The call of the wild
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.
Chapter IV. Who Has Won to Mastership
“Eh? Wot I say? I spik true w’en I say dat Buck two devils.” This was
François’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 François’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 François, 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?” François 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.
François was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again displaced
Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.
François 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 François, 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. François followed him up, whereupon he again
retreated. After some time of this, François 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.
François sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his watch