Project Gutenberg
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London

Chapter III

The Dominant Primordial Beast


The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the
fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a
secret growth.  His newborn cunning gave him poise and control.
He was too busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease,
and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever
possible.  A certain deliberateness characterized his attitude.
He was not prone to rashness and precipitate action; and in the
bitter hatred between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience,
shunned all offensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous
rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth.  He
even went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to
start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the
other.  Early in the trip this might have taken place had it not
been for an unwonted accident.  At the end of this day they made a
bleak and miserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge.  Driving
snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness had
forced them to grope for a camping place.  They could hardly have
fared worse.  At their backs rose a perpendicular wall of rock,
and Perrault and Francois were compelled to make their fire and
spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself.  The
tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light.  A few
sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed down
through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest.  So snug
and warm was it, that he was loath to leave it when Francois
distributed the fish which he had first thawed over the fire.  But
when Buck finished his ration and returned, he found his nest
occupied.  A warning snarl told him that the trespasser was Spitz.
Till now Buck had avoided trouble with his enemy, but this was too
much.  The beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury
which surprised them both, and Spitz particularly, for his whole
experience with Buck had gone to teach him that his rival was an
unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own only because of
his great weight and size.

Francois was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from
the disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble.  "A-a-
ah!" he cried to Buck.  "Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem,
the dirty t'eef!"

Spitz was equally willing.  He was crying with sheer rage and
eagerness as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in.
Buck was no less eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise
circled back and forth for the advantage.  But it was then that
the unexpected happened, the thing which projected their struggle
for supremacy far into the future, past many a weary mile of trail
and toil.

An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony
frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of
pandemonium.  The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with
skulking furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of
them, who had scented the camp from some Indian village.  They had
crept in while Buck and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men
sprang among them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and
fought back.  They were crazed by the smell of the food.  Perrault
found one with head buried in the grub-box.  His club landed
heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box was capsized on the
ground.  On the instant a score of the famished brutes were
scrambling for the bread and bacon.  The clubs fell upon them
unheeded.  They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but
struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been
devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their
nests only to be set upon by the fierce invaders.  Never had Buck
seen such dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst
through their skins.  They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in
draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs.  But the
hunger-madness made them terrifying, irresistible.  There was no
opposing them.  The team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at
the first onset.  Buck was beset by three huskies, and in a trice
his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed.  The din was
frightful.  Billee was crying as usual.  Dave and Sol-leks,
dripping blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side
by side.  Joe was snapping like a demon.  Once, his teeth closed
on the fore leg of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone.
Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking
its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buck got a
frothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when
his teeth sank through the jugular.  The warm taste of it in his
mouth goaded him to greater fierceness.  He flung himself upon
another, and at the same time felt teeth sink into his own throat.
It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.

Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part of the camp,
hurried to save their sled-dogs.  The wild wave of famished beasts
rolled back before them, and Buck shook himself free.  But it was
only for a moment.  The two men were compelled to run back to save
the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the
team.  Billee, terrified into bravery, sprang through the savage
circle and fled away over the ice.  Pike and Dub followed on his
heels, with the rest of the team behind.  As Buck drew himself
together to spring after them, out of the tail of his eye he saw
Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention of overthrowing
him.  Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies, there was
no hope for him.  But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in
the forest.  Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight.  There
was not one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some
were wounded grievously.  Dub was badly injured in a hind leg;
Dolly, the last husky added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn
throat; Joe had lost an eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with
an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout
the night.  At daybreak they limped warily back to camp, to find
the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers.  Fully half
their grub supply was gone.  The huskies had chewed through the
sled lashings and canvas coverings.  In fact, nothing, no matter
how remotely eatable, had escaped them.  They had eaten a pair of
Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces,
and even two feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip.  He
broke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded
dogs.

"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose
many bites.  Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh,
Perrault?"

The courier shook his head dubiously.  With four hundred miles of
trail still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have
madness break out among his dogs.  Two hours of cursing and
exertion got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened
team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest part of
the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the
hardest between them and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open.  Its wild water defied the
frost, and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that
the ice held at all.  Six days of exhausting toil were required to
cover those thirty terrible miles.  And terrible they were, for
every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and
man.  A dozen times, Perrault, nosing the way broke through the
ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so
held that it fell each time across the hole made by his body.  But
a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering fifty below zero,
and each time he broke through he was compelled for very life to
build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him.  It was because nothing daunted him that he
had been chosen for government courier.  He took all manner of
risks, resolutely thrusting his little weazened face into the
frost and struggling on from dim dawn to dark.  He skirted the
frowning shores on rim ice that bent and crackled under foot and
upon which they dared not halt.  Once, the sled broke through,
with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and all but drowned
by the time they were dragged out.  The usual fire was necessary
to save them.  They were coated solidly with ice, and the two men
kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so
close that they were singed by the flames.

At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after
him up to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his
fore paws on the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping
all around.  But behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward,
and behind the sled was Francois, pulling till his tendons
cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no
escape except up the cliff.  Perrault scaled it by a miracle,
while Francois prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong
and sled lashing and the last bit of harness rove into a long
rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to the cliff crest.
Francois came up last, after the sled and load.  Then came the
search for a place to descend, which descent was ultimately made
by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the river
with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was
played out.  The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but
Perrault, to make up lost time, pushed them late and early.  The
first day they covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the
next day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon; the third day
forty miles, which brought them well up toward the Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the
huskies.  His had softened during the many generations since the
day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river
man.  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 Francois had to bring to him.  Also, the
dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after
supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins to make four
moccasins for Buck.  This was a great relief, and Buck caused even
the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one
morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his
back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to
budge without them.  Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and
the worn-out foot-gear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who
had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad.  She
announced her condition by a long, heartbreaking wolf howl that
sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck.
He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear
madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it
in a panic. Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and
frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was
his terror, nor could he leave her, so great was her madness.  He
plunged through the wooded breast of the island, flew down to the
lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice to another
island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and
in desperation started to cross it.  And all the time, though he
did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind.
Francois called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled
back, still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting
all his faith in that Francois would save him.  The dog-driver
held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck shot past him the axe
crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.

Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for
breath, helpless.  This was Spitz's opportunity.  He sprang upon
Buck, and twice his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped
and tore the flesh to the bone.  Then Francois's lash descended,
and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz receive the worst
whipping as yet administered to any of the teams.

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

"Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder.  "All de tam I
watch dat Buck I know for sure.  Lissen: some dam fine day heem
get mad lak hell an' den heem chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem
out on de snow.  Sure.  I know."

From then on it was war between them.  Spitz, as lead-dog and
acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by
this strange Southland dog.  And strange Buck was to him, for of
the many Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up
worthily in camp and on trail.  They were all too soft, dying
under the toil, the frost, and starvation.  Buck was the
exception.  He alone endured and prospered, matching the husky in
strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he was a masterful dog, and
what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in
the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out of
his desire for mastery.  He was preeminently cunning, and could
bide his time with a patience that was nothing less than
primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck
wanted it.  He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had
been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the
trail and trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the
last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and
breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness.  This was
the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all
his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp,
transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining,
eager, ambitious creatures; the pride that spurred them on all day
and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fall back
into gloomy unrest and uncontent.  This was the pride that bore up
Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked
in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible
lead-dog.  And this was Buck's pride, too.

He openly threatened the other's leadership.  He came between him
and the shirks he should have punished.  And he did it
deliberately.  One night there was a heavy snowfall, and in the
morning Pike, the malingerer, did not appear.  He was securely
hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.  Francois called him and
sought him in vain.  Spitz was wild with wrath. He raged through
the camp, smelling and digging in every likely place, snarling so
frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish
him, Buck flew, with equal rage, in between.  So unexpected was
it, and so shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and
off his feet.  Pike, who had been trembling abjectly, took heart
at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his overthrown leader.  Buck,
to whom fair play was a forgotten code, likewise sprang upon
Spitz.  But Francois, chuckling at the incident while unswerving
in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon Buck
with all his might.  This failed to drive Buck from his prostrate
rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into play.  Half-
stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash laid
upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck
still continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but
he did it craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert
mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased.
Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went
from bad to worse.  Things no longer went right.  There was
continual bickering and jangling.  Trouble was always afoot, and
at the bottom of it was Buck.  He kept Francois busy, for the dog-
driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle
between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and
on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling and strife among
the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe, fearful that
Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into
Dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come.
Here were many men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at
work.  It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs should
work.  All day they swung up and down the main street in long
teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by.  They
hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did
all manner of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley.
Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were
the wild wolf husky breed.  Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie
chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars
leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its
pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the
defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-
drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life,
the articulate travail of existence.  It was an old song, old as
the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a
day when songs were sad.  It was invested with the woe of
unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred.  When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of
living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear
and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and
mystery.  And that he should be stirred by it marked the
completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire
and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped
down the steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled
for Dyea and Salt Water.  Perrault was carrying despatches if
anything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the
travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make the record
trip of the year.  Several things favored him in this.  The week's
rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim.  The
trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later
journeyers.  And further, the police had arranged in two or three
places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was travelling
light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day;
and the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way
to Pelly.  But such splendid running was achieved not without
great trouble and vexation on the part of Francois.  The insidious
revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team.  It
no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces.  The encouragement
Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of petty
misdemeanors.  No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared.
The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging his
authority.  Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped
it down under the protection of Buck.  Another night Dub and Joe
fought Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved.
And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and
whined not half so placatingly as in former days.  Buck never came
near Spitz without snarling and bristling menacingly.  In fact,
his conduct approached that of a bully, and he was given to
swaggering up and down before Spitz's very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in
their relations with one another.  They quarrelled and bickered
more than ever among themselves, till at times the camp was a
howling bedlam.  Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though
they were made irritable by the unending squabbling.  Francois
swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in futile
rage, and tore his hair.  His lash was always singing among the
dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned they
were at it again.  He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team.  Francois knew he was behind
all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever
ever again to be caught red-handed.  He worked faithfully in the
harness, for the toil had become a delight to him; yet it was a
greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight amongst his mates and
tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned
up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed.  In a second the
whole team was in full cry.  A hundred yards away was a camp of
the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the
chase.  The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small
creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily.  It ran
lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs ploughed
through by main strength.  Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around
bend after bend, but he could not gain.  He lay down low to the
race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by
leap, in the wan white moonlight.  And leap by leap, like some
pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives
men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill
things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the
joy to kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more
intimate.  He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the
wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and
wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond
which life cannot rise.  And such is the paradox of living, this
ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete
forgetfulness that one is alive.  This ecstasy, this forgetfulness
of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a
sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken
field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack,
sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive
and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.  He was
sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature
that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.  He
was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of
being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew
in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow
and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly
under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not
move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left
the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made
a long bend around.  Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded
the bend, the frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him,
he saw another and larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging
bank into the immediate path of the rabbit.  It was Spitz.  The
rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in
mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek.  At
sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's apex in
the grip of Death, the fall pack at Buck's heels raised a hell's
chorus of delight.

Buck did not cry out.  He did not check himself, but drove in upon
Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.
They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his
feet almost as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck
down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped
together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for
better footing, with lean and lifting lips that writhed and
snarled.

In a flash Buck knew it.  The time had come.  It was to the death.
As they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful
for the advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of
familiarity.  He seemed to remember it all,--the white woods, and
earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle.  Over the
whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. There was not the
faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the
visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in the
frosty air.  They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit,
these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up
in an expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only
gleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward.  To Buck it was
nothing new or strange, this scene of old time.  It was as though
it had always been, the wonted way of things.

Spitz was a practised fighter.  From Spitzbergen through the
Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own
with all manner of dogs and achieved to mastery over them.  Bitter
rage was his, but never blind rage.  In passion to rend and
destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passion to
rend and destroy.  He never rushed till he was prepared to receive
a rush; never attacked till he had first defended that attack.

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white
dog.  Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were
countered by the fangs of Spitz.  Fang clashed fang, and lips were
cut and bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard.
Then he warmed up and enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes.
Time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life
bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every time Spitz
slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to rushing, as though for
the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in
from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the shoulder of
Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him.  But instead, Buck's
shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and
panting hard.  The fight was growing desperate.  And all the while
the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog
went down.  As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he
kept him staggering for footing.  Once Buck went over, and the
whole circle of sixty dogs started up; but he recovered himself,
almost in mid air, and the circle sank down again and waited.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness--
imagination.  He fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as
well.  He rushed, as though attempting the old shoulder trick, but
at the last instant swept low to the snow and in.  His teeth
closed on Spitz's left fore leg.  There was a crunch of breaking
bone, and the white dog faced him on three legs.  Thrice he tried
to knock him over, then repeated the trick and broke the right
fore leg.  Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz struggled
madly to keep up.  He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes,
lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in
upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten
antagonists in the past. Only this time he was the one who was
beaten.

There was no hope for him.  Buck was inexorable.  Mercy was a
thing reserved for 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.



Chapter IV

Who Has Won to Mastership


"Eh?  Wot I say?  I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils."
This was Francois'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 Francois'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 Francois, 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?" Francois 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.  Francois was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck
again displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.

Francois was angry.  "Now, by Gar, I feex you!" he cried, coming
back with a heavy club in his hand.

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 Francois, 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.
Francois followed him up, whereupon he again retreated.  After
some time of this, Francois 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.

Francois 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.  Francois scratched his head again.  He
shook it and grinned sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his
shoulders in sign that they were beaten. Then Francois went up to
where Sol-leks stood and called to Buck.  Buck laughed, as dogs
laugh, yet kept his distance. Francois 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 Francois
called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.

"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.

Francois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing
triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the
team.  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 Francois 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 Francois'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 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 Francois 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.  Francois called Buck to him,
threw his arms around him, wept over him.  And that was the last
of Francois 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, 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 become 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 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.

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 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.

