching had tumbled into
possession of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and, after having
sampled most methods of "burning" money known to the northland, still
had fully half this sum to his credit.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|