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WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP

<< THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST
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WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
"
E
H? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils."
This was François's speech next morning when he
discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with wounds. He
drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out.
"Dat Spitz fight lak hell," said Perrault, as he surveyed the gaping
rips and cuts.
"An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was François's answer. "An'
now we make good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure."
While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded the sled, the dog-
driver proceeded to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the place Spitz
would have occupied as leader; but François, not noticing him, brought
Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol-leks was the best
lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury, driving him back and
standing in his place.
"Eh? eh?" François cried, slapping his thighs gleefully. "Look at dat
Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."
"Go 'way, Chook!" he cried, but Buck refused to budge.
He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled
threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old
dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.
François was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again
displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.
François was angry. "Now, by Gar, I feex you!" he cried, coming
back with a heavy club in his hand.
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THE CALL OF THE WILD
Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and retreated slowly;
nor did he attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought
forward. But he circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling with
bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club so as to
dodge it if thrown by François, for he was become wise in the way of
clubs.
The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was
ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two or
three steps. François followed him up, whereupon he again retreated.
After some time of this, François threw down the club, thinking that
Buck feared a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to
escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It was his by right. He had
earned it, and he would not be content with less.
Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the better
part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him,
and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his seed to come after
him down to the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and
drop of blood in his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and kept out
of their reach. He did not try to run away, but retreated around and
around the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he
would come in and be good.
François sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his
watch and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the
trail an hour gone. François scratched his head again. He shook it and
grinned sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign
that they were beaten. Then François went up to where Sol-leks stood
and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance.
François unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his old place.
The team stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the
trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more François
called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.
"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.
François  complied,  whereupon  Buck  trotted  in,  laughing
triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the team.
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
39
His traces were fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running
they dashed out on to the river trail.
Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils,
he found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a
bound Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was
required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the
superior even of Spitz, of whom François had never seen an equal.
But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that
Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership.
It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil
mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they did
not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all they
cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had
grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great
now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.
Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more
of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was
swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done
he was pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp,
Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly--a thing that Spitz had never
succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior
weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for
mercy.
The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its
old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the
traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were
added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away
François's breath.
"Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!" he cried. "No, nevaire! Heem
worth one t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?"
And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record then, and gaining
day by day. The trail was in excellent condition, well packed and hard,
and there was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It was not too
cold. The temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained there
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THE CALL OF THE WILD
the whole trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on
the jump, with but infrequent stoppages.
The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated with ice, and they
covered in one day going out what had taken them ten days coming in.
In one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge
to the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy
miles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run
towed behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the
second week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope
with the lights of Skaguay and of the shipping at their feet.
It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged
forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and
down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to
drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of
dog-busters and mushers. Then three or four western bad men aspired to
clean out the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and
public interest turned to other idols. Next came official orders. François
called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that
was the last of François and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out of
Buck's life for good.
A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in
company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary
trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy
toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,
carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the
shadow of the Pole.
Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in
it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates,
whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a monotonous
life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was very like
another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, fires were
built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp, others
harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the
darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made.
Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the beds,
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
41
and still others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the dogs were
fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it was good to
loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other
dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were fierce fighters
among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery,
so that when he bristled and showed his teeth, they got out of his way.
Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched
under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking
dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's big
house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement
swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the
Japanese pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the
death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had
eaten or would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very
dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more
potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never
seen before a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the
memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later
days, and still later, in him, quickened and became alive again.
Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it
seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched by
this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook
before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with
muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling.
The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted back
under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very
much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching
in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a
heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and
fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body
there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and
down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a
thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from
the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was a
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THE CALL OF THE WILD
peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness
as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.
At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between
his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his
hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.
And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many
gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be
the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their
bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.
And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the
fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to
rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his
neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the
half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon
the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and
he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.
It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work
wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when
they made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at
least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from
the Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the
drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This
meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for
the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best for the
animals.
Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the
drivers ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the
feet of the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the
beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles,
dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles
will tell upon life of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to
their work and maintaining discipline, though he too was very tired.
Billee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was
sourer than ever, and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other
side.
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
43
But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gone
wrong with him. He became more morose and irritable, and when camp
was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of
the harness and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-up
time in the morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden
stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with
pain. The driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers
became interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-time, and over
their last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a
consultation. He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed
and prodded till he cried out many times. Something was wrong inside,
but they could locate no broken bones, could not make it out.
By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was
falling repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and
took him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled.
His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled. Sick
as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling while
the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when he
saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the
pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear
that another dog should do his work.
When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the
beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and
trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving to
leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the while
whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed tried
to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging
lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run
quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but
continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was
most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell,
howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.
With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along
behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds
to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a
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THE CALL OF THE WILD
moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he
returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with
remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in
surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He
called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of
Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his
proper place.
He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed.
His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being
denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known,
where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were
cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he
was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more
than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt.
Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the
sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.
But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place
for him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up
time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on his
feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly
toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would
advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching
movement, when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again
for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw
of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they
could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a
belt of river timber.
Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his
steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot
rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells
tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and
every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.