Dogs of the Sledge Trail – by Ken Doyle (continued)
Out of the drift they came – nine dogs pulling a Nansen sledge with a driver skiing alongside, followed at a distance of a few hundred yards by another team of dogs with their driver. Twenty living things in all that wilderness – it mattered little if they were men or dogs – they were just twenty living, breathing units, that passed over the land, changing it not at all save for the tracks which would soon disappear. Things which need food to survive, things which had to take in so much moisture in so much time, which had to gasp in so much freezing air into tortured lungs in so many minutes, things which needed so much warm blood and tissue, things which had to cover so many miles per day – or die.
“Aaah boys” – the word was sufficient – there was no need to apply the foot brake – the dogs were as tired as the drivers and were only too ready to stop. A hundred feet behind, the second team stopped. At once the dogs dropped on to the snow, half curled, heads on paws facing downwind, tails wrapped around themselves, furry tips covering noses. There was none of the growling and readiness to fight of fresh teams – these dogs had “had it” but still within each was the willingness to pull a load – that spark of adventure and daring of the unknown that makes the husky different from other dogs.
The lead dog of the first team was still on his feet when the rest of the dogs lay down – a smallish husky, white with black markings; he stood there with widely braced legs, breathing deeply, looking ahead towards the North – no longer was his tail defiantly curved up over his body but drooped limply, ruffled by the snow-carrying wind. Once he turned his head and looked at the rest of the teams and the drivers, then he too dropped down with the other dogs. Even he, the number one dog on the number one sledge was close to his limit.
“They’ve had it, poor devils” said the driver of the leading team. |The second man nodded his head as he crouched down in the lee side of the sledge – “still eighteen miles South of base”. These men did not talk much; they had been on the trail for far too long to waste energy, physical or mental, on unnecessary answers.
Each one sat hunched in his windproof, chewing his last piece of chocolate, too tired to relax and think of other places and times when all was going well and bodies and minds were fresh. Only one thought – those eighteen bloody miles that lay ahead and the threatening blizzard.
After a few moments, both men got up without a word as if they had both known that this was the exact minute at which they had to start out again, but then after sledging with the same person for so many weeks, thoughts seem to pass back and forth without words being actually spoken. Words, in fact, often destroy the thought pattern. Each driver gripped the handlebars of the sledge – “get up dogs”. Slowly the dogs got to their feet. “Now dogs – wheet” and with a twisting lifting heave on the sledge from its driver each team once again slid off northwards.
Behind them the steady hiss of the drifting snow and the moan of the wind were the only sounds – soon the tracks of men and dogs were filled with snow and again nothing lived in this land – and yet because for a few brief moments life had lived and breathed and existed here these snowfield could never be quite so lonely again………..