BUCK did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that

trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-

water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from

Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness,

had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation

companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into

the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were

heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to

protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge

Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden

among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide

cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached

by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading

lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things

were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great

stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad

servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the

pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where

Judge Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot

afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here

he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs.

There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not

count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived

obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the

Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,—strange creatures that

rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand,

there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful

promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and

protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm

was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the

Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on

long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the

Judge's feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge's

grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their

footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable

yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.

Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he

utterly ignored, for he was king,—king over all creeping, crawling,

flying things of Judge Miller's place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's

inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his

father. He was not so large,—he weighed only one hundred and forty

pounds,—for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog.

Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the

dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to

carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his

puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride

in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes

become because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself bynot becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor

delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as

to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health

preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when

the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen

North. But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that

Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance.

Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in

his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this

made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while

the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and

numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and

the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night

of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the

orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the

exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag

station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and

money chinked between them.

"You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm," the stranger

said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's

neck under the collar.

"Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel, and the

stranger grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an

unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and

to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the

ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled

menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride

believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope

tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he

sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the

throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope

tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lollingout of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life

had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so

angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing

when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage

car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting

and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The

hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he

was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation

of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the

unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but

Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they

relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

"Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the

baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. "I'm

takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that

he can cure 'm."

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for

himself, in a little shed, back of a saloon on the San Francisco water

front.

"All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled; "an' I wouldn't do it over for a

thousand, cold cash."

His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right

trouser leg was ripped from knee to ankle.

"How much did the other mug get?" the saloon-keeper demanded.

"A hundred," was the reply. "Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me."

"That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated; "and

he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead."

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his

lacerated hand. "If I don't get the hydrophoby—"

"It'll be because you was born to hang," laughed the saloon-keeper.

"Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight," he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the

life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But

he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filingthe heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed,

and he was flung into a cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath

and wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did

they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him

pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed

by the vague sense of impending calamity. Several times during the

night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to

see the Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face

of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow

candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was

twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men

entered and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for

they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed

and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks

at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that that

was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the

crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was

imprisoned, began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the express

office took charge of him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck

carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry

steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and

finally he was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail

of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate

nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express

messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When

he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at

him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs,

mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he

knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed

and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water

caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever pitch. For that

matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung himinto a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and

swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given

them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.

They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was

resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during

those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath

that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned

bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed

was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the

express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the

train at Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small,

high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged

generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. That

was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself

savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet

and a club.

"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.

"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.

There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had

carried it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to

watch the performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging

and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was

there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get out

as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening

sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped

the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for

the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot

eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds

of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid

air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received a shockthat checked his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing

clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and side. He had

never been struck by a club in his life, and did not understand. With a

snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and

launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought

crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club,

but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as

often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to

rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth

and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then

the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the

nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the

exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its

ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the

club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same

time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete

circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his

head and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had

purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down,

knocked utterly senseless.

"He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot I say," one of the men on

the wall cried enthusiastically.

"Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the

reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where

he had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.

" 'Answers to the name of Buck,' " the man soliloquized, quoting

from the saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of

the crate and contents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial

voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let

it go at that. You've learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog

and all'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll whale

the stuffin' outa you. Understand?"As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly

pounded, and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the

hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he

drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by

chunk, from the man's hand.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once

for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had

learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club

was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,

and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer

aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the

latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs

came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging

and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass

under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as

he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to

Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though

not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he

did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails,

and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate

nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly,

wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater.

And at such times that money passed between them the strangers took

one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they

went, for they never came back; but the fear of the future was strong

upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man

who spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations

which Buck could not understand.

"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam

bully dog! Eh? How moch?"

"Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of the

man in the red sweater. "And seein' it's government money, you ain't

got no kick coming, eh, Perrault?"Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been

boomed skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for

so fine an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor

would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he

looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand—"One in ten

t'ousand," he commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when

Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little

weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater,

and as Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the

Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he

were taken below by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant

called François. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but

François was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They

were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many

more), and while he developed no affection for them, he none the less

grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and

François were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and

too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two

other dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen

who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later

accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.

He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, smiling into one's face

the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he

stole from Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him,

the lash of François's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit

first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was

fair of François, he decided, and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's

estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not

attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow,

and he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and

further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. "Dave" he

was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and tookinterest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte

Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When

Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as

though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and

went to sleep again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller,

and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that

the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the

propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere

of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change

was at hand. François leashed them and brought them on deck. At the

first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy

something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this

white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it

fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his

tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him.

He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed

uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first

snow. first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every

hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly

jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of

things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do

but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's

safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb

were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these

dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of

them, who knew no law but the 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 is true, it was a

vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly

was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her

friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown

wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap

in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and

Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there

was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and

surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not

comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they

were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again

and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar

fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them. This waswhat the onlooking 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 of laughing; and he

saw François, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men

with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two

minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were

clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled

snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing over

her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to trouble

him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fairplay. Once down, that was

the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz

ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment Buck hated

him with a bitter and deathless hatred.

Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing

of Curly, he received another shock. François fastened upon 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 as he had seen horses work,

so he was set to work, hauling François on a sled to the forest that

fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though his

dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too

wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though it

was all new and strange. François was stern, demanding instant

obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience; while

Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quarters

whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,

and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof

now and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck

into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined

tuition of his two mates and François made remarkable progress. Ere

they returned to camp he knew enough to stop at "ho," to go ahead at

"mush," to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler

when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels."T'ree vair' good dogs," François told Perrault. "Dat Buck, heem

pool lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt'ing."

By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his

despatches, returned with two more dogs. "Billee" and "Joe" he called

them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother

though they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one

fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite,

sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck

received them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz

proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail

appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no

avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz's sharp teeth scored his

flank. But no matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels

to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and snarling,

jaws clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes diabolically

gleaming—the incarnation of belligerent fear. So terrible was his

appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him; but to cover

his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing Billee

and drove him to the confines of the camp.

By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long and

lean and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye which flashed

a warning of prowess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks,

which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave

nothing, expected nothing; and when he marched slowly and

deliberately into their midst, even Spitz left him alone. He had one

peculiarity which Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did not like

to be approached on his blind side. Of this offence Buck was unwittingly

guilty, and the first knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when Sol-

leks whirled upon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three

inches up and down. Forever after Buck avoided his blind side, and to

the last of their comradeship had no more trouble. His only apparent

ambition, like Dave's, was to be left alone; though, as Buck was

afterward to learn, each of them possessed one other and even more vital

ambition.That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent,

illumined by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the white plain;

and when he, as a matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and François

bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till he recovered from

his consternation and fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill

wind was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom

into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to

sleep, but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet. Miserable and

disconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents, only to find that

one place was as cold as another. Here and there savage dogs rushed

upon him, but he bristled his neck hair and snarled (for he was learning

fast), and they let him go his way unmolested.

Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his own

team-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they had

disappeared. 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 and shivering body, very forlorn indeed,

he aimlessly circled the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his

fore legs and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He

sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown.

But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate.

A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under

the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and

wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a

bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face with his warm wet tongue.

Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck

confidently selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort

proceeded to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his body

filled the confined space and he was asleep. The day had been 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 waking

camp. At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed during the

night and he was completely buried. The snow walls pressed him onevery side, and a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the

wild thing for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through

his own life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an

unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so

could not of himself fear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted

spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders stood

on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into the

blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he

landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before him and

knew where he was and remembered all that had passed from the time

he went for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for himself the

night before.

A shout from François hailed his appearance. "Wot I say?" the dog-

driver cried to Perrault. "Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt'ing."

Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government,

bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs,

and he was particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.

Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making a

total of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passed they were

in harness and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Cañon. Buck was

glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not

particularly despise it. He was surprised at the eagerness which animated

the whole team, and which was communicated to him; but still more

surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They were new

dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. 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 supreme

expression of their being, and all that they lived for and the only 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 that

he might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were equallyapt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing

their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and very wise. He

never nipped Buck without cause, and he never failed to nip him when

he stood in need of it. As François's whip backed him up, Buck found it

to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during a brief

halt, when he got tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both Dave

and Sol-leks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The

resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the

traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he

mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. François's whip

snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up

his feet and carefully examining them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Cañon, through Sheep Camp, past the

Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of

feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between the

salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely

North. They made good time down the chain of lakes which fills the

craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge

camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands of gold-seekers were

building boats against the breakup of the ice in the spring. Buck made

his hole in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all too

early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his mates

to the sled.

That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the next

day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail, worked

harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead of the

team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them.

François, 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 of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall

ice was very thin, 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 dawn found them

hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always theypitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep

into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of sun-dried

salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go nowhere. He

never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the

other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the life, received

a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good condition.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old

life. 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 down the throats of the

others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger

compel him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him. He

watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever

malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back

was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting

away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was

unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting

caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland

environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to

changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and

terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his

moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for

existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love

and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in

the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things

into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail

to prosper.

Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and

unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his

days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the

club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more

fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a

moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but

the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his abilityto flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide.

He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach.

He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect

for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was

easier to do them than not to do them.

His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became

hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an

internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter

how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach

extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to

the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest

of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing

developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound

and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice

out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when he was

thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he would

break it by rearing and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most

conspicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a night

in advance. No matter how breathless the air when he dug his nest by

tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward,

sheltered and snug.

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead

became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In

vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time

the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed

their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight

with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought

forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old

tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his

tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had

been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose

at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and

dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and

through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences whichvoiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and

the cold, and dark.

Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient song surged

through him and he came into his own again; and he came because men

had found a yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a

gardener's helper whose wages did not lap over the needs of his wife

and divers small copies of himself.dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the

fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret

growth. His new-born cunning gave him poise and control. He

was too busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not

only did he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A

certain deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to

rashness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and

Spitz he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous

rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. 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 or the other.

Early in the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an

unwonted accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and

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 of rock, and Perrault and François were

compelled to make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of

the lake itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel

light. A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed

down through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and

warm was it, that he was loath to leave it when François distributed the

fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his

ration and returned, he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl told

him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble

with his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He

sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz

particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him

that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own

only because of his great weight and size.

François was surprised, too, when they shot out 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

eagerness as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck

was no less eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and

forth for the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected happened,

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 resounding impact of a club upon a bony

frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of

pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with

skulking furry forms—starving huskies, four or five score of them, who

had scented the camp from some Indian village. They had crept in while

Buck and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men sprang among

them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They

were crazed by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head

buried in the grub-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

famished brutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell

upon them unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows,

but struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had 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 burst through their skins.

They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled 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 a trice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed.

The din was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks,

dripping blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by

side. Joe was snapping like a demon. Once his teeth closed on the fore

leg of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the

malingerer, leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a

quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the

throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the

jugular. The warm taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater

fierceness. He flung himself upon another, and at the same time felt

teeth sink into his own throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from

the side.

Perrault and François, having cleaned out their part of the camp,

hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled

back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a

moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub,

upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee,

terrified into bravery, sprang through 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 spring after them, out of

the tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention

of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies,

there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's

charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the

forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not one

who was not wounded in four 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 an eye;

while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons,

cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they limped

warily back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad

tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewedthrough 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 the end of François's whip. He broke from a

mournful contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.

"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe it mek 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 still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness

break out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the

harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way,

struggling painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet

encountered, and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost,

and it was in 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 of them was

accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault,

nosing the way, broke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long

pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across the hole

made by his body. But a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering

fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was compelled for

very life to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he

had been chosen for government courier. He took all manner of risks,

resolutely thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling

on from dim dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice

that bent and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt.

Once, the sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, 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

the two men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing,

so close that they 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 his strength, his forepaws on the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around.

But behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the

sled was François, pulling till his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no

escape except up the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while François

prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and

the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one

by one, to the cliff crest. François came up last, after the sled and load.

Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was

ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the

river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was

played out. The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to

make up lost time, pushed them late and early. The first day they

covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five

more to the Little Salmon; the third day forty miles, which brought them

well up toward the Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies.

His had softened during the many generations since the day his last wild

ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he

limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog.

Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish,

which François had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's

feet for half an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of

his own moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great

relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself

into a grin one morning, when François forgot the moccasins and Buck

lay on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused

to budge without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the

worn-out foot-gear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who

had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She

announced her condition by a long, heart-breaking wolf howl that sent

every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had

never seen a dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness;yet he knew that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic.

Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and 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 the island, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel

filled with rough ice to another island, gained a third island, curved back

to the main river, and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time,

though he did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind.

François called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back,

still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in

that François would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his

hand, 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 ripped and tore the flesh to the

bone. Then François's 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 heem keel

dat Buck."

"Dat Buck two devils," was François's rejoinder. "All de tam I

watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get

mad lak hell 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 threatened by this

strange Southland dog. 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. 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 rashnessout of his desire for mastery. He was preëminently 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 uncontent. 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. François 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 fairplay was a

forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But François, 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 laidupon 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 François 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

François 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 quarrelling 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, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie

chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.

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 thecold 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

Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches 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

travelling 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 François. 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 quarrelled 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. François 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 at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while

Buck backed up the remainder of the team. François 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 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, 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 blood lust, 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.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which

life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes

when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that

one 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 to the 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 him through 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 of Time. He wasmastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect

joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything

that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in

movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead

matter that did not move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the

pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long

bend around. Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the

frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger

frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of

the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth

broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may

shriek. At sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's apex

in the grip of Death, the full pack at Buck's heels raised a hell's chorus

of delight.

Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon

Spitz, 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 he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder

and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of

a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips

that writhed and snarled.

In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As

they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the

advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense 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 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 slowly and lingering

in the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these

dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an

expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming 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, the

wonted way of things.Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic,

and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner

of dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but

never blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his

enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till he

was prepared to receive 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 softer flesh, they were countered by

the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding,

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 time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then

Buck took to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing

back his head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder

at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. 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 growing desperate. And all the while the

silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down.

As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to 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 possessed a quality that made for greatness—imagination.

He fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as

though attempting the old shoulder 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, and the white dog faced him on three legs.

Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and broke the

right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz struggled madly

to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues,

and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him as he had seensimilar circles close in upon beaten antagonists in the past. Only this

time he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing

reserved for gentler climes. He manœuvred 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 to either side, half crouching for

the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every

animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz quivered

and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with horrible

menace, as though to frighten off impending 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.Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils."

This was François's speech next morning when he

discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with wounds. He

drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out.

"Dat Spitz fight lak hell," said Perrault, as he surveyed the gaping

rips and cuts.

"An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was François's answer. "An'

now we make good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure."

While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded the sled, the dog-

driver proceeded to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the place Spitz

would have occupied as leader; but François, not noticing him, brought

Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol-leks was the best

lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury, driving him back and

standing in his place.

"Eh? eh?" François cried, slapping his thighs gleefully. "Look at dat

Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."

"Go 'way, Chook!" he cried, but Buck refused to budge.

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled

threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old

dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.

François was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again

displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.

François was angry. "Now, by Gar, I feex you!" he cried, coming

back with a heavy club in his hand.Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and retreated slowly;

nor did he attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought

forward. But he circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling with

bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club so as to

dodge it if thrown by François, for he was become wise in the way of

clubs.

The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was

ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two or

three steps. François followed him up, whereupon he again retreated.

After some time of this, François threw down the club, thinking that

Buck feared a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to

escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It was his by right. He had

earned it, and he would not be content with less.

Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the better

part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him,

and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his seed to come after

him down to the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and

drop of blood in his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and kept out

of their reach. He did not try to run away, but retreated around and

around the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he

would come in and be good.

François sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his

watch and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the

trail an hour gone. François scratched his head again. He shook it and

grinned sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign

that they were beaten. Then François went up to where Sol-leks stood

and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance.

François unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his old place.

The team stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the

trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more François

called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.

"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.

François complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing

triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the team.His traces were fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running

they dashed out on to the river trail.

Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils,

he found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a

bound Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was

required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the

superior even of Spitz, of whom François had never seen an equal.

But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that

Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership.

It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil

mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they did

not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all they

cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had

grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great

now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.

Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more

of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was

swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done

he was pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp,

Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly—a thing that Spitz had never

succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior

weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for

mercy.

The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its

old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the

traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were

added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away

François's breath.

"Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!" he cried. "No, nevaire! Heem

worth one t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?"

And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record then, and gaining

day by day. The trail was in excellent condition, well packed and hard,

and there was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It was not too

cold. The temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained therethe whole trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on

the jump, with but infrequent stoppages.

The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated with ice, and they

covered in one day going out what had taken them ten days coming in.

In one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge

to the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy

miles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run

towed behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the

second week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope

with the lights of Skaguay and of the shipping at their feet.

It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged

forty miles. For three days Perrault and François threw chests up and

down the main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to

drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of

dog-busters and mushers. Then three or four western bad men aspired to

clean out the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and

public interest turned to other idols. Next came official orders. François

called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that

was the last of François and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out of

Buck's life for good.

A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in

company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary

trail to Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy

toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,

carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the

shadow of the Pole.

Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in

it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates,

whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a monotonous

life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was very like

another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, fires were

built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp, others

harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the

darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made.

Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the beds,and still others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the dogs were

fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it was good to

loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other

dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were fierce fighters

among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery,

so that when he bristled and showed his teeth, they got out of his way.

Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched

under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking

dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's big

house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement

swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the

Japanese pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the

death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had

eaten or would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very

dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more

potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never

seen before a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the

memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later

days, and still later, in him, quickened and became alive again.

Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it

seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched by

this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook

before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with

muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling.

The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted back

under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very

much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching

in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a

heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and

fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body

there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and

down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a

thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from

the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was apeculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness

as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen.

At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between

his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his

hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.

And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many

gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be

the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their

bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.

And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the

fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to

rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his

neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the

half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon

the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and

he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.

It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work

wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when

they made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at

least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from

the Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the

drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This

meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for

the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best for the

animals.

Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the

drivers ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the

feet of the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the

beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles,

dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles

will tell upon life of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to

their work and maintaining discipline, though he too was very tired.

Billee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was

sourer than ever, and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other

side.But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gone

wrong with him. .