Chapter III. The Dominant Primordial Beast

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. There was hatred between him and Spitz, but he did not demonstrate it.

On the other hand, Spitz never missed an opportunity of showing his teeth. He constantly wanted to start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the other.

At the end of one day they made a camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. At their backs there was a perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Francois had to make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent they had left at Dyea in order to travel light.

Close to the rock Buck made his nest. But after supper, when Buck finished his meal and returned, he found his nest occupied by Spitz. This was too much. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both.

Spitz was crying with pure rage as he circled looking for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less cautious. But then the unexpected happened, and their struggle for supremacy was postponed far into the future.

There appeared hungry huskies, who had scented the camp from some Indian village. When the two men sprang among them with clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed by the smell of food. In an instant, they ate bread and bacon. They cried under the rain of blows, but struggled madly till the last piece had been eaten.

Never had Buck seen such dogs. They were just skeletons. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying. Buck was attacked by three huskies. He and his mates fought bravely. When Buck’s teeth went through an enemy’s artery, the warm taste of it in his mouth made him fiercer. He flung himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sank into his own throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.

Perrault and Francois hurried to save their sled-dogs. The hungry beasts fled, and for a moment Buck was free. But the two men had to run back to save the food, after which the huskies returned to attack the team. Billee sprang through the circle and fled away over the ice. The rest of the team followed. When Buck wanted to run after them, he saw Spitz rush upon him with the obvious intention of overthrowing him. If he fell under that mass of huskies, there would be no hope for him. But he managed to join the others in the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together in the forest. Though the huskies did not follow them, each of them was wounded in four or five places, and some seriously. In the morning they returned to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad mood. Half of their food was gone. In fact, nothing, no matter how eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault’s moccasins, parts of the leather traces, and even two feet from the end of Francois’s whip.

“Ah, my friends,” he said softly, looking at his wounded dogs, “maybe it’ll make you mad dogs, those many bites. What d’you think, Perrault?”

The courier shook his head. With four hundred miles of trail between him and Dawson, he could not afford to have madness break out among his dogs.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost. Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles, where every step was risky for life to dog and man. The thermometer registered fifty below zero, and each time Perrault broke through ice and water he had to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing frightened him. That is why he had been chosen for government courier. Now ice bent and crackled under foot, so they did not dare to stop, fearing to go through.

Once, the sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and practically drowned by the time they were dragged out. At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up to Buck, who pulled backward with all his strength, with Dave and François helping him from behind.

By the time they got to the Hootalinqua and good ice, the dogs were exhausted. In three days they made one hundred and ten miles.

Buck’s feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had softened during the many generations since his last wild ancestor was tamed. In a camp, he lay and could not move, and Francois even had to bring food 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 even made Perrault smile one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving in the air, and refused to get up without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly went suddenly mad. She gave a long, terrible wolf howl and then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a dog go mad, yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it in panic, with Dolly, with foaming mouth, behind him. Francois called to him a quarter of a mile away and he ran back, one leap ahead of her, putting all his faith in that Francois would save him. The dog-driver held the axe in his hand, and as Buck flashed past him, the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly’s head.

Buck was exhausted and helpless. This was Spitz’s opportunity. He tried to spring at Buck, but François whipped him.

“One devil, that Spitz,” remarked Perrault. “Some day he’ll kill that Buck.”

“That Buck is two devils,” was Francois’s answer. “Listen: some fine day he’ll chew that Spitz all up and spit him out on the snow. Sure. I know.”

From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as a lead-dog, felt his supremacy threatened. Buck was strange to him, because of the many Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and on trail. Buck was the exception. 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 blindness out of his desire for mastery.

It was clear that the struggle for leadership should come. Buck wanted it because it was his nature, because he was in the power of that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace – that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last breath, which makes them die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave and Solleks. It was this pride that made Spitz fear Buck as a possible lead-dog. And now this was Buck’s pride, too. He openly threatened Spitz’s leadership. He often stood between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it smartly, when Francois was not around.

Finally, one afternoon they came to Dawson. Here were many men and dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed normal here that dogs should do all kinds of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. And every night they sang a song, strange and dark, and Buck joined delightedly.

Seven days from the time they came to Dawson they got to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault now had more urgent despatches than those he had brought in; also, he wanted to make the record trip of the year. Several things helped him in this. The week’s rest had put the dogs in order. The trail was packed hard by previous travellers. Moreover, the police had arranged in two or three places deposits of food for dog and man, and he was travelling light.

In two days they were at the Yukon and on their way to Pelly. But it was achieved not without great trouble. The revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team. They no longer worked as one dog. No more was Spitz a leader to be feared.

The breaking down of discipline also affected the dogs in their relations with one another. They quarrelled more among themselves. Only Dave and Solleks did not change, though they were made irritable. Francois swore, and stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. He knew Buck was behind all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever to be caught.

One night after supper, Dub turned up a rabbit. In a second the whole team was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, and their fifty huskies who joined the chase. The rabbit ran down the river. Buck led the pack. And leap by leap, like pale ghost, the rabbit flashed on ahead.

All old instincts, the blood thirst, the joy to kill – all this was Buck’s. He was at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, to kill it with his own teeth and wash his muzzle 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. And it came to Buck, leading the pack. He was mastered by the fire of life, the perfect joy of each separate muscle.

But Spitz, always cold and calculating, left the pack and cut across. Buck did not know of this, he only saw the pale ghost of a rabbit still running before him, and then another and larger ghost leap from the overhanging bank into the path of the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in mid air it cried as loudly as a man may cry. It was the cry of Life going down from Life’s summit to Death. The pack behind Buck raised a chorus of delight.

Buck did not cry out. He ran upon Spitz. He knew the time had come. It was to the death. As they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, looking for a chance, Buck seemed to remember it all, – the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the joy of battle. Nothing moved, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly in the frosty air. The dogs waited. To Buck it was as though it had always been like that.

Spitz was an experienced fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he fought with many dogs and got mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. In passion to destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in the same passion. He never attacked till he had first defended the attack.

In vain Buck tried to sink his teeth in his neck. He took Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes, but each time Spitz slashed him and got away. The same happened when he tried for the shoulder.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was all in blood and breathing hard. The fight was becoming desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off the dog that would go down. Once Buck fell, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started up; but he got up, and the circle sank down again and waited.

Buck possessed such a rare quality as imagination. He rushed, as though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant went low to the snow and his teeth closed on Spitz’s left fore leg. The bone was broken. Then Buck repeated the trick and broke the right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz fought madly. He saw the silent circle closing in upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon his beaten enemies in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Mercy was a thing for other places. Buck maneuvered for the final rush. A pause fell, every animal was motionless as if they turned to stone. Only Spitz bristled as he went back and forth, snarling horribly, as though to frighten off his coming death. Then Buck sprang in and out. The circle became a dot on the snow as Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who killed and found it good.