White Fang / Белый Клык. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Then he crawled back into the blankets.

“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”

Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded, “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothin’,” came the answer; “only there’s seven of ’em again. I just counted.”

Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into a snore as he drifted back into sleep.

In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out of bed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six o’clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.

“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how many dogs did you say we had?”

“Six.”

“Wrong,” Bill proclaimed triumphantly.

“Seven again?” Henry queried.

“No, five; one’s gone.”

“The hell!” Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and count the dogs.

“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded.

“Fatty’s gone.”

“An’ he went like greased lightnin’ once he got started. Couldn’t ’ve seen ’m for smoke.”

“No chance at all[9 - No chance at all – (разг.) Паршиво (У него не было ни одного шанса)],” Henry concluded. “They jes’ swallowed ’m alive. I bet he was yelpin’ as he went down their throats, damn ’em!”

“He always was a fool dog,” said Bill.

“But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an’ commit suicide that way.

” He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal. “I bet none of the others would do it.”

“Couldn’t drive ’em away from the fire with a club,” Bill agreed. “I always did think there was somethin’ wrong with Fatty anyway.”

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail – less scant than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

Chapter II

The She-Wolf

Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled[10 - lashed to the sled – (разг.) приторочены к саням], the men turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad – cries that called through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o’clock.