The call of the wild
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.
Chapter II. The Law of Club and Fang
Buck’s first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was
filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the
heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No
lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be
bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was
confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.
There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and
men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who
knew no law but the law of club and fang.
He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his
first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was
a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.
Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she,
in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a
full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning,
only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out
equally swift, and Curly’s face was ripped open from eye to jaw.
It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there
was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and
surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not
comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they
were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again
and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar
fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them. This
was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,
snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath
the bristling mass of bodies.
So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback. He saw
Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing; and he
saw François, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men
with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two
minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were
clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody,
trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed
standing over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to
Buck to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play.