Chapter Three
The Dominant Primordial Beast
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 gender 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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