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It was a hard journey , and the heavy work wore the dogs down . Since the beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles . The drivers were fair , and every night they fed the dogs before themselves . Still , the dogs grew weaker . Dave suffered most of all . Something had gone wrong inside him , and he often cried out with pain . Soon he was so weak that he kept falling in the traces . The driver took him out of the team and put Sol - leks in his place , so that Dave could rest and run free behind the sled . But Dave could not bear it . He whined with a broken heart when he saw Sol - leks in the place he had held for so long . He ran beside the sled in the deep , soft snow , attacking Sol - leks , until at last he fell and lay howling as the long line of sleds went past . With the last of his strength he followed the train until it stopped again . Then he went past the other sleds to his own and stood beside Sol - leks . When the driver started the team , the sled did not move . Dave had bitten through Sol - leks’s traces , and he was standing in front of the sled , in his own place . He begged with his eyes to stay there . The drivers said that a dog could break its heart if it was taken away from the work that was killing it . They agreed that , since Dave was going to die anyway , it was kinder to let him die in the traces . So he was harnessed again , and he pulled proudly as before , though he often cried out with the pain inside him . The next morning he was too weak to walk . He tried to crawl towards the harnesses , but his strength left him . The last his companions saw of him , he was lying in the snow , looking after them with longing . They could hear him howling sadly until they went round a bend in the river . There the train stopped , and the driver walked slowly back to the camp . A shot rang out . The driver came back quickly , the whips cracked , and the sleds moved on . But Buck knew , and every dog knew , what had happened behind the trees . VIII . Hal , Charles and Mercedes Thirty days after leaving Dawson , the mail train arrived at Skaguay . Buck and his companions were in a terrible state . Buck’s weight had fallen from a hundred and forty pounds to a hundred and fifteen . Pike and Sol - leks were limping , Dub had hurt his shoulder , and all the dogs had sore feet . They were not ill . They were simply dead tired , with the kind of tiredness that comes from months of hard work . In less than five months they had travelled two thousand five hundred miles . The drivers expected a long rest . But so many people had written letters to the men in the Klondike that the mail was piling up like mountains . Official orders came : fresh dogs would take the places of the tired ones , and the tired ones would be sold .
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