They were all terribly footsore (脚酸的，脚痛的). No spring (跳) or rebound was left in them. Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and doubting the fatigue (疲劳) 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 (长期的) strength drainage (外流) of months of toil.{1}
There was no power of recuperation (复原) left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre (纤维), every cell (细胞), was tired, dead tired.
And there was reason for it. In less than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during the last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days' rest.
When they arrived at Skaguay they were apparently (显然地) on their last legs.
They could barely keep the traces taut (拉紧的), and on the down grades (下坡) just managed to keep out of the way of the sled.
"Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged them as they tottered down the main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get one long res'. Eh? For sure. One bully long res'."{2}
The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they had covered twelve hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the nature of reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing.
But so many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike (前文中提到的克朗代克地区，加拿大育空河流域的黄金产地), and so many were the sweethearts, wives, and kin (亲戚) that had not rushed in, that the congested (堵塞的) mail was taking on Alpine proportions (像阿尔卑斯山一样的规模，形容邮件堆积如山); also, there were official orders.{3}
Fresh batches of Hudson Bay (哈得逊湾，位于加拿大中东部）dogs were to take the places of those worthless for the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and, since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be sold.
Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how really tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for a song.{4}
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The men addressed (称呼) each other as "Hal" and "Charles.”
Charles was a middle-aged, lightish-colored (肤色浅的) man, with weak and watery eyes and a mustache (胡子) that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply drooping lip it concealed.
Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty, with a big Colt's revolver (左轮手枪) and a hunting-knife strapped about him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges (弹药筒).
This belt was the most salient (突出的) thing about him. It advertised his callowness (缺乏经验)--a callowness sheer and unutterable.
Both men were manifestly out of place, and why such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things that passes understanding.
Buck heard the chaffering (讨价还价), saw the money pass between the man and the Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and François and the others who had gone before.
When driven with his mates to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod (潦草的) and slovenly (马虎的) affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a woman.
"Mercedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife and Hal's sister--a nice family party.
Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner, but no businesslike method.
The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle three times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packed away unwashed.
Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men and kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance (规劝) and advice.
When they put a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go on the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.
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Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning (咧嘴笑) and winking at one another.
"You've got a right smart load as it is," said one of them; "and it's not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote (携带) that tent along if I was you."
"Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay. "However in the world could I manage without a tent?"
"It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather," the man replied.
She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds and ends on top the mountainous load.
"Think it'll ride?" one of the men asked.
"Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded rather shortly.
"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the man hastened meekly to say.
"I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy."
Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could, which was not in the least well.
"An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption (笨拙的装置) behind them," affirmed a second of the men.
"Certainly," said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. "Mush!" he shouted. "Mush on there!"
The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled.
"The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried, preparing to lash out at them with the whip.
But Mercedes interfered (干涉), crying, "Oh, Hal, you mustn't," as she caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from him.
"The poor dears! Now you must promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of the trip, or I won't go a step."
"Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother sneered (嘲笑); "and I wish you'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got to whip them to get anything out of them.That's their way. You ask any one. Ask one of those men."