Jack London Call Of The Wild

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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. Fran�ois 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 fair play was a forgotten code, likewise
sprang upon Spitz. But Fran�ois, 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 laid upon 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
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continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily,
when Fran�ois 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 Fran�ois 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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