Bab Bab 1 · Into the Primitive

. Into the Primitive

“Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom’s chain;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain.”

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble

was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog,

strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San

Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow

metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming

the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men

wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong

muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the

frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge

Miller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden

among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide

cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached

by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns

and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things

were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great

stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad

servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long

grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there

was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank

where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in

the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he

had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other

dogs. There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they

did not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or

lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of

Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,—strange

creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On

the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least,

who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the

windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with

brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.

He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s

sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long

twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the

Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s

grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their

footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable

yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.

Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he

utterly ignored, for he was king,—king over all creeping, crawling,

flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable

companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was

not so large,—he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,—for his

mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred

and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good

living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right

royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived

the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was

even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become

because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not

becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor

delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as

to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a

health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the

Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North.

But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel,

one of the gardener’s helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel

had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his

gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this

made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while

the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife

and numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers’ Association, and the

boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of

Manuel’s treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard

on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a

solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known

as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between

them.

“You might wrap up the goods before you deliver ’m,” the stranger said

gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck’s neck

under the collar.

“Twist it, an’ you’ll choke ’m plentee,” said Manuel, and the stranger

grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an

unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and

to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the

ends of the rope were placed in the stranger’s hands, he growled

menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride

believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope

tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he

sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the

throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope

tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue

lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in

all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life

had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he

knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into

the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and

that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse

shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He

had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of

riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the

unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but

Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they

relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

“Yep, has fits,” the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the

baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. “I’m

takin’ ’m up for the boss to ’Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks

that he can cure ’m.”

Concerning that night’s ride, the man spoke most eloquently for

himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water

front.

“All I get is fifty for it,” he grumbled; “an’ I wouldn’t do it over

for a thousand, cold cash.”

His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser

leg was ripped from knee to ankle.

“How much did the other mug get?” the saloon-keeper demanded.

“A hundred,” was the reply. “Wouldn’t take a sou less, so help me.”

“That makes a hundred and fifty,” the saloon-keeper calculated; “and

he’s worth it, or I’m a squarehead.”

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated

hand. “If I don’t get the hydrophoby—”

“It’ll be because you was born to hang,” laughed the saloon-keeper.

“Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight,” he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life

half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But

he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing

the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed,

and he was flung into a cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath

and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did

they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent

up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by

the vague sense of impending calamity. Several times during the night

he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see

the Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face

of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a

tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck’s

throat was twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men

entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for

they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed

and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks

at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that

that was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed

the crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he

was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the

express office took charge of him; he was carted about in another

wagon; a truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels,

upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great

railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail

of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate

nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express

messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When he

flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at

him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs,

mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he

knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger

waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of

water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch.

For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment

had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his

parched and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given

them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.

They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was

resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during

those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath

that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned

blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed

was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the

express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the

train at Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small,

high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged

generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.

That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled

himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a

hatchet and a club.

“You ain’t going to take him out now?” the driver asked.

“Sure,” the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.

There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried

it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the

performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging

and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was

there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get

out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

“Now, you red-eyed devil,” he said, when he had made an opening

sufficient for the passage of Buck’s body. At the same time he dropped

the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for

the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his

blood-shot eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and

forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and

nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he

received a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together

with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his

back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did

not understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was

again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came

and he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware

that it was the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he

charged, and as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to

rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth

and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver.

Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on

the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the

exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its

ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the

club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the

same time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete

circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on

his head and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had

purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down,

knocked utterly senseless.

“He’s no slouch at dog-breakin’, that’s wot I say,” one of the men on

the wall cried enthusiastically.

“Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays,” was the reply of

the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck’s senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where he

had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.

“‘Answers to the name of Buck,’” the man soliloquized, quoting from the

saloon-keeper’s letter which had announced the consignment of the crate

and contents. “Well, Buck, my boy,” he went on in a genial voice,

“we’ve had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let

it go at that. You’ve learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good

dog and all ’ll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I’ll

whale the stuffin’ outa you. Understand?”

As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly

pounded, and though Buck’s hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the

hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he

drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by

chunk, from the man’s hand.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for

all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned

the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was

a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,

and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a

fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it

with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by,

other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and

some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched

them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and

again, as he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven

home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed,

though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty,

though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged

their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would

neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for

mastery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly,

and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such

times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of

the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never

came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was

glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who

spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which

Buck could not understand.

“Sacredam!” he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. “Dat one dam bully

dog! Eh? How moch?”

“Three hundred, and a present at that,” was the prompt reply of the man

in the red sweater. “And seem’ it’s government money, you ain’t got no

kick coming, eh, Perrault?”

Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed

skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an

animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its

despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at

Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand—“One in ten t’ousand,” he

commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a

good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened

man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as

Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the _Narwhal_,

it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken

below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called

François. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but François was

a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new

kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and

while he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew

honestly to respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and

François were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice,

and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the ’tween-decks of the _Narwhal_, Buck and Curly joined two other

dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had

been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied a

Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous

sort of way, smiling into one’s face the while he meditated some

underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck’s food at

the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of François’s

whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing

remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of François, he

decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck’s estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not

attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow,

and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone,

and further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone.

“Dave” he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times,

and took interest in nothing, not even when the _Narwhal_ crossed Queen

Charlotte Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing

possessed. When Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he

raised his head as though annoyed, favored them with an incurious

glance, yawned, and went to sleep again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller,

and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that

the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the

propeller was quiet, and the _Narwhal_ was pervaded with an atmosphere

of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a

change was at hand. François leashed them and brought them on deck. At

the first step upon the cold surface, Buck’s feet sank into a white

mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of

this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but

more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up

on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This

puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers

laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was

his first snow.