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.
