[Gnuplot-bugs] Ver the trees into the sky, lighting the la

[Kuenzi R. <pa...@si...>]

D fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly toward where the
harnesses were being
put on his mates. He would advance his fore legs and drag up his body
with a sort of hitching movement, when he would advance

his fore legs and hitch ahead again

for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates
saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But
they could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight
behind a belt of river timber. Here the
train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his steps to
the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang
out. The
man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells tinkled
merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and every
dog knew, what had taken place
behind the belt of river trees. Chapter V. The Toil of Trace and Trail
Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with
Buck and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay.

They were in a wretched state, worn out and worn down. Buck's one
hundred and forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The
rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively lost more
weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, in
his lifetime of deceit, had often successfully feigned a hurt leg, was
now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was limping, and

Dub was suffering from a
wrenched shoulder-blade. They were all terribly footsore. No spring or
rebound was left in them.
Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and
doubling the fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter
with them except that they were dead tired. It was not the
dead-tiredness that comes through
brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter
of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the slow
and prolonged strength drainage
of months of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no reserve
strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it.
Every muscle, every