The call of the wild
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