THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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III

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

HE 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 new-born 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 François 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 François distributed the

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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.

François 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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 François, 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

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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 François'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

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 François, 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 François

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. François 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 François 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 François 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, heart-breaking 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;

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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.

François 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 François 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 François's lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction of

watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any of

the team.

"One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault. "Some dam day heem keel

dat Buck."

"Dat Buck two devils," was François'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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

out of his desire for mastery. He was preëminently 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. François 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 fairplay was a

forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But François, 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

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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 François 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

François 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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 François. 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. François swore strange barbarous oaths, and

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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. François 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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 full 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.

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST

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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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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