It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged (平均) forty miles.
For three days Perrault and Francois threw chests up and down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged (淹没) with invitations to drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers (拉橇人).{1}
Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out the town, were riddled (使布满孔洞) like pepper-boxes for their pains, and public interest turned to other idols.{2} Next came official orders.
Francois called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, and wept (weep 的过去式，“哭泣”) over him.
And that was the last of Francois and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out of Buck's life for good.
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A Scotch half-breed (混血) took charge of him and his mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary (筋疲力尽的) trail to Dawson.
It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train, carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the shadow of the Pole.
Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates, whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share.
It was a monotonous (单调乏味的) life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was very like another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, fires were built, and breakfast was eaten.
Then, while some broke camp, others harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made.
Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the beds, and still others carried water or ice for the cooks.
Also, the dogs were fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other dogs, of which there were five score and odd.
There were fierce fighters among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery, so that when he bristled and showed his teeth they got out of his way.{3}
Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched (蜷缩) under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking dreamily at the flames.
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Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's baghouse in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement (水泥) swimming-tank, and Ysabel (前文中提到的墨西哥无毛狗), the Mexican hairless, and Toots (图兹，前文中提到的日本哈巴狗), the Japanese pug;
but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had eaten or would like to eat.
He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him.
Far more potent were the memories of his heredity (遗传) that gave things he had never seen before a seeming familiarity;
the instincts (which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed (衰退) in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and become alive again.
Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook before him.{4}
This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling.
The hair of this man was long and matted (乱糟糟一团的), and his head slanted back under it from the eyes.
He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching (紧握) in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end.
He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair.
In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur.
He did not stand erect (昂首挺胸直立的), but with trunk (躯干) inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees.
About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.
At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between his legs and slept.
On such occasions his elbows (肘) were on his knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.
And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey.
And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.
And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him,
"Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.
It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week’s rest at least.
But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside.
The dogs were tired, the drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day.
This meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best for the animals.
Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the drivers ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of the dogs he drove.
Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the toughest.
Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work and maintaining discipline, though he, too, was very tired.
Billee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever, and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other side.