More hard work

More hard workThirty days after leaving Dawson City，wine boxthe team arrived back in Skagway． They were very， very tired Buck now weighed only fifty kilograms， and the other dogs were also very thin．

They were not ill； they just needed a long， long rest． But at Skagway there were mountains of letters waiting to go north，so the men had to buy new， strong dogs The old ones， now useless for work， were sold．More hard workTwo American men， called Hal and Charles， bought Buck and his team， together with the harness． Charles was forty years old， with light hair and watery blue eyes． Hal was a young man of twenty with a big shiny gun and a big knife in his belt ．These things， more than anything， showed how young he was Both men were clearly new to the north， and its hard and dangerous life．

They took the dogs back to their untidy camp，wine boxwhere a woman was waiting ．This was Mercedes—Charles's wife and Hal's sister．