Kitabı oku: «The Call of the Wild / Зов предков», sayfa 12

There appeared hungry huskies, who had scented the camp from some Indian village. When the two men sprang among them with clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed by the smell of food. In an instant, they ate bread and bacon. They cried under the rain of blows, but struggled madly till the last piece had been eaten.

Never had Buck seen such dogs. They were just skeletons. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying. Buck was attacked by three huskies. He and his mates fought bravely. When Buck’s teeth went through an enemy’s artery, the warm taste of it in his mouth made him fiercer. He flung himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sank into his own throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.

Perrault and Francois hurried to save their sled-dogs. The hungry beasts fled, and for a moment Buck was free. But the two men had to run back to save the food, after which the huskies returned to attack the team. Billee sprang through the circle and fled away over the ice. The rest of the team followed. When Buck wanted to run after them, he saw Spitz rush upon him with the obvious intention of overthrowing him. If he fell under that mass of huskies, there would be no hope for him. But he managed to join the others in the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together in the forest. Though the huskies did not follow them, each of them was wounded in four or five places, and some seriously. In the morning they returned to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad mood. Half of their food was gone. In fact, nothing, no matter how eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault’s moccasins, parts of the leather traces, and even two feet from the end of Francois’s whip.

“Ah, my friends,” he said softly, looking at his wounded dogs, “maybe it’ll make you mad dogs, those many bites. What d’you think, Perrault?”