This chapter begins thirty days after the dogs have made the long pull back to Skagway, after having successfully delivered the mail to Dawson. By now, Buck has lost over thirty-five pounds, and he is not alone in his suffering; in fact, all of the dogs are in a wretched state. They are all overworked, they have sore paws, they are plagued with injuries, and, in general, they are exhausted—dead tired. Furthermore, there is “no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon.” In this chapter, we discover that in the last five months they have traveled twenty-five thousand miles with only five days’ rest.
The drivers expect a long recuperation period, but because of the droves of people who have arrived in the great North, the mail is arriving at a rapid pace, necessitating constant mail runs. Worthless or tired and weak dogs, London tells us, are “gotten rid of.” Thus, before the team is fully rested, two men from the States buy them—”harness and all, for a song”—meaning that they were bought very cheaply. The two men are Hal and Charles. Charles, the older, is middle-aged with watery eyes and a fiercely uptwisted light mustache. Hal is younger, probably nineteen or twenty, and he carries a gun and a hunting knife—a detail which London includes to emphasize Hal’s callousness and his potential evil. The two men are accompanied by Mercedes, who is Charles’s wife and Hal’s sister. London never tells the reader exactly why these people have come to the great North; instead, they seem to be here only to illustrate another aspect of the type of life that Buck has had to become accustomed to if he is to adjust to all aspects of this new and primitive existence. Until this event, Buck’s masters have all known critical ways of coping with the North—that is, they know how to drive, how to survive, and how to treat the team. Now, however, Buck is confronted with inept people who cannot cope with the violence of the wilderness and the great North. Consequently, we will now see how Buck responds and adjusts to human ineptitude.
The first example of Buck’s new masters’ ineptitude is the tent, which is awkwardly assembled. In addition, the dishes are packed unwashed, and no one has any concept as to how to load and pack the sled. Furthermore, when the three attempt to leave, the dogs are unable to budge the sled; ignorantly, Hal assumes that this is merely incompetence on the part of the dogs, and he beats them severely, lashing them viciously with his whip. A man from a neighboring tent attempts to defend the dogs, claiming that “they are plumb tuckered out,” and another incensed onlooker tells the three that the sled runners are frozen fast in the snow; this is the reason why the dogs cannot budge the sled. Here again is more proof of the trio’s ineptitude—and what is far worse is their basic ignorance of the techniques of dealing with the conditions of the great North. Throughout the beatings of the dogs, Mercedes objects strongly, but at the same time, she is resentful of the fact that some of the things which she has packed must be tossed off the sled. During the course of this trip, we will discover why Mercedes changes as drastically as she does; eventually, however, her present concern for the dogs will be replaced by a concern for only herself.
The sled’s runners are finally freed from the frozen snow, but the dogs still have to struggle with all their might in order to pull the sled even a short distance, and when the path becomes uneven, the sled overturns and spills most of the load, which, as we know, has been improperly loaded. Once the dogs are freed from the excess weight, they flee without heeding the calls of their “new masters.” Buck and his comrades look upon these people with a great deal of suspicion.
Later, when Mercedes refuses to cast away as much of her possessions as the onlookers advocated, Charles and Hal decide to buy six extra dogs, now making a total of fourteen dogs pulling the sled. The extra dogs, of course, require more food proportionately, and this factor increases the load which the dogs must pull. As the days go by, London says, it becomes apparent, even to Buck, that “they were slack in all things, without order or discipline.”
