The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce
conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth.
His newborn cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy
adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did
he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A certain
deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rashness
and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz
he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.
On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous
rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even
went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the
fight which could end only in the death of one or the other. Early in
the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an unwonted
accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp
on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a
white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping
place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a
perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Francois were compelled to
make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake
itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light.
A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed down
through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.
Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm
was it, that he was loath to leave it when Francois distributed the
fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his
ration and returned, he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl told
him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble
with his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He
sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz
particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him
that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own
only because of his great weight and size.
Francois was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from the
disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble. "A-a-ah!"
he cried to Buck. "Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem, the dirty
t'eef!"
Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer rage and eagerness
as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less
eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for
the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected happened, the thing
which projected their struggle for supremacy far into the future, past
many a weary mile of trail and toil.
An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony
frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of
pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulking
furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of them, who had
scented the camp from some Indian village. They had crept in while Buck
and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men sprang among them with
stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed
by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head buried in the
grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box
was capsized on the ground. On the instant a score of the famished
brutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them
unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but struggled
none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured.
In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their nests
only to be set upon by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such
dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins.
They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing
eyes and slavered fangs. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying,
irresistible. There was no opposing them. The team-dogs were swept back
against the cliff at the first onset. Buck was beset by three huskies,
and in a trice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed. The din
was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks, dripping
blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side. Joe
was snapping like a demon. Once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of
a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer,
leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of
teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat, and was
sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugular. The warm
taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He flung
himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sink into his own
throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.
Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part of the camp,
hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled
back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a
moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub, upon
which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified
into bravery, sprang through the savage circle and fled away over the
ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the team
behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them, out of the
tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention
of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies,
there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.
Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the
forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not
one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some were wounded
grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky
added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye;
while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons,
cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they limped warily
back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers.
Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewed through
the sled lashings and canvas coverings. 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. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses
into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling
painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered,
and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.
The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost,
and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held
at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty
terrible miles. And terrible they were, for every foot of them was
accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man. A dozen times,
Perrault, nosing the way broke through the ice bridges, being saved by
the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across
the hole made by his body. But a cold snap was on, the thermometer
registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was
compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.
Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he had been
chosen for government courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely
thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from
dim dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent
and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt. Once, the
sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and
all but drowned by the time they were dragged out. The usual fire was
necessary to save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the two
men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close
that they were singed by the flames.
At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up
to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on
the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But
behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled
was Francois, pulling till his tendons cracked.
Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape
except up the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while Francois
prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and
the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted,
one by one, to the cliff crest. Francois came up last, after the sled
and load. Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was
ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the
river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.
By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out.
The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to make
up lost time, pushed them late and early. The first day they covered
thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to
the Little Salmon; the third day forty miles, which brought them well up
toward the Five Fingers.
Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies.
His had softened during the many generations since the day his last
wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he
limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as
he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which Francois
had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half
an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own
moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and
Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a
grin one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his
back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge
without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out
foot-gear was thrown away.
At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who had
never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She announced
her condition by a long, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog
bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a
dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew
that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. Straight away he
raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she
gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great
was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the island,
flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice
to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river,
and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time, though he
did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. Francois
called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one
leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in that
Francois would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand,
and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.
Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath,
helpless. This was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice
his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to
the bone. Then Francois's lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction
of watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any
of the teams.
"One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault. "Some dam day heem keel dat
Buck."
"Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder. "All de tam I watch dat
Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell
an' den heem chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I
know."
From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as lead-dog and
acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by this
strange Southland dog. And strange Buck was to him, for of the many
Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and
on trail. They were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and
starvation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured and prospered,
matching the husky in strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he was a
masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of
the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out
of his desire for mastery. He was preeminently cunning, and could bide
his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.
It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted
it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been
gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and
trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which
lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts
if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as
wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride
that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and
sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride
that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night,
letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This was the
pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered
and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible
lead-dog. And this was Buck's pride, too.
He openly threatened the other's leadership. He came between him and the
shirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night
there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer,
did not appear. He was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.
Francois called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath.
He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely
place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his
hiding-place.
But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him,
Buck flew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so
shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike,
who had been trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny,
and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a
forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Francois, chuckling at
the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought
his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck
from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into
play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash
laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.
In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still
continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it
craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck,
a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks
were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse.
Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling.
Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the
life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place
sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling
and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe,
fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.
But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson
one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many
men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the
ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up
and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling
bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up
to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa
Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main
they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant,
in which it was Buck's delight to join.
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping
in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow,
this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it
was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and
was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It
was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the
younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe
of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that
was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the
cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be
stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through
the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling
ages.
Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the
steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and
Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent
than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him,
and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things
favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put
them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was
packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged
in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was
travelling light.
They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and
the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.
But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and
vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt led by Buck
had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog
leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them
into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly
to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging
his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped
it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even
Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half
so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without
snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that
of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's
very nose.
The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their
relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever
among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and
Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the
unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped
the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing
among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned
they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was behind all the
trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be
caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil
had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to
precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.
At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a
snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team
was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest
Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit
sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of
which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while
the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty
strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low
to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap
by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale
frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.
All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men
out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things
by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to
kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was
ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living
meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm
blood.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life
cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when
one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is
alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist,
caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the
soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came
to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after
the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the
moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of
his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being,
the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was
everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing
itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face
of dead matter that did not move.
But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack
and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend
around. Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost
wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger
frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of
the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white
teeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man
may shriek. At sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's
apex in the grip of Death, the fall pack at Buck's heels raised a hell's
chorus of delight.
Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz,
shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled
over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as
though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and
leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of
a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips
that writhed and snarled.
In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As
they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the
advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed
to remember it all,--the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the
thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm.
There was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf
quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in
the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these
dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an
expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and
their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was nothing new or
strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been,
the wonted way of things.
Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and
across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of
dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never
blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his
enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till
he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first
defended that attack.
In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog.
Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by
the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding,
but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and
enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried
for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and
each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took
to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his
head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the
shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead,
Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.
Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting
hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and
wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck
grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for
footing. Once Buck went over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started
up; but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the circle sank
down again and waited.
But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness--imagination. He
fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as
though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept
low to the snow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz's left fore leg. There
was a crunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three
legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and
broke the right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz
struggled madly to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming
eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in
upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists
in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.
There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing
reserved for gentler climes. He manoeuvred for the final rush. The
circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on
his flanks. He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either side, half
crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to
fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz
quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with
horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Buck
sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely
met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as
Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful
champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found
it good.
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