The Dominant Primordial Beast

The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierceconditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. Hisnewborn cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy adjusting himselfto the new life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but heavoided them whenever possible. A certain deliberateness characterized hisattitude. He was not prone to rashness and precipitate action; and in thebitter hatred between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, shunned alloffensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous rival, Spitznever lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even went out of his way tobully Buck, striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in thedeath of one or the other. Early in the trip this might have taken place had itnot been for an unwonted accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak andmiserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cutlike a white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a campingplace. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a perpendicularwall of rock, and Perrault and François were compelled to make their fire andspread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent they haddiscarded at Dyea in order to travel light. A few sticks of driftwood furnishedthem with a fire that thawed down through the ice and left them to eat supperin the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm was it,that he was loath to leave it when François distributed the fish which he hadfirst thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his ration and returned, hefound his nest occupied. A warning snarl told him that the trespasser wasSpitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble with his enemy, but this was too much.The beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised themboth, and Spitz particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone toteach him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold hisown only because of his great weight and size.

François was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from the disruptednest and he divined the cause of the trouble. “A-a-ah!” he cried toBuck. “Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem, the dirtyt’eef!”

Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer rage and eagerness as hecircled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less eager, andno less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for the advantage. Butit was then that the unexpected happened, the thing which projected theirstruggle for supremacy far into the future, past many a weary mile of trail andtoil.

An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony frame, and ashrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of pandemonium. The camp wassuddenly discovered to be alive with skulking furry forms,—starvinghuskies, four or five score of them, who had scented the camp from some Indianvillage. They had crept in while Buck and Spitz were fighting, and when the twomen sprang among them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back.They were crazed by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head buriedin the grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-boxwas capsized on the ground. On the instant a score of the famished brutes werescrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them unheeded. Theyyelped and howled under the rain of blows, but struggled none the less madlytill the last crumb had been devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their nests only tobe set upon by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such dogs. It seemed asthough their bones would burst through their skins. They were mere skeletons,draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. But thehunger-madness made them terrifying, irresistible. There was no opposing them.The team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at the first onset. Buck wasbeset by three huskies, and in a trice his head and shoulders were ripped andslashed. The din was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks,dripping blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side. Joewas snapping like a demon. Once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of a husky,and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon thecrippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buckgot a frothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when histeeth sank through the jugular. The warm taste of it in his mouth goaded him togreater fierceness. He flung himself upon another, and at the same time feltteeth sink into his own throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from theside.

Perrault and François, having cleaned out their part of the camp, hurried tosave their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled back before them,and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a moment. The two men werecompelled to run back to save the grub, upon which the huskies returned to theattack on the team. Billee, terrified into bravery, sprang through the savagecircle and fled away over the ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with therest of the team behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them,out of the tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evidentintention of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass ofhuskies, there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock ofSpitz’s charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the forest.Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not one who was notwounded in four or five places, while some were wounded grievously. Dub wasbadly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky added to the team at Dyea,had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye; while Billee, the good-natured,with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout thenight. At daybreak they limped warily back to camp, to find the marauders goneand the two men in bad tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. Thehuskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact,nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten apair of Perrault’s moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leathertraces, and even two feet of lash from the end of François’s whip. Hebroke from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.

“Ah, my frien’s,” he said softly, “mebbe it mek you maddog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t’ink, eh,Perrault?”

The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail stillbetween him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break out among hisdogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses into shape, and thewound-stiffened team was under way, struggling painfully over the hardest partof the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the hardest betweenthem and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost, and itwas in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held at all. Sixdays of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles. Andterrible they were, for every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of lifeto dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault, nosing the way broke through the icebridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it felleach time across the hole made by his body. But a cold snap was on, thethermometer registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he wascompelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he had been chosenfor government courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely thrusting hislittle weazened face into the frost and struggling on from dim dawn to dark. Heskirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent and crackled under foot andupon which they dared not halt. Once, the sled broke through, with Dave andBuck, and they were half-frozen and all but drowned by the time they weredragged out. The usual fire was necessary to save them. They were coatedsolidly 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 toBuck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on theslippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But behind him wasDave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled was François, pullingtill his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape exceptup the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while François prayed for justthat miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and the last bit of harnessrove 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 aplace to descend, which descent was ultimately made by the aid of the rope, andnight found them back on the river with a quarter of a mile to the day’scredit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out. Therest 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 theBig Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon; the third dayforty 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. Hishad softened during the many generations since the day his last wild ancestorwas tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, andcamp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he would not moveto receive his ration of fish, which François had to bring to him. Also, thedog-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 totwist itself into a grin one morning, when François forgot the moccasins andBuck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refusedto budge without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-outfoot-gear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who had never beenconspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She announced her condition by along, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, thensprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have anyreason to fear madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from itin a panic. Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leapbehind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leaveher, so great was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of theisland, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with roughice 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 notlook, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. François called to him aquarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one leap ahead, gaspingpainfully 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 theaxe 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 teethsank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to the bone. ThenFrançois’s lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction of watchingSpitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any of the teams.

“One devil, dat Spitz,” remarked Perrault. “Some dam day heemkeel dat Buck.”

“Dat Buck two devils,” was François’s rejoinder. “Allde tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get madlak hell an’ den heem chew dat Spitz all up an’ spit heem out on desnow. Sure. I know.”

From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as lead-dog and acknowledgedmaster of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by this strange Southlanddog. 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. Healone endured and prospered, matching the husky in strength, savagery, andcunning. Then he was a masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the factthat the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck andrashness out of his desire for mastery. He was preeminently cunning, and couldbide his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted it. Hewanted it because it was his nature, because he had been gripped tight by thatnameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace—that pride whichholds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully inthe harness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness. Thiswas the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all hisstrength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming themfrom sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; thepride 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 pridethat bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirkedin the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning. Likewise it wasthis pride that made him fear Buck as a possible lead-dog. And this wasBuck’s pride, too.

He openly threatened the other’s leadership. He came between him and theshirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night there wasa heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer, did not appear. Hewas securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow. François called him andsought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath. He raged through the camp,smelling and digging in every likely place, snarling so frightfully that Pikeheard and shivered in his hiding-place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him, Buckflew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so shrewdlymanaged, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike, who had beentrembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon hisoverthrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a forgotten code, likewisesprang upon Spitz. But François, chuckling at the incident while unswerving inthe administration of justice, brought his lash down upon Buck with all hismight. This failed to drive Buck from his prostrate rival, and the butt of thewhip was brought into play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backwardand the lash laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished themany times offending Pike.

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck stillcontinued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily,when François was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck, a generalinsubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, butthe rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. Therewas continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at thebottom of it was Buck. He kept François busy, for the dog-driver was inconstant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which heknew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds ofquarrelling and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleepingrobe, fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson onedreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many men, andcountless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the ordained orderof things that dogs should work. All day they swung up and down the main streetin long teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by. They hauledcabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did all manner of workthat horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southlanddogs, 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 weirdand eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in thefrost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song ofthe huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minorkey, 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 breeditself—one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songswere sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaintby which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was withthe pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fearand mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that heshould be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked backthrough the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howlingages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the steepbank 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 hadbrought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make therecord trip of the year. Several things favored him in this. The week’srest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The trail they hadbroken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers. And further, thepolice 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 thesecond day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But suchsplendid running was achieved not without great trouble and vexation on thepart of François. The insidious revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarityof the team. It no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces. Theencouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of pettymisdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared. The old awedeparted, and they grew equal to challenging his authority. Pike robbed him ofhalf a fish one night, and gulped it down under the protection of Buck. Anothernight Dub and Joe fought Spitz and made him forego the punishment theydeserved. And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whinednot half so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz withoutsnarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that of abully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz’s verynose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their relationswith 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 wereunaltered, though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling. Françoisswore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in futile rage, and torehis hair. His lash was always singing among the dogs, but it was of smallavail. Directly his back was turned they were at it again. He backed up Spitzwith his whip, while Buck backed up the remainder of the team. François knew hewas behind all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever everagain to be caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for thetoil had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly toprecipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a snowshoerabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team was in full cry. Ahundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskiesall, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into asmall creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on thesurface of the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck ledthe pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He laydown low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leapby leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frostwraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out fromthe sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelledleaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill—all this wasBuck’s, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the headof the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his ownteeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannotrise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is mostalive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. Thisecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and outof himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a strickenfield and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding theold wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftlybefore him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, andof the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the wombof 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 waseverything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itselfin movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matterthat did not move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack andcut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend around. Buckdid not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost wraith of a rabbitstill flitting before him, he saw another and larger frost wraith leap from theoverhanging bank into the immediate path of the rabbit. It was Spitz. Therabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in mid air itshrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. At sound of this, the cry ofLife plunging down from Life’s apex in the grip of Death, the full packat 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 andover in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as though he had notbeen overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice histeeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away forbetter 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 theycircled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the advantage, thescene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to remember itall,—the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle.Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. There was not thefaintest whisper of air—nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visiblebreaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in the frosty air. They hadmade 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 itwas nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it hadalways been, the wonted way of things.

Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and acrossCanada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs andachieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. Inpassion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passionto 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 thefangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding, but Buckcould not penetrate his enemy’s guard. Then he warmed up and envelopedSpitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried for the snow-whitethroat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every timeSpitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to rushing, as though for thethroat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in from the side, hewould drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which tooverthrow him. But instead, Buck’s shoulder was slashed down each time asSpitz leaped lightly away.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. Thefight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circlewaited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck grew winded, Spitz tookto rushing, and he kept him staggering for footing. Once Buck went over, andthe whole circle of sixty dogs started up; but he recovered himself, almost inmid air, and the circle sank down again and waited.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness—imagination. Hefought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as thoughattempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept low to thesnow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz’s left fore leg. There was acrunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three legs. Thrice hetried 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 thesilent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breathsdrifting upward, closing in upon him as he had seen similar circles close inupon beaten antagonists in the past. Only this time he was the one who wasbeaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing reserved forgentler climes. He manœuvred for the final rush. The circle had tightened tillhe 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 eyesfixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every animal was motionless as thoughturned to stone. Only Spitz quivered and bristled as he staggered back andforth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten off impendingdeath. Then Buck sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at lastsquarely met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow asSpitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion,the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good.