CHAPTER IV
Who Has Won to Mastership
"Eh? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils."
This was Francois'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 Francois'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 Francois, 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?" Francois 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, d
ragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old
dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.
Francois was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again
displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all
unwilling to go.
Francois 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 Francois, 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. Francois followed him up,
whereupon he again
retreated. After some time of this, Francois 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.
Francois 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. Francois scratched his head again. He shook it
and grinned sheepishly at the
courier, who shrugged his shoulders in
sign that they were beaten. Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks
stood and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his
distance. Francois unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his
old place. The team stood harnessed to the sled in an
unbroken line, to the sled.
His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled.
Sick as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling
while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly
when he saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long.
For the pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not
bear that another dog should do his work.
When the sled started, he
floundered in the soft snow
alongside the
beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and
trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving to
leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and A the while
whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed
tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the
stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave
refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was
easy, but continued to
flounderalongside in the soft snow, where the
going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he
fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.
With the last
remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along
behind till the train made another stop, when he
floundered past the sleds
to his own, where he stood
alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a
moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he
returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with
remarkable lack of
exertion, turned their heads
uneasily, and stopped in
surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He
called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had
bitten through both
of Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his
proper place.
He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed.
His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being
denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known,
where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were
cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he
was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more
than once he cried out
involuntarily from the bite of his
inward hurt.
Several times he fell down and was d
ragged in the traces, and once the
sled ran upon him so that he limped
thereafter in one of his hind legs.
But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place
for him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At
harness-up time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he
got on his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward
slowly toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He
would advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching
movement, when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again
for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw
of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they
could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a
belt of river timber.
Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced
his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A
revolver-shot rang out. The man came back
hurriedly. The whips
snapped, the bells tinkled
merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but
Buck knew, and every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of
river trees.
ready for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front.
Once more Francois called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.
"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.
Francois 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 Francois 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
Francois'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
there the 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 Francois 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.
Francois called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him.
And that was the last of Francois 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
cementswimming-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
seemingfamiliarity; 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 become 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 a
peculiar 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. He became more morose and
irritable, and when
camp was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him.
Once out of the harness and down, he did not get on his feet again till
harness-up time in the morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked
by a sudden stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry
out with pain. The driver examined him, but could find nothing. All
the drivers became interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-
time, and over their last pipes before going to bed, and one night they
held a
consultation. He was brought from his nest to the fire and was
pressed and prodded till he cried out many times. Something was
wrong inside, but they could locate no broken bones, could not make it out.
By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was
falling
repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and
took him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast
关键字:
野性的呼唤生词表: