Bab Bab 3 · The Dominant Primordial Beast

. 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 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

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

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 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 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, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog

bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a

dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew

that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. Straight away

he raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could

she gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so

great was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the

island, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with

rough ice to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the

main river, and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time,

though he did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap

behind. 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 teams.

“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

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. 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 fair play 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 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 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

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 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.

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 gentler climes. He manœuvred 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.