第15章 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP(2)

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 LeBarge 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 center of a worshipful crowd of dogbusters and mushers.Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out the town, were riddled like pepperboxes 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 tents, 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 drearily 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 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.