chapter iii.the dominant primordial beast the dominant primordial beast was strong inbuck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew.yet it was a secret growth. his newborn cunning gave him poise andcontrol. he was too busy adjusting himself to thenew life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided themwhenever possible. a certain deliberateness characterized hisattitude. he was not prone to rashness andprecipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and spitz he betrayed noimpatience, shunned all offensive acts.
on the other hand, possibly because hedivined in buck a dangerous rival, spitz never lost an opportunity of showing histeeth. he even went out of his way to bully buck,striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one orthe other. early in the trip this might have takenplace had it not been for an unwonted accident. at the end of this day they made a bleakand miserable camp on the shore of lake le barge. driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to
grope for a camping place.they could hardly have fared worse. at their backs rose a perpendicular wall ofrock, and perrault and francois were compelled to make their fire and spreadtheir sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. the tent they had discarded at dyea inorder to travel light. a few sticks of driftwood furnished themwith a fire that thawed down through the ice and left them to eat supper in thedark. close in under the sheltering rock buckmade his nest. so snug and warm was it, that he was loathto leave it when francois distributed the
fish which he had first thawed over thefire. but when buck finished his ration andreturned, he found his nest occupied. a warning snarl told him that thetrespasser was spitz. till now buck had avoided trouble with hisenemy, but this was too much. the beast in him roared. he sprang upon spitz with a fury whichsurprised them both, and spitz particularly, for his whole experience withbuck had gone to teach him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own only because of his greatweight and size.
francois was surprised, too, when they shotout in a tangle from the disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble. "a-a-ah!" he cried to buck."gif it to heem, by gar! gif it to heem, the dirty t'eef!"spitz was equally willing. he was crying with sheer rage and eagernessas he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. buck was no less eager, and no lesscautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for the advantage. but it was then that the unexpectedhappened, the thing which projected their
struggle for supremacy far into the future,past many a weary mile of trail and toil. an oath from perrault, the resoundingimpact of a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breakingforth of pandemonium. the camp was suddenly discovered to bealive with skulking furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of them, whohad scented the camp from some indian village. they had crept in while buck and spitz werefighting, and when the two men sprang among them with stout clubs they showed theirteeth and fought back. they were crazed by the smell of the food.
perrault found one with head buried in thegrub-box. his club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs,and the grub-box was capsized on the ground. on the instant a score of the famishedbrutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon.the clubs fell upon them unheeded. they yelped and howled under the rain ofblows, but struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured. in the meantime the astonished team-dogshad burst out of their nests only to be set upon by the fierce invaders.never had buck seen such dogs.
it seemed as though their bones would burstthrough their skins. they were mere skeletons, draped loosely indraggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. but the hunger-madness made themterrifying, irresistible. there was no opposing them.the team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at the first onset. buck was beset by three huskies, and in atrice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed.the din was frightful. billee was crying as usual.
dave and sol-leks, dripping blood from ascore of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side.joe was snapping like a demon. once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of ahusky, 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, buck got afrothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sankthrough the jugular. the warm taste of it in his mouth goadedhim to greater fierceness. he flung himself upon another, and at thesame time felt teeth sink into his own
throat.it was spitz, treacherously attacking from the side. perrault and francois, having cleaned outtheir part of the camp, hurried to save their sled-dogs. the wild wave of famished beasts rolledback before them, and buck shook himself free.but it was only for a moment. the two men were compelled to run back tosave the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. billee, terrified into bravery, sprangthrough the savage circle and fled away
over the ice.pike and dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the team behind. as buck drew himself together to springafter 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 togetherand sought shelter in the forest. though unpursued, they were in a sorryplight.
there was not one who was not wounded infour or five places, while some were wounded grievously. dub was badly injured in a hind leg; dolly,the last husky added to the team at dyea, had a badly torn throat; joe had lost aneye; while billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, criedand whimpered throughout the night. at daybreak they limped warily back tocamp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers. fully half their grub supply was gone.the huskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings.in fact, nothing, no matter how remotely
eatable, had escaped them. they had eaten a pair of perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from theend of francois's whip. he broke from a mournful contemplation ofit to look over his wounded dogs. "ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe itmek you mad dog, 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 his dogs.
two hours of cursing and exertion got theharnesses into shape, and the wound- stiffened team was under way, strugglingpainfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the hardest between them anddawson. the thirty mile river was wide open. its wild water defied the frost, and it wasin the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held at all.six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles. and terrible they were, for every foot ofthem was accomplished at the risk of life
to dog and man. a dozen times, perrault, nosing the waybroke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he soheld that it fell each time across the hole made by his body. but a cold snap was on, the thermometerregistering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was compelled for verylife to build a fire and dry his garments. nothing daunted him. it was because nothing daunted him that hehad been chosen for government courier. he took all manner of risks, resolutelythrusting his little weazened face into the
frost and struggling on from dim dawn todark. he skirted the frowning shores on rim icethat bent and crackled under foot and upon 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 were dragged out.the usual fire was necessary to save them. they were coated solidly with ice, and thetwo men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close thatthey were singed by the flames. at another time spitz went through,dragging the whole team after him up to buck, who strained backward with all hisstrength, his fore paws on the slippery
edge and the ice quivering and snapping allaround. but behind him was dave, likewise strainingbackward, and behind the sled was francois, pulling till his tendons cracked. again, the rim ice broke away before andbehind, and there was no escape except up the cliff. perrault scaled it by a miracle, whilefrancois prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and thelast bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to thecliff crest. francois came up last, after the sled andload.
then came the search for a place todescend, which descent was ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night foundthem back on the river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit. by the time they made the hootalinqua andgood ice, buck was played out. the rest of the dogs were in likecondition; but perrault, to make up lost time, pushed them late and early. the first day they covered thirty-fivemiles to the big salmon; the next day thirty-five more to the little salmon; thethird day forty miles, which brought them well up toward the five fingers.
buck's feet were not so compact and hard asthe feet of the huskies. his had softened during the manygenerations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller orriver man. all day long he limped in agony, and camponce made, lay down like a dead dog. hungry as he was, he would not move toreceive his ration of fish, which francois had to bring to him. also, the dog-driver rubbed buck's feet forhalf an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins tomake four moccasins for buck. this was a great relief, and buck causedeven the weazened face of perrault to twist
itself into a grin one morning, whenfrancois forgot the moccasins and buck lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused tobudge without them. later his feet grew hard to the trail, andthe worn-out foot-gear was thrown away. at the pelly one morning, as they wereharnessing up, dolly, who had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenlymad. she announced her condition by a long,heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straightfor buck. he had never seen a dog go mad, nor did hehave any reason to fear madness; yet he
knew that here was horror, and fled awayfrom it in a panic. straight away he raced, with dolly, pantingand frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror,nor could he leave her, 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 rough ice toanother island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and indesperation started to cross it. and all the time, though he did not look,he could hear her snarling just one leap behind.
francois called to him a quarter of a mileaway and he doubled back, still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air andputting all his faith in that francois would save him. the dog-driver held the axe poised in hishand, and as buck shot past him the axe 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 teeth sank into his unresisting foe and rippedand tore the flesh to the bone. then francois's lash descended, and buckhad the satisfaction of watching spitz
receive the worst whipping as yetadministered to any of the teams. "one devil, dat spitz," remarked perrault. "some dam day heem keel dat buck.""dat buck two devils," was francois's rejoinder."all de tam i watch dat buck i know for sure. lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lakhell an' den heem chew dat spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow.sure. i know." from then on it was war between them.spitz, as lead-dog and acknowledged master
of the team, felt his supremacy threatenedby this strange southland dog. and strange buck was to him, for of themany 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, andcunning. then he was a masterful dog, and what madehim dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked allblind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery.
he was preeminently cunning, and could bidehis 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 thetrail 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, ofsol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride that laid hold of themat break of camp, transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride thatspurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fallback into gloomy unrest and uncontent. this was the pride that bore up spitz andmade him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces or hid away atharness-up time in the morning. likewise it was this pride that made himfear 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 heshould have punished. and he did it deliberately. one night there was a heavy snowfall, andin 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 anddigging in every likely place, snarling so frightfully that pike heard and shivered inhis hiding-place.
but when he was at last unearthed, andspitz flew at him to punish him, buck flew, with equal rage, in between. so unexpected was it, and so shrewdlymanaged, that spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. pike, who had been trembling abjectly, tookheart 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 incidentwhile unswerving in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon buckwith all his might.
this failed to drive buck from hisprostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into play. half-stunned by the blow, buck was knockedbackward and the lash laid upon him again and again, while spitz soundly punished themany times offending pike. in the days that followed, as dawson grewcloser 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 andincreased. dave and sol-leks were unaffected, but therest 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-driverwas in constant 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 of quarrelling and strife among the other dogsturned 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 tocome. here were many men, and countless dogs, andbuck found them all at work. it seemed the ordained order of things thatdogs should work. all day they swung up and down the mainstreet 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 santaclara valley. here and there buck met southland dogs, butin the main they were the wild wolf husky breed.
every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve,at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it wasbuck's delight to join. with the aurora borealis flaming coldlyoverhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen underits 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 articulatetravail of existence. it was an old song, old as the breeditself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.
it was invested with the woe of unnumberedgenerations, this plaint by which buck was so strangely stirred. when he moaned and sobbed, it was with thepain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mysteryof the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. and that he should be stirred by it markedthe completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to theraw beginnings of life in the howling ages. seven days from the time they pulled intodawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the barracks to the yukon trail, and pulledfor dyea and salt water.
perrault was carrying despatches ifanything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride hadgripped 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 twoor three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was travelling light. they made sixty mile, which is a fifty-milerun, on the first day; and the second day
saw them booming up the yukon well on theirway to pelly. but such splendid running was achieved notwithout 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 thetraces. the encouragement buck gave the rebels ledthem into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. no more was spitz a leader greatly to befeared. the old awe departed, and they grew equalto 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 andmade him forego the punishment they deserved. and even billee, the good-natured, was lessgood-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 abully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before spitz's very nose. the breaking down of discipline likewiseaffected the dogs in their relations with
one another. they quarrelled and bickered more than everamong 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, andstamped 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 atit again.
he backed up spitz with his whip, whilebuck backed up the remainder of the team. francois knew he was behind all thetrouble, and buck knew he knew; but buck was too clever ever again to be caught red-handed. he worked faithfully in the harness, forthe toil 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 nightafter 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 thenorthwest police, with fifty dogs, huskies
all, who joined the chase. the rabbit sped down the river, turned offinto a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. it ran lightly on the surface of the snow,while the dogs ploughed 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, whiningeagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan whitemoonlight. and leap by leap, like some pale frostwraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on
ahead. all that stirring of old instincts which atstated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to killthings by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill-- all this was buck's, only it was infinitelymore 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 washhis muzzle to the eyes in warm blood. there is an ecstasy that marks the summitof life, and beyond which life cannot rise. and such is the paradox of living, thisecstasy comes when one is most alive, and
it comes as a complete forgetfulness thatone is alive. this ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living,comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes tothe soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before himthrough the moonlight. he was sounding the deeps of his nature,and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb oftime. he was mastered by the sheer surging oflife, the tidal wave of being, the perfect
joy of each separate muscle, joint, andsinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flyingexultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move. but spitz, cold and calculating even in hissupreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek madea long bend around. buck did not know of this, and as herounded the bend, the frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he sawanother and larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediatepath of the rabbit.
it was spitz. the rabbit could not turn, and as the whiteteeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. at sound of this, the cry of life plungingdown from life's apex in the grip of death, the fall pack at buck's heels raised ahell's chorus of delight. buck did not cry out. he did not check himself, but drove in uponspitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.they rolled over and over in the powdery snow.
spitz gained his feet almost as though hehad not been overthrown, slashing buck down the shoulder and leaping clear. twice his teeth clipped together, like thesteel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lipsthat writhed and snarled. in a flash buck knew it. the time had come.it was to the death. as they circled about, snarling, ears laidback, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scene came to buck with a sense offamiliarity. he seemed to remember it all,--the whitewoods, and earth, and moonlight, and the
thrill of battle.over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. there was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowlyand lingering in the frosty air. they had made short work of the snowshoerabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in anexpectant circle. they, too, were silent, their eyes onlygleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward.to buck it was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time.
it was as though it had always been, thewonted way of things. spitz was a practised fighter. from spitzbergen through the arctic, andacross canada 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. in passion to rend and destroy, he neverforgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. he never rushed till he was prepared toreceive 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 softerflesh, they were countered by the fangs of spitz. fang clashed fang, and lips were cut andbleeding, but buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard.then he warmed up and enveloped spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, 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 forthe throat, when, suddenly drawing back his
head and curving in from the side, he woulddrive his shoulder at the shoulder of spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. but instead, buck's shoulder was slasheddown each time as spitz leaped lightly away.spitz was untouched, while buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. the fight was growing desperate.and all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dogwent down. as buck grew winded, spitz took to rushing,and he kept him staggering for footing. once buck went over, and the whole circleof sixty dogs started up; but he recovered
himself, almost in mid air, and the circlesank down again and waited. but buck possessed a quality that made forgreatness--imagination. he fought by instinct, but he could fightby head as well. he rushed, as though attempting the oldshoulder trick, but at the last instant swept low to the snow and in.his teeth closed on spitz's left fore leg. there was a crunch of breaking bone, andthe white dog faced him on three legs. thrice he tried to knock him over, thenrepeated the trick and broke the right fore leg. despite the pain and helplessness, spitzstruggled madly to keep up.
he saw the silent circle, with gleamingeyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him as hehad seen similar circles close in upon 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 for gentlerclimes. he manoeuvred for the final rush.the circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. he could see them, beyond spitz and toeither side, half crouching for the spring,
their eyes fixed upon him.a pause seemed to fall. every animal was motionless as thoughturned to stone. only spitz quivered and bristled as hestaggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten offimpending death. then buck sprang in and out; but while hewas 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 successfulchampion, the dominant primordial beast who
had made his kill and found it good.
Coloring Pages Of Animal Jam Arctic Wolf