Chapter II. The Law of Club and Fang

Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Everyhour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenlyjerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart ofthings primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, withnothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, norrest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, andevery moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperativeneed to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not towndogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law butthe law of club and fang. He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought,and his first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It istrue, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have livedto profit by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped near thelog store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to ahusky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so largeas she. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, ametallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly's facewas ripped open from eye to jaw. It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; butthere was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran tothe spot and surrounded the combatants in an intent and silentcircle. Buck did not comprehend that silent intentness, nor theeager way with which they were licking their chops. Curly rushedher antagonist, who struck again and leaped aside. He met hernext rush with his chest, in a peculiar fashion that tumbled heroff her feet. She never regained them, This was what theonlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony,beneath the bristling mass of bodies. So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback.He saw Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had oflaughing; and he saw Francois, swinging an axe, spring into themess of dogs. Three men with clubs were helping him to scatterthem. It did not take long. Two minutes from the time Curly wentdown, the last of her assailants were clubbed off. But she laythere limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow, almostliterally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing over herand cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck totrouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play.Once down, that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it thathe never went down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again,and from that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathlesshatred. Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragicpassing of Curly, he received another shock. Francois fastenedupon him an arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness,such as he had seen the grooms put on the horses at home. And ashe had seen horses work, so he was set to work, hauling Francoison a sled to the forest that fringed the valley, and returningwith a load of firewood. Though his dignity was sorely hurt bythus being made a draught animal, he was too wise to rebel. Hebuckled down with a will and did his best, though it was all newand strange. Francois was stem, demanding instant obedience, andby virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience; while Dave, whowas an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quarters wheneverhe was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced, andwhile he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproofnow and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerkBuck into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and underthe combined tuition of his two mates and Francois made remarkableprogress. Ere they returned to camp he knew enough to stop at"ho," to go ahead at "mush," to swing wide on the bends, and tokeep clear of the wheeler when the loaded sled shot downhill attheir heels. "T'ree vair' good dogs," Francois told Perrault. "Dat Buck, heempool lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt'ing." By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail withhis despatches, returned with two more dogs. "Billee" and "Joe"he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of theone mother though they were, they were as different as day andnight. Billee's one fault was his excessive good nature, whileJoe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with aperpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them incomradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded tothrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tailappeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of noavail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz's sharp teethscored his flank. But no matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirledaround on his heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back,lips writhing and snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as hecould snap, and eyes diabolically gleaming--the incarnation ofbelligerent fear. So terrible was his appearance that Spitz wasforced to forego disciplining him; but to cover his owndiscomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing Billee anddrove him to the confines of the camp. By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long andlean and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye whichflashed a warning of prowess that commanded respect. He wascalled Sol-leks, which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he askednothing, gave nothing, expected nothing; and when he marchedslowly and deliberately into their midst, even Spitz left himalone. He had one peculiarity which Buck was unlucky enough todiscover. He did not like to be approached on his blind side. Ofthis offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledgehe had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks whirled upon him andslashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down.Forever after Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last oftheir comradeship had no more trouble. His only apparentambition, like Dave's, was to be left alone; though, as Buck wasafterward to learn, each of them possessed one other and even morevital ambition. That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent,illumined by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the whiteplain; and when he, as a matter of course, entered it, bothPerrault and Francois bombarded him with curses and cookingutensils, till he recovered from his consternation and fledignominiously into the outer cold. A chill wind was blowing thatnipped him sharply and bit with especial venom into his woundedshoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to sleep, but thefrost soon drove him shivering to his feet. Miserable anddisconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents, only to findthat one place was as cold as another. Here and there savage dogsrushed upon him, but he bristled his neck-hair and snarled (for hewas learning fast), and they let him go his way unmolested. Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his ownteam-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they haddisappeared. Again he wandered about through the great camp,looking for them, and again he returned. Were they in the tent?No, that could not be, else he would not have been driven out.Then where could they possibly be? With drooping tail andshivering body, very forlorn indeed, he aimlessly circled thetent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore legs and hesank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back,bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But afriendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back toinvestigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, andthere, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. Hewhined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good willand intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lickBuck's face with his warm wet tongue. Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buckconfidently selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effortproceeded to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat from hisbody filled the confined space and he was asleep. The day hadbeen long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably,though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams. Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the wakingcamp. At first he did not know where he was. It had snowedduring the night and he was completely buried. The snow wallspressed him on every side, and a great surge of fear swept throughhim--the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a token thathe was harking back through his own life to the lives of hisforebears; for he was a civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog,and of his own experience knew no trap and so could not of himselffear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted spasmodicallyand instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders stood onend, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into theblinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Erehe landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before himand knew where he was and remembered all that had passed from thetime he went for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug forhimself the night before. A shout from Francois hailed his appearance. "Wot I say?" thedog-driver cried to Perrault. "Dat Buck for sure learn queek asanyt'ing." Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government,bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the bestdogs, and he was particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck. Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making atotal of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passedthey were in harness and swinging up the trail toward the DyeaCanon. Buck was glad to be gone, and though the work was hard hefound he did not particularly despise it. He was surprised at theeagerness which animated the whole team and which was communicatedto him; but still more surprising was the change wrought in Daveand Sol-leks. They were new dogs, utterly transformed by theharness. All passiveness and unconcern had dropped from them.They were alert and active, anxious that the work should go well,and fiercely irritable with whatever, by delay or confusion,retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed the supremeexpression of their being, and all that they lived for and theonly thing in which they took delight. Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of him was Buck,then came Sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead,single file, to the leader, which position was filled by Spitz. Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and Sol-leks so thathe might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they wereequally apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error,and enforcing their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave wasfair and very wise. He never nipped Buck without cause, and henever failed to nip him when he stood in need of it. AsFrancois's whip backed him up, Buck found it to be cheaper to mendhis ways than to retaliate, Once, during a brief halt, when he gottangled in the traces and delayed the start, both Dave and Sol-leks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. Theresulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keepthe traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well hadhe mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him.Francois's whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honoredBuck by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them. It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through Sheep Camp, pastthe Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdriftshundreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, whichstands between the salt water and the fresh and guardsforbiddingly the sad and lonely North. They made good time downthe chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct volcanoes,and late that night pulled into the huge camp at the head of LakeBennett, where thousands of goldseekers were building boatsagainst the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made his holein the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all tooearly was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with hismates to the sled. That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but thenext day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail,worked harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perraulttravelled ahead of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes tomake it easier for them. Francois, guiding the sled at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places with him, but not often.Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself on his knowledge ofice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall ice was verythin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all. Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces.Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawnfound them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behindthem. And always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bitof fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous.The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration foreach day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and sufferedfrom perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because theyweighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only ofthe fish and managed to keep in good condition. He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his oldlife. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first,robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it.While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing downthe throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast asthey; and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was not abovetaking what did not belong to him. He watched and learned. Whenhe saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief,slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, heduplicated the performance the following day, getting away withthe whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he wasunsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was alwaysgetting caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed. This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostileNorthland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacityto adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which wouldhave meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, thedecay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and ahandicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all wellenough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, torespect private property and personal feelings; but in theNorthland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such thingsinto account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them hewould fail to prosper. Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, andunconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life.All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from afight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten intohim a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he couldhave died for a moral consideration, say the defence of JudgeMiller's riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilizationwas now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of amoral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal forjoy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did notrob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect forclub and fang. In short, the things he did were done because itwas easier to do them than not to do them. His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles becamehard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. Heachieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eatanything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, onceeaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particleof nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches ofhis body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues.Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearingdeveloped such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintestsound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned tobite the ice out with his teeth when it collected between histoes; and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of iceover the water hole, he would break it by rearing and striking itwith stiff fore legs. His most conspicuous trait was an ability toscent the wind and forecast it a night in advance. No matter howbreathless the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the windthat later blew inevitably found him to leeward, sheltered andsnug. And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long deadbecame alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him.In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to thetime the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest andkilled their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him tolearn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. Inthis manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened theold life within him, and the old tricks which they had stampedinto the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to himwithout effort or discovery, as though they had been his always.And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a starand howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust,pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries andthrough him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadenceswhich voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of thestiffness, and the cold, and dark. Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient songsurged through him and he came into his own again; and he camebecause men had found a yellow metal in the North, and becauseManuel was a gardener's helper whose wages did not lap over theneeds of his wife and divers small copies of himself.