In fact, nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them.

They had eaten a pair of Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip.

He broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.
"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many bites.

Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh, Perrault ?" The courier shook his head dubiously.

With four hundred miles of trail still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break out among his dogs.