第12章 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST(4)

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, 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 breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred.When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery.And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Yea and Salt Water.Perrault was carrying dispatches if anything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make the record trip of the year.Several things favored him in this.The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim.The trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers.And further, the police had arranged in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was traveling light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.

But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and vexation on the part of Francois.The insidious revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team.It no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces.The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of petty misdemeanors.No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared.

The old awe departed, and they grew equal to 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 quarreled 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.Francois 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.Francois 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 plowed 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 bloodlust, 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.