In chapter 1, we met this other alpha dog named Spitz. Know what happens when two alpha dogs are thrown together? Yeah, exactly.
Spitz, who is sort of running the show among the dogs, laughs when another dog, Curly, is violently (and explicitly) attacked by a mass of huskies.
Buck musters up some resolve.
Meanwhile, Buck is learning to be part of this sled-pulling team of dogs traveling vast distances.
We meet the rest of the cast, like Billee (nice and friendly), Joe (borderline-evil), and Sol-leks (keeps to himself). Sol-leks also has a scar across one eye that makes him partially blind.
Life starts to not be so great. The weather is freezing and Buck is getting minimal amounts of food.
So he adapts – his body gets leaner and stronger and we see this idea of "law of club and fang." Basically that means that things are really primitive; brute force dictates superiority.
Something is stirring in Buck, and since he isn’t eating enough, it’s not dinner. It’s his primitive instincts.