The call of the wild
Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he
never went down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from
that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.
Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing of
Curly, he received another shock. François fastened upon him an
arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had
seen the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he had seen horses
work, so he was set to work, hauling François on a sled to the forest
that fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though
his dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was
too wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though
it was all new and strange. François was stern, demanding instant
obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience; while
Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck’s hind quarters
whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,
and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now
and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck
into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined
tuition of his two mates and François made remarkable progress. Ere
they returned to camp he knew enough to stop at “ho,” to go ahead at
“mush,” to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler
when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.
“T’ree vair’ good dogs,” François told Perrault. “Dat Buck, heem pool
lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt’ing.”
By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his
despatches, returned with two more dogs. “Billee” and “Joe” he called
them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother
though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee’s one
fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite,
sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye.
Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz
proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his
tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no
avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz’s sharp teeth scored
his flank. But no matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his
heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and
snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes
diabolically gleaming—the incarnation of belligerent fear. So terrible
was his appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him;
but to cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and
wailing Billee and drove him to the confines of the camp.
By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long and lean
and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye which flashed a
warning of prowess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks,
which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing,
expected nothing; and when he marched slowly and deliberately into
their midst, even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity which
Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did not like to be approached
on his blind side. Of this offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the
first knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks whirled
upon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and
down. Forever after Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last of
their comradeship had no more trouble. His only apparent ambition, like
Dave’s, was to be left alone; though, as Buck was afterward to learn,
each of them possessed one other and even more vital ambition.
That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent,
illumined by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the white plain;
and when he, as a matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and
François bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till he
recovered from his consternation and fled ignominiously into the outer
cold. A chill wind was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with
especial venom into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and
attempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet.
Miserable and disconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents,
only to find that one place was as cold as another. Here and there
savage dogs rushed upon him, but he bristled his neck-hair and snarled
(for he was learning fast), and they let him go his way unmolested.
Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his own
team-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they had disappeared.
Again he wandered about through the great camp, looking for them, and
again he returned. Were they in the tent? No, that could not be, else
he would not have been driven out. Then where could they possibly be?
With drooping tail and shivering body, very forlorn indeed, he
aimlessly circled the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore
legs and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang
back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a
friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A
whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under
the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed
and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured,
as a bribe for peace, to lick Buck’s face with his warm wet tongue.
Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck confidently
selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a
hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined
space and he was asleep. The day had been long and arduous, and he
slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and
wrestled with bad dreams.
Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the waking camp.
At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed during the night
and he was completely buried. The snow walls pressed him on every side,
and a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the wild thing
for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own
life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an
unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so
could not of himself fear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted
spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders
stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into
the blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he
landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before him and
knew where he was and remembered all that had passed from the time he
went for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for himself the
night before.
A shout from François hailed his appearance. “Wot I say?” the
dog-driver cried to Perrault. “Dat Buck for sure learn queek as
anyt’ing.”
Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government,
bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs,
and he was particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.
Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making a
total of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passed they
were in harness and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Cañon. Buck
was glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not
particularly despise it. He was surprised at the eagerness which
animated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still
more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They were
new dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and
unconcern had dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious
that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by
delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed
the supreme expression of their being, and all that they lived for and
the only thing in which they took delight.
Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of him was Buck, then
came Sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead, single file,
to the leader, which position was filled by Spitz.
Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and Sol-leks so that he
might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were equally
apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing
their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and very wise. He
never nipped Buck without cause, and he never failed to nip him when he
stood in need of it. As François’s whip backed him up, Buck found it to
be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during a brief
halt, when he got tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both
Dave and Sol-leks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The
resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the
traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he
mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. François’s whip
snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up
his feet and carefully examining them.
It was a hard day’s run, up the Cañon, through Sheep Camp, past the
Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of
feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between the
salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely
North. They made good time down the chain of lakes which fills the
craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge
camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were
building boats against the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made
his hole in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all
too early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.
That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the next
day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail, worked
harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead of
the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for
them. François, guiding the sled at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged
places with him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided
himself on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for
the fall ice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was
no ice at all.
Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always,
they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them
hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always
they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to
sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of
sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go
nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs.
Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the
life, received a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good
condition.
He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old
life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed
him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was
fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the
others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did
hunger compel him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him.
He watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever
malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault’s back
was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting