"Jack London. The Call of the Wild (Сборник из 7 рассказов на англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

rolled back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was
only for a moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save
the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the
team. Billee, terrified into bravery, sprang through the savage
circle and fled away over the ice. Pike and Dub followed on his
heels, with the rest of the team behind. As Buck drew himself
together to spring after them, out of the tail of his eye he saw
Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention of overthrowing
him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies, there was
no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.


Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in
the forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There
was not one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some
were wounded grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg;
Dolly, the last husky added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn
throat; Joe had lost an eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with
an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout
the night. At daybreak they limped warily back to camp, to find
the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers. Fully half
their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewed through the
sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter
how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of
Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces,
and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip. He
broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded
dogs.


"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose
many bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh,
Perrault?"


The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of
trail still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have
madness break out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and
exertion got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened
team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest part of
the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the
hardest between them and Dawson.


The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the
frost, and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that
the ice held at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to
cover those thirty terrible miles. And terrible they were, for
every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and