第11章 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST(3)

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 Francois' lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any of the team.

"One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault."Some dam day him kill dat Buck.""Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder."All de time I watch dat Buck I know for sure.Lissen: some dam fine day him get mad like hell and den him chew dat Spitz all up and spit him out on de snow.Sure, Iknow."

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.F 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.E 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 discontent.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.Francois 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 Francois, 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 Francois 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 Francois 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 quarreling 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, and three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.