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 as a law-giver, 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 dispatches 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.