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The Call of the Wild
Chapter 4. The Dominant Primordial Beast, Part 2
It was unavoidable that the fight for leadership would come, Buck wanted it.
He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been gripped by that nameless, deep pride of the trail and the harness.
That pride holds dogs to their work until their last breath.
It makes them die joyfully in the harness, and it breaks their hearts if they're taken out of it.
This was the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, and of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength.
It was the pride that took hold of them at break of camp, changing them from sour and sullen animals into straining, eager, ambitious creatures.
It was the pride that drove them all day and dropped them at camp at night, letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and unhappiness.
This was the pride that kept Spitz strong and made him beat the sled-dogs who made mistakes or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
And it was also 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 Spitz and the dogs he should have punished.
And he did it on purpose, One night there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the lazy dog, didn't appear.
He was safely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.
Francois called him and looked for him, but he couldn't find him, Spitz was wild with anger.
He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely place, snarling so terribly that Pike heard him and shivered in his hiding-place.
But when he was finally dug out, and Spitz flew at him to punish him, Buck flew in between them with equal rage.
It was so unexpected and so cleverly done that Spitz was thrown backward and knocked off his feet.
Pike, who had been shaking with fear, took courage at this open rebellion and jumped on his fallen leader.
Buck, to whom fair play was a forgotten rule, also jumped on Spitz.
But Francois, laughing at the incident while still being fair in giving out justice, brought his whip down on Buck with all his strength.
That didn't drive Buck away from his fallen enemy, so Francois used the handle of the whip.
Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward, and the whip hit him again and again, while Spitz punished Pike, who had offended many times before.
In the days that followed, as they got closer and closer to Dawson, Buck still continued to interfere between Spitz and the guilty dogs.
But he did it cleverly, when Francois wasn't around.
With Buck's secret rebellion, a general disobedience grew and increased.
Dave and Sol-leks weren't affected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse.
Things no longer went right, there was constant arguing and fighting.
Trouble was always happening, and at the bottom of it was Buck.
He kept Francois busy, because the dog-driver was always afraid of the life-and-death fight between the two that he knew must happen sooner or later.
On more than one night, the sounds of quarreling and fighting among the other dogs made him get out of his sleeping robe.
He was afraid that Buck and Spitz were at it.
But the chance didn't come, and they pulled into Dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come.
There were many men here, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work.
It seemed the natural order of things that dogs should work.
All day they moved up and down the main street in long teams, and at night their jingling bells still went by.
They pulled cabin logs and firewood, carried loads up to the mines, and did all kinds of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley.
Here and there Buck met dogs from the South, but most of them were the wild wolf husky breed.
Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a night song, a strange and eerie chant, in which Buck loved to join.
The northern lights flamed coldly overhead, Stars leaped in a frosty dance.
The land lay numb and frozen under its blanket of snow.
This song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life.
But it was sung in a sad key, with long wails and half-sobs.
And it was more like the pleading of life, the painful cry of existence.
It was an old song, as old as the breed itself.
It was one of the first songs of the younger world, from a time when songs were sad.
It was filled with the sorrow of countless generations, this sad cry that stirred Buck so strangely.
He moaned and sobbed with the pain of living.
This was once the pain of his wild ancestors.
It was also the fear and mystery of the cold and dark.
His being stirred by it showed how completely he had gone back through the ages of fire and shelter.
He had returned to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.
Seven days after arriving in Dawson, they descended the bank by Barracks to Yukon Trail and pulled for Dyea and Salt Water.
Perrault was carrying messages that were even more urgent than the ones he had brought in.
Also, the pride of travel had gripped him, and he planned to make the fastest trip of the year.
Several things helped him, the week's rest had recovered the dogs and put them in perfect condition.
The trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later travelers.
And also, the police had set up supplies for dog and man in two or three places, so he was traveling light.
They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day.
And the second day saw them moving quickly up the Yukon, well on their way to Pelly.
But such great running wasn't achieved without much trouble and annoyance on Francois's part.
The secret rebellion led by Buck had destroyed the unity of the team.
It no longer worked like one dog leaping in the traces.
The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of small misdeeds.
Spitz was no longer a leader to be greatly feared.
The old respect was gone, and they felt able to challenge his authority.
One night, Pike stole half a fish from Spitz and swallowed it down under Buck's protection.
Another night, Dub and Joe fought Spitz and made him give up the punishment they deserved.
And even Billee, the good-natured dog, was less good-natured, and he whined not nearly as peacefully as before.
Buck never came near Spitz without snarling and bristling in a threatening way.
In fact, his behavior was almost like a bully's, and he often walked back and forth right in front of Spitz's nose.
The breakdown of discipline also affected the dogs in their relations with one another.
They quarreled and argued more than ever among themselves, until at times the camp was a howling madhouse.
Only Dave and Sol-leks were unchanged, though they were made irritable by the endless squabbling.
Francois swore strange, wild oaths, and stamped the snow in useless anger, and tore his hair.
His whip was always singing among the dogs, but it did little good.
As soon as his back was turned, they were at it again.
He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck backed up the rest of the team.
Francois knew that Buck was behind all the trouble, and Buck knew that Francois knew.
But Buck was too clever to ever be caught in the act again.
He worked faithfully in the harness, because the work had become a joy to him.
Yet it was an even greater joy to slyly start a fight among his mates and tangle the traces.
At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub found a snowshoe rabbit, missed it, and failed to catch it.
In a second, the whole team was in full chase.
A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, all huskies, who joined the chase.
The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, and held steady up the frozen bed.
It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs struggled through with all their strength.
Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he couldn't catch up.
He lay low to the race, whining eagerly, his beautiful body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the pale white moonlight.
And leap by leap, like some pale frost ghost, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.
All that stirring of old instincts drove men from noisy cities to the forest and plain.
They killed animals with guns, feeling blood lust and the joy to kill.
This was Buck's instinct too, but it was much more personal.
He was running at the head of the pack, chasing the wild thing, the living meat.
He meant to kill it with his own teeth and to wash his muzzle up to the eyes in warm blood.
There's a kind of joy that marks the highest point of life, and beyond which life can't go.
And this is the strange thing about living, this joy comes when one is most alive.
And it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
This joy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and carried away in a sheet of flame.
It comes to the soldier, mad with war on a battlefield and refusing to show mercy.
And it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after living prey that fled before him through the moonlight.
He explored the depths of his nature and parts deeper than himself, going back into the womb of Time.
He was mastered by the pure surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew.
It was everything that wasn't death, heat, motion, and the bright pulse of life.
It was glowing and wild, expressing itself in movement, flying joyfully under the stars and over the face of dead matter that didn't move.
But Spitz, cold and calculating, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck where the creek made a long bend.
Buck didn't know this, As he rounded the bend, he saw a rabbit's frost ghost still flying before him.
Then a larger frost ghost leaped from the overhanging bank into the rabbit's path, it was Spitz.
The rabbit couldn't turn, and as the white teeth broke its back in mid air, it shrieked as loudly as a wounded man might shriek.
At the sound of this, the cry of Life falling from Life's highest point in the grip of Death rose.
The full pack at Buck's heels raised a hellish chorus of delight.
Buck didn't cry out, he didn't stop himself, but drove into Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.
They rolled over and over in the powdery snow.
Spitz got to his feet almost as though he hadn't been knocked down, slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear.
Twice his teeth clicked like steel trap jaws as he backed away for footing, his thin lifted lips twisted and snarled.
In a flash, Buck knew it, the time had come, it was to the death.
As they circled around, snarling, ears laid back, watching carefully for an advantage, the scene came to Buck with a feeling 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 hung a ghostly calm.
There wasn't the faintest whisper of air.
Nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rose slowly and stayed in the frosty air.
They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these dogs that were hardly tamed wolves.
And now they were drawn up in an expectant circle.
They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward.
To Buck, this scene of old times was nothing new or strange.
It was as though it had always been, the usual way of things.
Spitz was a practiced fighter, seasoned by many battles across ice and snow.
From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own against all kinds of dogs and had become their master.
He had bitter rage, but never blind rage.
In his passion to tear and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy had the same passion to tear and destroy.
He never rushed until he was ready to receive a rush.
He never attacked until he had first defended that attack.
In vain, Buck tried to sink his teeth into the neck of the big white dog.
Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were met by the fangs of Spitz.
Fang clashed against fang, and lips were cut and bleeding, but Buck couldn't get through his enemy's guard.
Then he warmed up and surrounded Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes.
Time and time again, he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled close to the surface.
And each time, Spitz slashed him and got away.
Then Buck started rushing, as though for the throat, when suddenly he pulled his head back and curved in from the side.
He'd drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, like a ram to knock him over.
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 becoming desperate, and all the while, the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down.
As Buck grew short of breath, Spitz started 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 had a quality that made for greatness, imagination.
He fought by instinct, but he could also fight with his head.
He rushed, as though trying the old shoulder trick, but at the last moment swept low to the snow and in.
His teeth closed on Spitz's left front leg.
There was a crunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three legs.
Three times he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and broke the right front leg.
Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz struggled madly to keep up.
He saw the silent circle with gleaming eyes, hanging tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward.
It closed in on him, just as he had seen similar circles close in on beaten enemies in the past.
Only this time, he was the one who was beaten.
There was no hope for him, Buck was unforgiving.
Mercy was something saved for gentler places.
He moved into position for the final rush.
The circle had tightened until he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his sides.
He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed on him.
A pause seemed to fall, Every animal was motionless, as though turned to stone.
Only Spitz shivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with terrible menace, as though to scare off approaching 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.