CHAPTER III

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

The Call of the Wild

25

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. AU 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 took, 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.

• 6小时掌握学英语的秘诀！——点击看答案
• 专治男女记不住单词的秘密