Call of the wild

^rasp^

THE CALL OF THE WILD

THE WORKS OF

JACK LONDON

THE GALL
OF THE WILD

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
NEW YORK

UiRAKT

COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY JACK LONDON.

Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1903. Re
printed July, August, September, December. 1903;
January, March, September, November, 1904; Febru
ary, April, July, 1905; January, April, November,
1906; June, 1907: May, June, 1908; April, 1909;
February, 1910; September, December, 1911: April,
September, October, 1912.

New edition May, September, 1910. October, 1913.
May, 1915.

>

I

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. INTO THE PRIMITIVE 9

II. THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG ... 33

III. THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL, BEAST . . 53

IV. WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP ... 83
V. THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL . . .103

VI. FOR THE LOVE. OF A MAN . . . .135

VII. THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL . 165

17743820

I

MTO THE PRIMITIVE

THE
CALL OF THE WILD

Into the Primitive

" Old longings nomadic leap,

Chafing at custom's chain;

Again from its brumal sleep

Wakens the ferine strain."

BUCK did not read the newspapers, or
he would have known that trouble
was brewing, not alone for himself,
but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle
and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound
to San Diego. Because men, groping in the
Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and
because steamship and transportation com
panies were booming the find, thousands of men
were rushing into the Northland. These men
wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were

9

io THE CALL OF THE WILD

heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to
toil, and furry coats to protect them from the
frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed
Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller's place, it
was called. It stood back from the road, half
hidden among the trees, through which glimpses
could be caught of the wide cool veranda that
ran around its four sides. The house was ap
proached by gravelled driveways which wound
about through wide-spreading lawns and under
the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the
rear things were on even a more spacious scale
than at the front. There were great stables,
where a dozen grooms and boys held forth,
rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, an endless
and orderly array of outhouses, long grape ar
bors, green pastures, orchards, and berry
patches. Then there was the pumping plant
for the artesian well, and the big cement tank
where Judge Miller's boys took their morning
plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled.
Here he was born, and here he had lived the

INTO THE PRIMITIVE n

four years of his life. It was true, there were
other dogs. There could not but be other dogs
on so vast a place, but they did not count.
They came and went, resided in the populous
kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the
house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese
pug, or Ysabl, the Mexican hairless, — strange
creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or
set foot to ground. On the other hand, there
were the fox terriers, a score of them at least,
who yelped fearful promises at Toots and
Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and
protected by a legion of housemaids armed with
brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel
dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged
into the swimming tank or went hunting with
the Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice,
the Judge's daughters, on long twilight or early
morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at
the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire;
he carried the Judge's grandsons on his back, or
rolled them in the grass, and guarded their foot
steps through wild adventures down to the

12 THE CALL OF THE WILD

fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond,
where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.
Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and
Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he
was king, — king over all creeping, crawling,
flying things of Judge Miller's place, humans
included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had
been the Judge's inseparable companion, and
Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father.
He was not so large, — he weighed only one
hundred and forty pounds, — for his mother,
Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. ! Never
theless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which
was added the dignity that comes of good living
and universal respect, enabled him to carry him
self in right royal fashion. During the four
years since his puppyhood he had lived the life
of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in him
self, was ever a trifle egotistical, as country
gentlemen sometimes become because of their
insular situation. But he had saved himself by
not becoming a mere pampered house-dog.
Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 13

kept down the fat and hardened his muscles;
and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races, the
love of water had been a tonic and a health
preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was
in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike
dragged men from all the world into the frozen
North. But Buck did not read the newspapers,
and he did not know that Manuel, one of the
gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaint
ance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He
loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his
gambling, he had one besetting weakness —
faith in a system; and this made his damnation
certain. For to play a system requires money,
while the wages of a gardener's helper do not
lap over the needs of a wife and numerous
progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin
Growers' Association, and the boys were busy
organizing an athletic( club, on the memorable
night of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him
and Buck go off through the orchard on what
Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with

I4 THE CALL OF THE WILD

the exception of a solitary man, no one saw
them arrive at the little flag station known as
College Park. This man talked with Manuel,
and money chinked betweei them.

" You might wrap up the goods before you
deliver 'm," the stranger said gruffly, and
Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around
Buck's neck under the collar.

" Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said
Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready af
firmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dig
nity. To be sure, it was an unwonted perform
ance: but he had learned to trust in men he
knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom
that outreached his own. But when the ends
of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands,
he growled menacingly. He had merely inti
mated his displeasure, in his pride believing
that to intimate was to command. But to his
surprise the rope tightened around his neck,
shutting off his breath. In quick rage he
sprang at the -man, who met him halfway,
grappled him close by the throat, and with a

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 15

deft twist threw him over on his back. Then
the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck
struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of
his mouth and his great chest panting futilely.
Never in all his life had he been so vilely
treated, and never in all his life had he been
so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes
glazed, and he knew nothing when the train
was flagged and the two men thiew him into the
baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that
his tongue was hurting and that he was being
jolted along in some kind of a conveyance.
The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling
a crossing told him where he was. He had
travelled too often with the Judge not to know
the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He
opened his eyes, and into them came the
unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The
man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too
quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand,
nor did they relax till his senses were choked
out of him once more.

** Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his

1 6 THE CALL OF THE WILD

mangled hand from the baggageman, who had
been attracted by the sounds of struggle.
" I'm takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco.
A crack dog-doctor there thinks that he can

cure 'm."

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke
most eloquently for himself, in a little shed
back of a saloon on the San Francisco water
front.

"All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled;
" an' I wouldn't do it over for a thousand, cold
cash."

His hand was wrapped in a bloody hand
kerchief, and the right trouser leg was ripped
from knee to ankle.

" How much did the other mug get?" the
saloon-keeper demanded.

"A hundred," was the reply. " Wouldn't
take a sou less, so help me."

" That makes a hundred and fifty," the
saloon-keeper calculated; " and he's worth it,
or I'm a squarehead."

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 17

and looked at his lacerated hand. " If I don't
get the hydrophoby — "

" It'll be because you was born to hang,"
laughed the saloon-keeper. " Here, lend me a
hand before you pull your freight," he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from
throat and tongue, with the life half throttled
out of him, Buck attempted to face his tor
mentors. But he was thrown down and
choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing
the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then
the robe was removed, and he was flung into a
cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary
night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride.
He could not understand what it all meant.
What did they want with him, these strange
men? Why were they keeping him pent up
in this narrow crate? He did not know why, J
but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of
impending calamity. Several times during the
night he sprang to his feet when the shed door
rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or the

1 8 THE CALL OF THE WILD

boys at least. But each time it was the bulg
ing face of the saloon-keeper that peered in
at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle.
And each time the joyful bark that trembled
in Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl.
But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in
the morning four men entered and picked up
the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided,
for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged
and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at
them through the bars. They only laughed
and poked sticks at him, which he promptly
assailed with his teeth till he realized that that
was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay
down sullenly and allowed the crate to be
lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate
in which he was imprisoned, began a passage
through many lands. Clerks in the express
office took charge of him; he was carted about
in another wagon; a truck carried him, with an ;
assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry
steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into
a great railway depot, and finally he was de
posited in an express car.

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 19

For two days and nights this express car
was dragged along at the tail of shrieking loco
motives; and for two days and nights Buck
neither ate nor drank. In his anger he had
met the first advances of the express mes
sengers with growls, and they had retaliated by
teasing him. When he flung himself against
the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed
at him and taunted him. They growled and
barked like detestable dogs, mewed, and
flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very
silly, helcnew; but therefore the more outrage
to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed.
He did not mind the hunger so much, but
the lack of water caused him severe suffering
and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that
matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill
treatment had flung him into a fever, which
was fed by the inflammation of his parched and
swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was
off his neck. That had given them an unfair
advantage; but now that it was off, he would
show them. They would never get another

20 THE CALL OF THE WILD

rope around his neck. Upon that he was re
solved. For two days and nights he neither
ate nor drank, and during those two days and
nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of
wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul
of him. His eyes turned blood-shot, and he
was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So
changed was he that the Judge himself would
/not jiayc recognized him ; and the express
messengers breathed with relief when they bun
dled him off the train at Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from
the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard.
A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged
generously at the neck, came out and signed
the book for the driver. That was the man,
Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he
hurled himself savagely against the bars. The
man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and
a club.

"You ain't going to take him out now?1'
the driver asked.

" Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet
into the crate for a pry.

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 21

There was an instantaneous scattering of
the four men who had carried it in, and from
safe perches on top the wall they prepared to
watch the performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sink
ing his teeth into it, surging and wrestling with
it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside,
he was there on the inside, snarling and growl
ing, as furiously anxious to get out as the man
in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting
him out.

" Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when
he had made an opening sufficient for the pas
sage of Buck's body. At the same time he
dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to
his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he
drew himself together for the spring, hair bris
tling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his blood
shot eyes. Straight at the man he launched
his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, sur
charged with the pent passion of two days and
nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about
to close on the man, he received a shock that

22 THE CALL OF THE WILD

checked his body and brought his teeth together
with an agonizing clip. He whirled over,
fetching the ground on his back and side. He
had never been struck by a club in his life, and
did not understand. With a snarl that was part
bark and more scream he was again on his feet
and launched into the air. And again the
shock came and he was brought crushingly to
the ground. This time he was aware that it
was the club, but his madness knew no caution.
A dozen times he charged, and as often the
club broke the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow he crawled
to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered
limply about, the blood flowing from nose and
mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and
flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man ad
vanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful
blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured
was as nothing compared with the exquisite
agony of this. With a roar that was almost
lionlike in its ferocity, he again hurled himself
at the man. But the man, shifting the club
from right to left, coolly caught him by the

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 23

under jaw, at the same time wrenching down
ward and backward. Buck described a com
plete circle in the air, and half of another, then
crashed to the ground on his head and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man
struck the shrewd blow he had purposely with
held for so long, and Buck crumpled up and
went down, knocked utterly senseless.

" He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot
I say," one of the men on the wall cried en
thusiastically.

" Druther break cayuses any day, and twice
on Sundays," was the reply of the driver, as he
climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck's senses came back to him, but not his
strength. He lay where he had fallen, and
from there he watched the man in the red
sweater.

' Answers to the name of Buck,' " the man
soliloquized, quoting from the saloon-keeper's
letter which had announced the consignment
of the crate and contents. " Well, Buck, my
boy," he went on in a genial voice, " we've had
our little ruction, and the best thing we can do

24 THE CALL OF THE WILD

is to let it go at that. You've learned your
place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and
all '11 go well and the goose hang high. Be a
bad dog, and I'll whale the stuffin' outa you.
Understand?"

As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he
had so mercilessly pounded, and though Buck's
hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the hand,
he endured it without protest. When the man
brought him water he drank eagerly, and later
bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by
chunk, from the man's hand.

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 reve
lation. It was his introduction to the reign of
primitive law, and he met the introduction half
way. The facts of life took on a fiercer as
pect; 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,

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 25

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 was a law
giver, a master to be obeyed, though not neces
sarily 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

26 THE CALL OF THE WILD

English and many strange and uncouth excla
mations 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 despatches
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.

Buck saw money pass between them, and
was not surprised when Curly, a good-natured
Newfoundland, and he were led away by the
little weazened man. That was the last he saw
of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly
and he looked at receding Seattle from the

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 27

deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of
the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken
below by Perrault and turned over to a black-
faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a
French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Frangois
was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as
swarthy. They were a new kind of men to
Buck (of which he was destined to see many
more), and while he developed no affection for
them, he none the less grew honestly to re
spect them. He speedily learned that Perrault
and Francois were fair men, calm and impartial
in administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck
and Curly joined two other dogs. One of
them was a big, snow-white fellow from
Spitzbergen who had been brought away by a
whaling captain, and who had later accom
panied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.

He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way,
smiling into one's face the while he meditated
some underhand trick, as, for instance, when
he stole from Buck's food at the first meal.

28 THE CALL OF THE WILD

As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of
Francois's whip sang through the air, reaching
the culprit first; and nothing remained to
Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair
of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed
began his rise in Buck's estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor re
ceived any; also, he did not attempt to steal
from the newcomers. He was a gloomy,
morose fellow, and he showed Curly plainly
that all he desired was to be left alone, and
further, that there would be trouble if he were
not left alone. " Dave " he was called, and
he ate and slept, or yawned between times,
and took interest in nothing, not even when
the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte Sound
and rolled and pitched and bucked like a
thing possessed. When Buck and Curly grew
excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head
as though annoyed, favored them with an in
curious glance, yawned, and went to sleep
again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tire
less pulse of the propeller, and though one

INTO THE PRIMITIVE 29

day was very like another, it was apparent to
Buck that the weather was steadily growing
colder. At last, one morning, the propeller
was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with
an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as
did the other dogs, and knew that a change
was at hand. Francois leashed them and
brought them on deck. At the first step
upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a
white mushy something very like mud. He
sprang back with a snort. More of this white
stuff was falling through the air. He shook
himself, but more of it fell upon him. He
sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his
tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant
was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it
again, with the same result. The onlookers
laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he
knew not why, for it was his first snow.

II

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG

II

The Law of Club and Fang

UCK'S first day on the Dyea beach
was like a nightmare. Every hour
was filled with shock and surprise. He
had been suddenly jerked from the heart of
civilization and flung into the heart of things
primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this,
with nothing to do but loaf and be bored.
Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a mo
ment's safety. All was confusion and action,
and every moment life and limb were in peril.
There was imperative need to be constantly
alert; for these dogs and men were not town
dogs and men. They were savages, all of
them, who knew no law but the law of club
and fang.

He had never seen dogs fight as these
wolfish creatures fought, and his first experi-

33

34 THE CALL OF THE WILD

cnce taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is
true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would
not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the
victim. They were camped near the log store,
where she, in her friendly way, made advances
to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf,
though not half so large as she. There was
no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic
clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and
Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.
It was the wolf manner of fighting, to
strike and leap away; but there was more to it
than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the
spot and surrounded the combatants in an in
tent and silent circle. Buck did not compre
hend that silent intentness, nor the eager way
with which they were licking their chops.
Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again
and leaped aside. He met her next rush with
his chest, in a peculiar fashion that tumbled
her off her feet. She never regained them.
This was what the onlooking huskies had waited
for. They closed in upon her, snarling and
yelping, and she was buried, screaming with

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 35

agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies.

So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that
Buck was taken aback. He saw Spitz run
out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laugh
ing; and he saw Francois, swinging an axe,
spring into the mess of dogs. Three men with
clubs were helping him to scatter them. Tt did
not take long. Two minutes from the time
. Curly went down, the last of her assailants were
clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless
in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally
torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing
over her and cursing horribly. The scene often
came back to Buck to trouble him in his sleep.
So that was the way. No fairplay. Once
down, that was the end of you. Well, he would
see to it that he never went down. Spitz ran
out his tongue and laughed again, and from
that moment Buck hated him with a bitter and
deathless hatred.

Before he had recovered from the shock
caused by the tragic passing of Curly, he
received another shock. Franqois fastened
upon him an arrangement of straps and

36 THE CALL OF THE WILD

buckles. It was a harness, such as he had
seen the grooms put on the horses at home.
And as he had seen horses work, so he was
set to work, hauling Francois on a sled to the
forest that fringed the valley, and returning
with a load of firewood. Though his dignity
was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught
animal, he was too wise to rebel. He buckled
down with a will and did his best, though it was
all new and strange. Francois was stern, de
manding instant obedience, and by virtue of his
whip receiving instant obedience; while Dave,
who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's
hind quarters whenever he was in error. Spitz
was the leader, likewise experienced, and while
he could not always get at Buck, he growled
sharp reproof now and again, or cunningly
threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck
into the way he should go. Buck learned
easily, and under the combined tuition of his
two mates and Francois made remarkable
progress. Ere they returned to camp he
knew enough to stop at " ho," to go ahead
at " mush," to swing wide on the bends, and

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 37

to keep clear of the wheeler when the loaded
sled shot downhill at their heels.

'* T'ree vair' good dogs," Francois told Per-
rault. " Dat Buck, heem pool lak hell. I
tich heem queek as anyt'ing."

By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry
to be on the trail with his despatches, returned
with two more dogs. " Billee " and " Joe "
he called them, two brothers, and true huskies
both. Sons of the one mother though they
were, they were as different as day and night.
Billee's one fault was his excessive good nature,
while Joe was the very opposite, sour and in
trospective, with a perpetual snarl and a malig
nant eye. Buck received them in comradely
fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz pro
ceeded to thrash first one and then the other.
Billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turned to
run when he saw that appeasement was of no
avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz's
sharp teeth scored his flank. But no matter
how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his
heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back,
Hps writhing and snarling, jaws clipping to-

3 8 THE CALL OF THE WILD

gether as fast as he could snap, and eyes dia
bolically gleaming — the incarnation of bellig
erent fear. So terrible was his appearance
that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining
him ; but to cover his own discomfiture he turned
upon the inoffensive and wailing Billee and
drove him to the confines of the camp.

By evening Perrault secured another dog, an
old husky, long and lean and gaunt, with a
battle-scarred face and" a single eye which
flashed a warning of prowess that commanded
respect. He was called Sol-leks, which means
the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked
nothing, gave nothing, expected nothing, and
when he marched slowly and deliberately into
their midst, even Spitz left him alone. He had
one peculiarity which Buck was unlucky enough
to discover. He did not like to be approached
on his blind side. Of this offence Buck was
unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he
had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks
whirled upon him and slashed his shoulder to
the bone for three inches up and down. For
ever after Buck avoided his blind side, and to

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 39

the last of their comradeship had no more
trouble. His only apparent ambition, like
Dave's, was to be left alone; though, as Buck
was afterward to learn, each of them possessed
one other and even more vital ambition.

That night Buck faced the great problem of
sleeping. The tent, illumined by a candle,
glowed warmly in the midst of the white
plain; and when he, as a matter of course,
entered it, both Perrault and Francois bom
barded him with curses and cooking utensils,
till he recovered from his consternation and
fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill
wind was blowing that nipped him sharply and
bit with especial venom into his wounded
shoulder. He lay down on the snow and at
tempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove him
shivering to his feet. Miserable and disconso
late, he wandered about among the many tents,
only to find that one place was as cold as an
other. Here and there savage dogs rushed
upon him, but he bristled his neck-hair and
snarled (for he was learning fast), and they
let him go his way unmolested.

40 THE CALL OF THE WILD

Finally an idea came to him. He would
return and see how his own team-mates were
making out. To his astonishment, they had
disappeared. Again he wandered about
through the great camp, looking for them, and
again he returned. Were they in the tent?
No, that could not be, else he would not have
been driven out. Then where could they pos
sibly be? With drooping tail and shivering
body, very forlorn indeed, he aimlessly circled
the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath
his fore legs and he sank down. Some
thing wriggled under his feet. He sprang
back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the un
seen and unknown. But a friendly little yelp
reassured him, and he went back to investigate.
A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and
there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball,
lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed
and wriggled to show his good will and inten
tions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace,
to lick Buck's face with his warm wet tongue.

Another lesson. So that was the way they
did it, eh? Buck confidently selected a spot,

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 41

and with much fuss and waste effort proceeded
to dig a hole for himself. In a trice the heat
from his body filled the confined space and
he was asleep. The day had been long and
arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably,
though he growled and barked and wrestled
with bad dreams.

Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the
noises of the waking camp. At first he did
not know where he was. It had snowed dur
ing the night and he was completely buried.
The snow walls pressed him on every side, and
a great surge of fear swept through him — the
fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a
token that he was harking back through his own
life to the lives of his forbears; for he was a
civilized dog, an unduly civilized dog and of
his own experience knew no trap and so could
not of himself fear it. The muscles of his
whole body contracted spasmodically and in
stinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders
stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he
bounded straight up into the blinding day, the
snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere

42 k THE CALL OF THE WILD

he landed on his feet, he saw the white camp
spread out before him and knew where he was
and remembered all that had passed from the
time he went for a stroll with Manuel to the
hole he had dug for himself the night before.

A shout from Francois hailed his appear
ance. " Wot I say? " the dog-driver cried to
Perrault. " Dat Buck for sure learn queek as
anyt'ing."

Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for
the Canadian Government, bearing important
despatches, he was anxious to secure the best
dogs, and he was particularly gladdened by the
possession of Buck.

Three more huskies were added to the team
inside an hour, making a total of nine, and
before another quarter of an hour had passed
they were in harness and swinging up the trail
toward the Dyea Canon. Buck was glad to be
gone, and though the work was hard he found
he did not particularly despise it. He was sur
prised at the eagerness which animated the
whole team and which was communicated to
him; but still more surprising was the change

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 43

wrought-in Dave and Sol-leks. They were new
dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All
passiveness and unconcern had dropped from
them. They were alert and active, anxious that
the work should go well, and fiercely irritable
with whatever, by delay or confusion, retarded
that work. The toil of the traces seemed the
supreme expression of their being, and all that
they lived for and the only thing in which they
took delight.

Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in
front of him was Buck, then came Sol-leks;
the rest of the team was strung out ahead,
single file, to the leader, which position was
filled by Spitz.

Buck had been purposely placed between
Dave and Sol-leks so that he might receive in
struction. Apt scholar that he was, they were
equally apt teachers, never allowing him to
linger long in error, and enforcing their teach
ing with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and
very wise. He never nipped Buck without
cause, and he never failed to nip him when
he stood in need of it. As Francois's whip

44 THE CALL OF THE WILD

backed him up, Buck found it to be cheaper to
mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during
a brief halt, when he got tangled in the traces
and delayed the start, both Dave and Sol-leks
flew at him and administered a sound trounc
ing. The resulting tangle was even worse, but
Buck took good care to keep the traces clear
thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well
had he mastered his work, his mates about
ceased nagging him. Francois's whip snapped
less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck
by lifting up his feet and carefully examining
them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Canon,
through Sheep Camp, past the Scales and the
timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hun
dreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot
Divide, which stands between the salt water and
the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and
lonely North. They made good time down the
chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct
volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the
huge camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where
thousands of goldseekers were building boats

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 45

against the break-up of the ice in the spring.
Buck made his hole in the snow and slept the
sleep of the exhausted just, but all too early was
routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed
with his mates to the sled.

That day they made forty miles, the trail
being packed; but the next day, and for many
days to follow, they broke their own trail,
worked harder, and made poorer time. As a
rule, Perrault travelled ahead of the team, pack
ing the snow with webbed shoes to make it
easier for them. Francois, guiding the sled at
the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places with
him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry,
and he prided himself on his knowledge of ice,
which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall
ice was very thin, and where there was swift
water, there was no ice at all.

Day after day, for days unending, Buck
toiled in the traces. Always, they broke camp
in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found
them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled
off behind them. And always they pitched
camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and

46 THE CALL OF THE WILD

crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was
ravenous. The pound and a half of sun-
dried salmon, which was his ration for each
day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had
enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger
pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they
weighed less and were born to the life, re
ceived a pound only of the fish and managed
to keep in good condition.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had
characterized his old life. A dainty eater, he
found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him
of his unfinished ration. There was no defend
ing it. While he was fighting off two or three,
it was disappearing down the throats of the
others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as they,
and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was
not above taking what did not belong to him.
He watched and learned. When he saw Pike,
one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and
thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Per-
rault's back was turned, he duplicated the per
formance the following day, getting away with
the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised,

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 47

but he was unsuspected, while Dub, an awkward
blunderer who was always getting caught, was
punished for Buck's misdeed.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to sur
vive in the hostile Northland environment. It
marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust
himself to changing conditions, the lack of
which would have meant swift and terrible
death. It marked, further, the decay or going
to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and
a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence.
It was all well enough in the Southland, under
the law of love and fellowship, to respect pri
vate property and personal feelings; but in the
Northland, under the law of club and fang,
whoso took such things into account was a fool,
and in so far as he observed them he would fail
to prosper.

Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was
fit, that was all, and unconsciously he accom
modated himself to the new mode of life. All
his days, no matter what the odds, he had
never run from a fight. But the club of the
man in the red sweater had beaten into him

48 THE CALL OF THE WILD

a more fundamental and primitive code. Civil
ized, he could have died for a moral considera
tion, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-
whip, but the completeness of his decivilization
was now evidenced by his ability to flee from
the defence of a moral consideration and so
save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it,
but because of the clamor of his stomach. He
did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cun
ningly, out of respect for club and fang. In
short, the things he did were done because it
was easier to do them than not to do them.

His development (or retrogression) was
rapid. His muscles became hard as iron, and
he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He
achieved an internal as well as external econ
omy. He could eat anything, no matter how
loathsome or indigestible, and, once eaten, the
juices of his stomach extracted the last least
particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it
to the farthest reaches of his body building it
into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight
and scent became remarkably keen, while his
hearing developed such acuteness that in his

THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 49

sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew
whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned
to bite the ice out with his teeth when it col
lected between his toes; and when he was thirsty
and there was a thick scum of ice over the water
hole, he would break it by rearing and striking
it with stiff fore legs. His most conspicuous
trait was an ability to scent the wind and fore
cast it a night in advance. No matter how
breathless the air when he dug his nest by tree
or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably
found him to leeward, sheltered and snug.

And not only did he learn by experience, but
instincts long dead became alive again. The
domesticated generations fell from him. In
vague ways he remembered back to the youth
of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged
in packs through the primeval forest and killed
their meat as they ran it down. It was no task
for him to learn to fight with cut and slash
and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had
fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened
the old life within him, and the old tricks which
they had stamped into the heredity of the breed

50 THE CALL OF THE WILD

were his tricks. They came to him without
effort or discovery, as though they had been his
always. And when, on the still cold nights, he
pointed his nose at a star and howled long and
wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust,
pointing nose at star and howling down
through the centuries and through him. And
his cadences were their cadences, the cadences
which voiced their woe and what to them was
the ^meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and
dark.

Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is,
the ancient song surged through him and he
came into his own again; and he came because
men had found a yellow metal in the North,
and because Manuel was a gardener's helper
whose wages did not lap over the needs of his
wife and divers small copies of himself.

Ill

THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL
BEAST

Ill

The Dominant Primordial Beast

THE dominant primordial beast was
strong in Buck, and under the fierce
conditions of trail life it grew and
grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His new
born cunning gave him poise and control. He
was too busy adjusting himself to the new life
to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick
fights, but he avoided them whenever possible.
A certain deliberateness characterized his atti
tude. He was not prone to rashness and pre
cipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between
him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience,
shunned all offensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he
divined in Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz, never
lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He

53

54 THE CALL OF THE WILD

even went out of his way to bully Buck, striv
ing constantly to start the fight which could end
only in the death of one or the other.

Early in the trip this might have taken place
had it not been for an unwonted accident. At
the end of this day they made a bleak and
miserable camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge.
Driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot
knife, and darkness, had forced them to grope
for a camping place. They could hardly have
fared worse. At their backs rose a perpen
dicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Fran-
c.ois were compelled to make their fire and
spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the
lake itself. The tent they had discarded at
Dyea in order to travel light. A few sticks of
driftwood furnished them with a fire that
thawed down through the ice and left them to
eat supper in the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made
his nest. So snug and warm was it, that he
was loath to leave it when Francois distributed
the fish which he had first thawed over the fire.
But when Buck finished his ration and returned,

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 55

he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl
told him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till
now Buck had avoided trouble with his enemy,
but this was too much. The beast in him
roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury
which surprised them both, and Spitz particu
larly, for his whole experience with Buck had
gone to teach him that his rival was an unusu
ally timid dog, who managed to hold his own
only because of his great weight and size.

Frangois was surprised, too, when they shot
out in a tangle from the disrupted nest and he
divined the cause of the trouble. " A-a-ah ! "
he cried to Buck. " Gif it to heem, by Gar!
Gif it to heem, the dirty t'eef ! "

Spitz was equally willing. He was crying
with sheer rage and eagerness as he circled back
and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was
no less eager, and no less cautious as he like
wise circled back and forth for the advantage.
But it was then that the unexpected happened,
the thing which projected their struggle for su
premacy far into the future, past many a weary
mile of trail and toil.

56 THE CALL OF THE WILD

An oath from Perrault, the resounding im
pact of a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill
yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of
pandemonium. The camp was suddenly dis
covered to be alive with skulking furry forms,
— starving huskies, four or five score of them,
who had scented the camp from some Indian
village. They had crept in while Buck and
Spitz were fighting, and when the two men
sprang among them with stout clubs they
showed their teeth and fought back. They
were crazed by the smell of the food. Per
rault found one with head buried in the grub-
box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs,
and the grub-box was capsized on the ground.
On the instant a score of the famished brutes
were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The
clubs fell upon them unheeded. They yelped
and howled under the rain of blows, but strug
gled none the less madly till the last crumb had
been devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs
had burst out of their nests only to be set upon
by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 57

such dogs. It seemed as though their bones
would burst through their skins. They were
mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled
hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs.
But the hunger-madness made them terrifying,
irresistible. There was no opposing them.
The team-dogs were swept back against the cliff
at the first onset. Buck was beset by three
huskies, and in a trice his head and shoulders
were ripped and slashed. The din was fright
ful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and
Sol-leks, dripping blood from a score of wounds,
were fighting bravely side by side. Joe was
snapping like a demon. Once, his teeth closed
on the fore leg of a husky, and he crunched
down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer,
leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its
neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk.
Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat,
and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sank
through the jugular. The warm taste of it in
his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness.
He flung himself upon another, and at the same
time felt teeth sink into his own throat. It

5 8 THE CALL OF THE WILD

was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the
side.

Perrault and Frangois, having cleaned out
their part of the camp, hurried to save their
sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts
rolled back before them, and Buck shook him
self free. But it was only for a moment. The
two men were compelled to run back to save the
grub upon which the huskies returned to the
attack on the team. Billee, terrified into
bravery, sprang through the savage circle and
fled away over the ice. Pike and Dub followed
on his heels, with the rest of the team behind.
As Buck drew himself together to spring after
them, out of the tail of his eye he saw Spitz
rush upon him with the evident intention of
overthrowing him. Once off his feet and un
der that mass of huskies, there was no hope for
him. But he braced himself to the shock of
Spitz's charge, then joined the flight out on the
lake.

Later, ;he nine team-dogs gathered together
and sought shelter in the forest. Though
unpursued, they \vere in a sorry plight. There

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 59

was not one who was not wounded in four or
five places, while some were wounded griev
ously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg;
Dolly, the last husky added to the team at
Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost
an eye; while Billee, the good-natured, with
an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and
whimpered throughout the night. At day
break they limped warily back to camp, to find
the marauders gone and the two men in bad
tempers. Fully half their grub supply was
gone. The huskies had chewed through the
sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact,
nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had
escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Per-
rault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the
leather traces, and even two feet of lash from
the end of Francois's whip. He broke from
a mournful contemplation of it to look over
his wounded dogs.

" Ah, my frien's," he said softly, " mebbe it
mek you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe
all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh,
Perrault?"

60 THE CALL OF THE WILD

The courier shook his head dubiously. With
four hundred miles of trail still between him
and Dawson, he could ill afford to have mad
ness break out among his dogs. Two hours of
cursing and exertion got the harnesses into
shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under
way, struggling painfully over the hardest part
of the trail they had yet encountered, and for
that matter, the hardest between them and
Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its
wild water defied the frost, and it was in the
eddies only and in the quiet places that the
ice held at all. Six days of exhausting toil
were required to cover those thirty terrible
miles. And terrible they were, for every foot
of them was accomplished at the risk of life
to dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault,
nosing the way, broke through the ice bridges,
being saved by the long pole he carried, which
he so held that it fell each time across the hole
made by his body. But a cold snap was on,
the thermometer registering fifty below zero,
and each time he broke through he was com-

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 61

pelled for very life to build a fire and dry his
garments.

Nothing daunted him. It was because
nothing daunted him that he had been chosen
for government courier. He took all manner
of risks, resolutely thrusting his little weazened
face into the frost and struggling on from dim
dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores
on rim ice that bent and crackled under foot
and upon which they dared not halt. Once, the
sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and
they were half-frozen and all but drowned by
the time they were dragged out. The usual
fire was necessary to save them. They were
coated solidly with ice, and the two men kept
them on the run around the fire, sweating and
thawing, so close that they were singed by the
flames.

At another time Spitz went through, drag
ging the whole team after him up to Buck,
who strained backward with all his strength,
his fore paws on the slippery edge and the ice
quivering and snapping all around. But behind
him was Dave, likewise straining backward,

62 THE CALL OF THE WILD

and behind the sled was Francois, pulling till
his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and
behind, and there was no escape except up the
cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while
Francois prayed for just that miracle; and with
every thong and sled lashing and the last bit
of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs
were hoisted, one by one, to the cliff crest.
Francois came up last, after the sled and load.
Then came the search for a place to descend,
which descent was ultimately made by the aid of
the rope, and night found them back on the
river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and
good ice, Buck was played out. The rest of
the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault,
to make up lost time, pushed them late and
early. The first day they covered thirty-five
miles to ^he Big Salmon ; the next day thirty-five
more to the Little Salmon; the third day forty
miles, which brought them well up toward the
Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 63

as the feet of the huskies. His had softened
during the many generations since the day his
last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller
or river man. All day long he limped in agony,
and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog.
Hungry as he was, he would not move to receive
his ration of fish, which Francois had to bring
to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's
feet for half an hour each night after supper,
and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins
to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a
great relief, and Buck caused even the weazened
face of Perrault to twist itself into a grin one
morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins
and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving
appealingly in the air, and refused to budge
without them. Later his feet grew hard to the
trail, and the worn-out foot-gear was thrown
away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were har
nessing up, Dolly, who had never been con
spicuous for anything, went suddenly mad.
She announced her condition by a long, heart-
breaking wolf howl that sent every dog bris-

64 THE CALL OF THE WILD

tling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck.
He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did he
have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew
that here was horror, and fled away from it in a
panic. Straight away he raced, with Dolly,
panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor
could she gain on him, so great was his terror,
nor could he leave her, so great was her mad
ness. He plunged through the wooded breast
of the island, flew down to the lower end,
crossed a back channel filled with rough ice
to another island, gained a third island, curbed
back to the main river, and in desperation
started to cross it. And all the time, though
he did not look, he could hear her snarling
just one leap behind. Francois called to him
a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back,
still one leap ahead, gasping painfully for air
and putting all his faith in that Francois would
save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised
in his hand, and as Buck shot past him the axe
crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.

Buck staggered over against the sled, ex
hausted, sobbing for breath, helpless. This

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 65

was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon
Buck, and twice his teeth sank into his unre
sisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to the
bone. Then Francois' lash descended, and
Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz
receive the worst whipping as yet administered
to any of the team.

" One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault.
" Some dam day heem keel dat Buck."

;i Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's re
joinder. " All de tarn I watch dat Buck I know
for sure. Lissen : some dam fine day heem get
mad lak hell an' den heem chew dat Spitz all
up an' spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I
know."

From then on it was war between them.
Spitz, as lead-dog and acknowledged master o'
the team, felt his supremacy threatened* ^y this
strange Southland dog. And strange Buck was
co him, for of the many Southland dogs he
had known, not one had shown up worthily in
camp and on trail. They were all too soft,
dying under the toil, the frost, and starvation.
Buck was the exception. He alone endured

66 THE CALL OF THE WILD

and prospered, matching the husky in strength,
savagery, and cunning. Then he was a mas
terful dog, and what made him dangerous was
the fact that the club of the man in the red
sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rash
ness out of his desire for mastery. He was
preeminently cunning, and could bide his time
with a patience that was nothing less than
primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for lead
ership 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

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 67

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 ap
pear. He was securely hidden in his nest under
a foot of snow. Franqois called him and
sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath.
He raged through the camp, smelling and dig
ging in every likely place, snarling so fright
fully 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 back-

68 THE CALL OF THE WILD

ward and off his feet. Pike, who had been
trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mu
tiny, and sprang upon his overthrown leader.
Buck, to whom fairplay was a forgotten code,
likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Francois,
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 continued to inter
fere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did
it craftily, when Francois was not around.
With the covert mutiny of Buck, a general in
subordination 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 bick
ering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot,

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 69

and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in con
stant apprehension of the life-and-death strug
gle 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 Bucks and Spitz were at
it.

But the opportunity did not present itself,
and they pulled into Dawson one dreary after
noon with the great fight still to come. Here
were many men, and countless dogs, and Buck
found them all at work. It seemed the or
dained 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, regu
larly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a

70 THE CALL OF THE WILD

nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in
which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly over
head, or the stars leaping in the frost dance,
and the land numb and frozen under its pall of
snow, this song of the huskies might have been
the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor
key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs,
and was more the pleading of life, the articu
late travail of existence. It was on old song,
old as the breed itself — one of the first songs
of the younger world in a day when songs
were sad. It was invested with the woe of un
numbered generations, this plaint by which Buck
was so strangely stirred. When he moaned
and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that
was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the
fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was
to them fear and mystery. And that he should
be stirred by it marked the completeness with
which he harked back through the ages of fire
and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the
howling ages.

Seven days from 'the time they pulled into

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 71

Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank by
the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled
for Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault was car
rying despatches if anything more urgent than
those he had brought in ; also, the travel pride
had gripped him, and he purposed to make the
record trip of the year. Several things favored
him in this. The week's rest had recuperated
the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The
trail they had broken into the country was
packed hard by later journeyers. And fur
ther, the police had arranged in two or three
places deposits of grub for dog and man, and
he was travelling light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile
run, on the first day; and the second day saw
them booming up the Yukon well on their way
to Pelly. But such splendid running was
achieved not without great trouble and vexa
tion on the part of Francois. The insidious
revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity
of the team. It no longer was as one dog
leaping in the traces. The encouragement
Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of

72 THE CALL OF THE WILD

petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a
leader greatly to be feared. The old awe de
parted, and they grew equal to challenging his
authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one
night, and gulped it down under the protection
of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they
deserved. And even Billee, the good-natured,
was less good-natured, and whined not half so
placatingly as in former days. Buck never
came near Spitz without snarling and bristling
menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached
that of a bully, and he was given to swaggering
up and down before Spitz's very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise
affected the dogs in their relations with one
another. They quarrelled and bickered more
than ever among themselves, till at times the
camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and Sol-
leks alone were unaltered, though they were
made irritable by the unending squabbling.
Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and
stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his
- hair. His lash was always singing among the

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 73

dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his
back was turned they were at it again. He
backekd up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Fran-
c,ois knew he was behind all the trouble, and
Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever
ever again to be caught red-handed. He
worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil
had become a delight to him; yet it was a
greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight
amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night
after supper, Dub turned up a snowshoe rab
bit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the
whole team was in full cry. A hundred yards
away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with
fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase.
The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into
a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it
held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of
the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by
main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong,
around bend after bend, but he could not gain.
He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly,

74 THE CALL OF THE WILD

his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap,
in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap,
like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rab
bit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at
stated periods drives men out from the sound
ing cities to forest and plain to kill things by
chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood
lust, the joy to kill — all this was Buck's, only
it was infinitely more intimate. He was rang
ing at the head of the pack, running the wild
thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own
teeth and wash his muzzle to the' eyes in warm
blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of
life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And
such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes
when one is most alive, and it comes as a com
plete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ec
stasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the
artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet
of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a
stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came
to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 75

wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive
and that fled swiftly before him through the
rrtoonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his
nature, and of the parts of his nature that were
deeper than he, going back into the womb of
Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging
of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy
of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that
it was everything that was not death, that it was
aglow and rampant, expressing itself in move
ment, flying exultantly under the stars and over
the face of dead matter that did not move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his
supreme moods, left the pack and cut across a
narrow neck of land where the creek made a
long bend around. Buck did not know of this,
and as he rounded the bend, the frost wraith
of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw an
other and larger frost wraith leap from the
overhanging bank into the immediate path of
the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could
not turn, and as the white teeth broke its back
in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken
man may shriek. At sound of this, the cry of

76 THE CALL OF THE WILD

Life plunging down from Life's apex in the grip
of Death, the full pack at Buck's heels raised
a hell's chorus of delight.

Buck did not cry out. He did not check him
self, but drove in upon Spitz, shoulder to
shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.
They rolled over and over in the powdery snow.
Spitz gained his feet almost as though he had
not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the
shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth
clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap,
as he backed away for better footing, with lean
and lifting lips that writhed and snarled.

In a flash Buck knew it. The time had
come. It was to the death. As they circled
about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful
for the advantage, the scene came back to Buck
with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to re
member it all, — the white woods, and earth,
and moonlight, and the thrill of battle. Over
the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly
calm. There was "not the faintest whisper of
air — nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the
visible breaths of the, dogs rising slowly and

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 77

lingering in the frosty air. They had made
short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these dogs
that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now
drawn up in an expectant circle. They, too,
were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their
breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it
was nothing new or strange, this scene of old
time. It was as though it had always been,
the wonted way of things.

Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitz-
bergen through the Arctic, and across Canada
and the Barrens, he had held his own with all
manner of dogs and achieved to mastery over
them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind
rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never
forgot that his enemy was in like passion to
rend and destroy. He never rushed till he was
prepared to receive a rush ; never attacked till
he had first defended that attack.

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the
neck of the big white dog. Wherever his fangs
struck for the softer flesh, they were countered
by the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and
lips were cut and bleeding, but Buck could not

78 THE CALL OF THE WILD

penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed
up and enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes.
Time and time again he tried for the snow-
white throat, where life bubbled near to the
surface, and each time and every time Spitz
slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to
rushing, as though for the throat, when, sud
denly drawing back his head and curving in from
the side, he would drive his shoulder at the
shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to over
throw him. But instead, Buck's shoulder was
slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly
away.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was
streaming with blood and panting hard. The
fight was growing desperate. And all the while
the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off
whichever dog went down. As Buck grew
winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him
staggering for footing. Once Buck went over,
and the whole circle of sixty dogs started up;
but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and
the circle sank down again and waited.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for

DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 79

greatness — imagination. He fought by in
stinct, but he could fight by head as well. He
rushed, as though attempting the old shoulder
trick, but at the last instant swept low to the
snow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz's left
fore leg. There was a crunch of breaking
bone, and the white dog faced him on three
legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then
repeated the trick and broke the right fore leg.
Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz strug
gled madly to keep up. He saw the silent
circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and
silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon
him as he had seen similar circles close in upon
beaten antagonists in the past. Only this time
he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was in
exorable. Mercy was a thing reserved for
gentler climes. He manoeuvred for the final
rush. This circle had tightened till he could
feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks.
He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either
side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes
fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall.

80 THE CALL OF THE WILD

Every animal was motionless as though turned
to stone. Only Spitz quivered and bristled as
he staggered back and forth, snarling with hor
rible menace, as though to frighten off impend
ing death. Then Buck sprang in and out; but
while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely
met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot
on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared
from view. Buck stood and looked on, the
successful champion, the dominant primordial
beast who had made his kill and found it good.

IV
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP

IV
Who Has Won to Mastership

""• "VH? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I
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 Perrauit, 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 Perrauit 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 Fran
ks, not noticing him, brought Sol-leks to the
83

84 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 fink to take de job."

" Go 'way, Chook! " he cried, but Buck re
fused to budge.

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and
though the dog growled threateningly, dragged
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 dis
placed 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 at
tempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more
brought forward. But he circled just beyond

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 85

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 Franqois, 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

86 THE CALL OF THE WILD

retreated around and around the camp, adver
tising plainly that when his desire was met, he
would come in and be good.

Frangois 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 sheep
ishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoul
ders 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-lek's traces and put him back in his old
place. The team stood harnessed to the sled
in an unbroken line, 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 87

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 leader
ship; 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 leader
ship. 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

88 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 suc
ceeded 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 soli
darity, 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. ci 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 89

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 on 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 Franqots threw chests up
and down the main street of Skaguay and were

90 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 Franqois 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 91

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

92 THE CALL OF THE WILD

he thought of Judge Miller's big house in the
sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the
cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexi
can 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.

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 93

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 for
ward 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

94 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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
eye's 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 laxy 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 condi
tion when they made Dawson, and should have
had 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 95

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 dis
cipline, 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

96 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 stop
page 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 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 97

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 trace*
and get between him and the sled, and all 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 flounder alongside in
the soft snow, where the going was most diffi
cult, 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

98 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 bit
ten 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

WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 99

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 dragged 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, stag
gered, and fell. Then he wormed his way
forward slowly toward where the harnesses
were being put on his mates. He would ad
vance 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 th^ 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-

100 THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 tin
kled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail ;
but Buck knew, and every dog knew, what had
taken place behind the belt of river trees.

V

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL

The Toil of Trace and Trail

THIRTY days from the time it left
Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with
Buck and his mates at the fore, ar
rived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched
state, worn out and worn down. Buck's one
hundred and forty pounds had dwindled to
one hundred and fifteen. The rest of his
mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively lost
more weight than he. Pike, the malingerer,
who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often suc
cessfully feigned a hurt leg, was now limping
in earnest. Sol-leks was limping, and Duh was
suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade.

They were all terribly footsore. No spring
or rebound was left in them. Their feet fell
heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and
doubling the fatigue of a day's travel. There
was nothing the matter with them except that

103

104 THE CALL OF THE WILD

they were dead tired. It was not the dead-
tiredness that comes through brief and exces
sive effort, from which recovery is a matter of
hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes
through the slow and prolonged strength drain
age of months of toil. There was no power of
recuperation left, no reserve strength to call
upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of
it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, was
tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it.
In less than five months they had travelled
twenty-five hundred miles, during the last
eighteen hundred of which they had had but five
days' rest. When they arrived at Skaguay they
were apparently on their last legs. They could
barely keep the traces taut, and on the down
grades just managed to keep out of the way
of the sled.

" Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver en
couraged them as they tottered down the main
street of Skaguay. " Dis is de las'. Den we
get one long res'. Eh? For sure. One bully
long res'."

The drivers confidently expected a long stop-

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 105

over. Themselves, they had covered twelve
hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the
nature of reason and common justice they de
served an interval of loafing. But so many
were the men who had rushed into the Klon
dike, and so many were the sweethearts, wives,
and kin that had not rushed in, that the con
gested mail was taking on Alpine proportions;
also, there were official orders. Fresh batches
of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the places of
those worthless for the trail. The worthless
ones were to be got rid of, and, since dogs count
for little against dollars, they were to be sold.
Three days passed, by which time Buck and
his mates found how really tired and weak they
were. Then, on the morning of the fourth
day, two men from the States came along and
bought them, harness and all, for a song. The
men addressed each other as " Hal " and
" Charles." Charles was a middle-aged, light
ish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes
and a mustache that twisted fiercely and vigor
ously up, giving the lie to the limply drooping
lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nine-

io6 THE CALL OF THE WILD

teen or twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and
a hunting-knife strapped about him on a belt
that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt
was the most salient thing about him. It ad
vertised his callowness — a callowness sheer
and unutterable. Both men were manifestly
out of place, and why such as they should ad
venture the North is part of the mystery of
things that passes understanding.

Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money
pass between the man and the Government
agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and
the mail-train drivers were passing out of his
life on the heels of Perrault and Francois and
the others who had gone before. When driven
with his mates to the new owners' camp. Buck
saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent half
stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in dis
order; also, he saw a woman. u Mercedes "
the men called her. She was Charles's wife
and Hal's sister — a nice family party.

Buck watched them apprehensively as they
proceeded to take down the tent and load the
sled. There was a great deal of effort about

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 107

their manner, but no businesslike method. The
tent was rolled into an awkward bundle three
times as large as it should have been. The tin
dishes were packed away unwashed. Mercedes
continually fluttered in the way of her men and *
kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance
and advice. When they put a clothes-sack on
the front of the sled, she suggested it should
go on the back; and when they had it put on the
back, and covered it over with a couple of other
bundles, she discovered overlooked articles
which could abide nowhere else but in that very
sack, and they unloaded again.

Three men from a neighboring tent came
out and looked on, grinning and winking at one
another.

" YouVe got a right smart 'load as it is,"
said one of them; " and it's not me should tell
you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tent
along if I was you."

" Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throw
ing up her hands in dainty dismay. " How
ever in the world could I manage without a
tent?"

io8 THE CALL OF THE WILD

" It's springtime, and you won't get any more
cold weather," the man replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Charles
and Hal put the last odds and ends on top the
mountainous load.

" Think it'll ride? " one of the men asked.

"Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded
rather shortly.

" Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the
man hastened meekly to say. " I was just
a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-
heavy."

Charles turned his back and drew the lash
ings down as well as he could, which was not
in the least well.

" An' of course the dogs can hike along all
day with that contraption behind them," af
firmed a second of the men.

" Certainly," said Hal, with freezing polite
ness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one
hand and swinging his whip from the other.
" Mush ! " he shouted. " Mush on there ! "

The dogs sprang against the breastbands.

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 109

strained hard for a few moments, then relaxed.
They were unable to move the sled.

" The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried,
preparing to lash out at them with the whip.

But, Mercedes interfered, crying, " Oh, Hal,
you mustn't," as she caught hold of the whip
and wrenched it from him. " The poor dears !
Now you must promise* you won't be harsh with
them for the rest of the trip, or I won't go a
step."

" Precious lot you know about dogs," her
brother sneered; "and I wish you'd leave me
-alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got
to whip them to get anything out of them.
That's their way. You ask any one. Ask
one of those men."

Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold
repugnance at sight of pain written in her pretty
face.

4 They're weak as water, if you want to
know," came the reply from one of the men.
" Plum tuckered out, that's what's the matter.
They need a rest."

no THE CALL OF THE WILD

" Rest be blanked," said Hal, with his beard
less lips; and Mercedes said, "Oh!" in pain
and sorrow at the oath.

But she was a clannish creature, and rushed
at once to the defence of her brother. " Never
mind that man," she said pointedly. " You're
driving our dogs, and you do what you think
best with them."

Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They
threw themselves against the breast-bands, dug
their feet into the packed snow, got down low
to it, and put forth all their strength. The
sled held as though it were an anchor. After
two efforts, they stood still, panting. The
whip was whistling savagely, when once more
Mercedes interfered. She dropped on her
knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and
put her arms around his neck.

" You poor, poor dears," she cried sympa
thetically, "why don't you pull hard? — then
you wouldn't be whipped." Buck did not like
her, but he was feeling too miserable to resist
her, taking it as part of the day's miserable
work.

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 1 1 1

One of the onlookers, who had been clench
ing his teeth to suppress hot speech, now spoke
up: —

" It's not that I care a whoop what becomes
of you, but for the dogs' sakes I just want to
tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by
breaking out that sled. The runners are froze
fast. Throw your weight against the gee-pole,
right and left, and break it out."

A third time the attempt was made, but this
time, following the advice, Hal broke out the
runners which had been frozen to the snow.
The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged
ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically
under the rain of blows. A hundred yards
ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into
the mkin street. It would have required an ex
perienced man to keep the top-heavy sled up
right, and Hal was not such a man. As they
swung on the turn the sled went over, spilling
half its load through the loose lashings. The
dogs never stopped. The lightened sled
bounded on its side behind them. They were
angry because of the ill treatment they had re-

U2 THE CALL OF THE WILD

ceived and the unjust load. Buck was raging.
He broke into a run, the team following his
lead. Hal cried "Whoa! whoa!" but they
gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off
his feet. The capsized sled ground over him,
and the dogs dashed on up the street, adding
to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the
remainder of the outfit along its chief thorough
fare.

Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and
gathered up the scattered belongings. Also
they gave advice. Half the load and twice the
dogs, if they ever expected to reach Dawson,
was what was said. Hal and his sister and
brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent,
and overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were
turned out that made men laugh, for canned
goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream
about. " Blankets for a hotel," quoth one of
the men who laughed and helped. " Half as
many is too much; get rid of them. Throw
away that tent, and all those dishes, — who's
going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do
you think you're travelling on a Pullman? "

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 113

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of
the superfluous. Mercedes cried when her
clothes-bag were dumped on the ground and
article after article was thrown out. She cried
in general, and she cried in particular over each
discarded thing. She clasped hands about
knees, rocking back and forth broken-heartedly.
She averred she would not go an inch, not for
a dozen Charleses. She appealed to every
body and to everything, finally wiping her eyes
and proceeding to cast out even articles of ap
parel that were imperative necessaries. And
in her zeal, when she had finished with her own,
she attacked the belongings of her men and
went through them like a tornado.

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in
half, was still a formidable bulk. Charles and
Hal went out in the evening and brought six
Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the
original team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies
obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip,
brought the team up to fourteen. But the Out
side dogs, though practically broken in since
their landing, did not amount to much. Three

1 14 THE CALL OF THE WILD

were short-haired pointers, one was a New-
foundland, and the other two were mongrels of
indeterminate breed. They did not seem to
know anything, these newcomers. Buck and
his comrades looked upon them with disgust,
and though he speedily taught them their places
and what not to do, he could not teach them
what to do. They did not take kindly to trace
and trail. With the exception of the two mon
grels, they were bewildered and spirit-broken
by the strange savage environment in which
they found themselves and by the ill treatment
they had received. The two mongrels were
without spirit at all; bones were the only things
breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn,
and the old team worn out by twenty-five hun
dred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was
anything but bright. The two men, however,
were quite cheerful. And they were proud,
too. They were doing the thing in style, with
fourteen dogs. They had seen other sleds de
part over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from
Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 115

many as fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic
travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs
should not drag one sled, and that was that
one sled could not carry the food for fourteen
dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this.
They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so
much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days,
Q. E. D. Mercedes looked over their shoul
ders and nodded comprehensively, it was all so
very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team
up the street. There was nothing lively about
it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They
were starting dead weary. Four times he had
covered the distance between Salt Water and
Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and
tired, he was facing the same trail once more,
made him bitter. His heart was not in the
work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Out-
sides were timid and frightened, the Insides
without confidence in their masters.

Buck felt vaguely that there was no depend
ing upon these two men and the woman. They
did not know how to do anything, and as the

Il6 THE CALL OF THE WILD

days went by it became apparent that they
could not learn. They were slack in all things,
without order or discipline. It took them half
the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the
morning to break that camp and get the sled
loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest
of the day they were occupied in stopping and
rearranging the load. Some days they did not
make ten miles. On other days they were un
able to get started at all. And on no day did
they succeed in making more than half the dis
tance used by the men as a basis in their dog-
food computation.

It was inevitable that they should go short
on dog-food. But they hastened it by over
feeding, bringing the day nearer when under
feeding would commence. The Outside dogs,
whose digestions had not been trained by
chronic famine to make the most of little, had
voracious appetites. And when, in addition to
this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal
decided that the orthodox ration was too small.
He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mer
cedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 117

in her throat, could not cajole him into giving
the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-
sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food
that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest.
And though they were making poor time, the
heavy load they dragged sapped their strength
severely.

Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke
one day to the fact that his dog-food was half
gone and the distance only quarter covered;
further, that for love or money no additional
dog-food was to be obtained. ' So he cut down
even the orthodox ration and tried to increase
the day's travel. His sister and brother-in-law
seconded him; but they were frustrated by their
heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It
was a simple matter to give the dogs less food;
but it was impossible to make the dogs travel
faster, while their own inability to get under
way earlier in the morning prevented them
from travelling longer hours. Not only did
they not know how to work dogs, but they did
not know how to work themselves.

The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering

Ii8 THE CALL OF THE WILD

thief that he was, always getting caught and
punished, he had none the less been a faithful
worker. His wrenched shoulder-blade, un
treated and unrested, went from bad to worse,
till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's re
volver. It is a saying of the country that an
Outside dog starves to death on the ration of
the husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck
could do no less than die on half the ration of
the husky. The Newfoundland went first, fol
lowed by the three short-haired pointers, the
two mongrels hanging more grittily on to life,
but going in the end.

By this time all the amenities and gentle
nesses of the Southland had fallen away from
the three people. Shorn of its glamour and
romance, Arctic travel became to them a reality
too harsh for their manhood and womanhood.
Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being
too occupied with weeping over herself and
with quarrelling with her husband and brother.
To quarrel was the one thing they were
never too weary to do. Their irritability arose
out of their misery, increased with it, doubled

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 119

upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful pa
tience of the trail which comes to men who
toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of
speech and kindly, did not come to these two
men and the woman. They had no inkling of
such a patience. They were stiff and in pain;
their muscles ached, their bones ached, their
very hearts ached; and because of this they be
came sharp of speech, and hard words were
first on their lips in the morning and last at
night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mer
cedes gave them a chance. It was the cher
ished belief of each that he. did more than his
share of the work, and neither forbore to
speak this belief at every opportunity. Some
times Mercedes sided with her husband, some
times with her brother. The result was a
beautiful and unending family quarrel. Start
ing from a dispute as to which should chop a
few sticks for the fire (a dispute which con
cerned only Charles and Hal), presently would
be lugged in the rest of the family, fathers,
mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands of

120 THE CALL OF THE WILD

miles away, and some of them dead. That
Hal's views on art, or the sort of society plays
his mother's brother wrote, should have any
thing to do with the chopping of a few sticks of
firewood, passes comprehension; nevertheless
the quarrel was as likely to tend in that direc
tion as in the direction of Charles's political
prejudices. And that Charles's sister's tale
bearing tongue should be relevant to the build
ing of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mer
cedes, who disburdened herself of copious opin
ions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a few
other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her hus
band's family. In the meantime the fire re
mained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and
the dogs unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance — the
grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and
had been chivalrously treated all her days.
But the present treatment by her husband and
brother was everything save chivalrous. It
was her custom to be helpless. They com
plained. Upon which impeachment of what to
her was her most essential sex-prerogative, she

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 121

made their lives unendurable. She no longer
considered the dogs, and because she was sore
and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled.
She was pretty and soft, but she weighed one
hundred and twenty pounds — a lusty last straw
to the load dragged by the weak and starving
animals. She rode for days, till they fell in
the traces and the sled stood still. Charles and
Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded
with her, entreated, the while she wept and im
portuned Heaven with a recital of their bru
tality.

On one occasion they took her off the sled by
main strength. They never did it again. She
let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat
down on the trail. They went on their way,
but she did not move. After they had travelled
three miles they unloaded the sled, came back
for her, and by main strength put her on the
sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were
callous to the suffering of their animals. Hal's
theory, which le practised on others, was that
one must get hardened. He had started out

322 THE CALL OF THE WILD

preaching it to his sister and brother-in-law.
Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs
with a club. At the Five Fingers the dog-food
gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to
trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide
for the Colt's revolver that kept the big hunt
ing-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor sub
stitute for food was this hide, just as it had
been stripped from the starved horses of the
cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state
it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and
when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it
thawed into thin and innutritious leathery
strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating
and indigestible.

And through it all Buck staggered along at
the head of the team as in a nightmare. He
pulled when he could; when he could no longer
pull, he fell down and remained down til; blows
from whip or club drove him to his feet again.
All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his
beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down,
limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood
where Hal's club had bruised him. His mus-

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 123

cles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the
flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib
and every bone in his frame were outlined
cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled
in folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking,
only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man
in the red sweater had proved that.

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates
They were perambulating skeletons. Therp
were seven all together, including him. In
their very great misery they had become insen
sible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the
club. The pain of the beating was dull and dis
tant, just as the things their eyes saw and their
ears heard seemed dull and distant. They
were not half living, or quarter living. They
were simply so many bags of bones in which
sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a halt
was made, they dropped down in the traces
like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and
paled and seemed to go out. And when the
club or whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered
feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and
staggered on.

124 THE CALL OF THE WILD

There came a day when Billee, the good-
natured, fell and could not rise. Hal had
traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and
knocked Billee on the head as he lay in the
traces, then cut the carcass out of the harness
and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his
mates saw, and they knew that this thing was
very close to them. On the next day Koona
went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too
far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and
limping, only half conscious and not conscious
enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-
eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace and trail,
and mournful in that he had so little strength
with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled
so far that winter and who was now beaten
more than the others because he was fresher;
and Buck, still at the head of the team, but no
longer enforcing discipline or striving to en
force it, blind with weakness half the time and
keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the
dim feel of his feet.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither
dogs nor humans were aware of it. Each day

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 125

the sun rose earlier and set later. It was
dawn by three in the morning, and twilight
lingered till nine at night. The whole long
day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly
winter silence had given way to the great spring
murmur of awakening life. This murmur
arose from all the land, fraught with the joy
of living. It came from the things that lived
and moved again, things which had been as
dead and which had not moved during the long
months of frost. The sap was rising in the
pines. The willows and aspens were bursting
out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were put
ting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in
the nights, and in the days all manner of creep
ing, crawling things rustled forth into the sun.
Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and
knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chatter
ing, birds singing} and overhead honked the
wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning
wedges that split the air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of
running water, the music of unseen fountains.
All things were thawing, bending, snapping.

126 THE CALL OF THE WILD

The Yukon was straining to break loose the iee
that bound it down. It ate away from beneath ;
the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed,
fissures sprang and spread apart, while thin
sections of ice fell through bodily into the river.
And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing
of awakening life, under the blazing sun and
through the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers
to death, staggered the two men, the woman,
and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and
riding, Hal swearing innocuously, and Charles's
eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into
John Thornton's camp at the mouth of the
White River. When they halted, the dogs
dropped down as though they had all been
struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and
looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down
on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly and
painstakingly what of his great stiffness. Hal
did the talking. John Thornton was whittling
the last touches on an axe-handle he had made
from a stick of birch. He whittled and lis
tened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 127

was asked, terse advice. He knew the breed,
and he gave his advice in the certainty that it
would not be followed.

4 They told us up above that the bottom
was dropping out of the trail and that the best
thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal said
in response to Thornton's warning to take no
more chances on the rotten ice. " They told
us we couldn't make White River, and here
we are." This last with a sneering ring of tri
umph in it.

" And they told you true," John Thornton
answered. " The bottom's likely to drop out
at any moment. Only fools, with the blind
luck of fools, could have made it. I tell you
straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass on that ice
for all the gold in Alaska."

" That's because you're not a fool, I sup
pose," said Hal. " All the same, we'll go on
to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. " Get up
there, Buck! Hi! Get up there! Mush
on!"

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle,
he knew, to get between a fool and his folly;

128 THE CALL OF THE WILD

while two or three fools more or less would
not alter the scheme of things.

But the team did not get up at the command.
It had long since passed into the stage where
blows were required to rouse it. The whip
flashed out, here and there, on its merciless er
rands. John Thornton compressed his lips.
Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek
followed. Joe came next, yelping with pain.
Pike made painful efforts. Twice he fell over,
when half up, and on the third attempt man
aged to rise. Buck made no effort. He lay
quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into
him again and again, but he neither whined nor
struggled. Several times Thornton started, as
though to speak, but changed his mind. A
moisture came into his eyes, and, as the whip
ping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely
up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in
itself a sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage.
He exchanged the whip for the customary club.
Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier
blows which now fell upon him. Like his

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 129

mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike
them, he had made up his mind not to get up.
He had a vague feeling of impending doom.
This had been strong upon him when he pulled
in to the bank, and it had not departed from
him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had
felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he
sensed disaster close at hand, out there ahead
on the ice where his master was trying to drive
him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he
suffered, and so far gone was he, that the
blows did not hurt much. And as they con
tinued to fall upon him, the spark of life within
flickered and went down. It was nearly out.
He felt strangely numb. As though from a
great distance, he was aware that he was being
beaten. The last sensations of pain left him.
He no longer felt anything, though very faintly
he could hear the impact of the club upon his
body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed
so far away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, utter
ing a cry that was inarticulate and more like
the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang

I3o THE CALL OF THE WILD

upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was
hurled backward, as though struck by a falling
tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked
on wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not
get up because of his stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling
to control himself, too convulsed with rage to
speak.

" If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you,"
he at last managed to say in a choking voice.

"It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood
from his mouth as he came back. " Get out
of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going to Daw-

son."

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and
evinced no intention of getting out of the way.
Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes
screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the
chaotic abandonment of hysteria. Thornton
rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle,
knocking the knife to the ground. He rapped
his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with
two strokes cut Buck's traces.

THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 131

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his
hands were full with his sister, or his arms,
rather; while Buck was too near dead to be
of further use in hauling the sled. A few
minutes later they pulled out from the bank and
down the river. Buck heard them go and
raised his head to see. Pike was leading, Sol-
leks was at the wheel, and between were Joe
and Teek. They were limping and staggering.
Mercedes was riding the loaded sled. Hal
guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled
along in the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt be
side him and with rough, kindly hands searched
for broken bones. By the time his search had
disclosed nothing more than many bruises and
a state of terrible starvation, the sled was a
quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched
it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly, they
saw its back end drop down as into a rut, and
the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into
the air. Mercedes's scream came to their ears.
They saw Charles turn and make one step to
run back, and then a whole section of ice give

I3 2 THE CALL OF THE WILD

way and dogs and humans disappear. A
yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The
bottom had dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each
other.

" You poor devil," said John Thornton, and
Buck licked his hand.

VI
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN

VI

For the Love of a Man

WHEN John Thornton froze his feet
in the previous December, his part
ners had made him comfortable and
left him to get well, going on themselves up
the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Daw-
son. He was still limping slightly at the time
he rescued Buck, but with the continued warm
weather even the slight limp left him. And
here, lying by the river bank through the long
spring days, watching the running water, listen
ing lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of
nature, Buck slowly won back his strength.

A rest comes very good after one has trav
elled three thousand miles, and it must be con
fessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds
healed, his muscles swelled out>, and the flesh
came back to cover his bones. For that matter,

i3S

136 THE CALL OF THE WILD

they were all loafing, — Buck, John Thornton,
and Skeet and Nig, — waiting for the raft to
come that was to carry them down to Dawson.
Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made
friends with Buck, who, in a dying condition,
was unable to resent her first advances. She
had the doctor trait which some dogs possess;
and as a mother cat washes her kittens, so she
washed and cleansed Buck's wounds. Regu
larly, each morning after he had finished his
breakfast, she performed her self-appointed
task, till he came to look for her ministrations
as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally
friendly, though less demonstrative, was a
huge black dog, half bloodhound and half deer-
hound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless
good nature.

To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no
jealousy toward him. They seemed to share
the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton.
As Buck grew stronger they enticed him into
all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thorn
ton himself could not forbear to join; and in
this fashion Buck romped through his conva-

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 137

lescence and into a new existence. Love, genu
ine passionate love, was his for the first time.
This he had never experienced at Judge Mil
ler's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping,
it had been a working partnership; with the
Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guar
dianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately
and dignified friendship. But love that was
feverish and burning, that was adoration, that
was madness, it had taken John Thornton to
arouse.

This man had saved his life, which was some
thing; but, further, he was the ideal master.
Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs
from a sense of duty and business expediency;
he s^w to the welfare of his as if they were
his own children, because he could not help it.
And he saw further. He never forgot a kindly
greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down
for a long talk with them (" gas " he called it)
was as much his delight as theirs. He had a
way of taking Buck's head roughly between
his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck's,

138 THE CALL OF THE WILD

of shaking him back and forth, the while call
ing him ill names that to Buck were love names.
Buck knew no greater joy than that rough em
brace and the sound of murmured oaths, and
at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his
heart would be shaken out of his body so great
was its ecstasy. And when, released, he sprang
to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes elo
quent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound,
and in that fashion remained without move
ment, John Thornton would reverently ex
claim, "God! you can all but speak! "

Buck had a trick of love expression that was
akin to hurt. He would often seize Thornton's
hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that
the flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some
time afterward. And as Buck understood the
oaths to be love words, so the man understood
this feigned bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck's love
was expressed in adoration. While he went
wild with happiness when Thornton touched
him or spoke to him, he did not seek these
tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 139

her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and
nudge till petted, or Nig, who would stalk up
and rest his great head on Thornton's knee,
Buck was content to adore at a distance. He
would lie by the hour, eager, alert, at Thorn
ton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling
upon it, studying it, following with keenest in
terest each fleeting expression, every movement
or change of feature. Or, as chance might
have it, he would lie farther away, to the side or
rear, watching the outlines of the man and the
occasional movements of his body. And often,
such was the communion in which they lived,
the strength of Buck's gaze would draw John
Thornton's head around, and he would return
the gaze, without speech, his heart shining out
of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

For a long time after his rescue, Buck did
not like Thornton to get out of his sight.
From the moment he left the tent to when he
entered it again, Buck would follow at his
heels. His transient masters since he had
come into the Northland had bred in him a
fear that no master could be permanent. He

1 40 THE CALL OF THE WILD

was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his
life as Perrault and Francois and the Scotch
half-breed had passed out. Even in the night,
in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear.
At such times he would shake off sleep and
creep through the chill to the flap of the tent,
where he would stand and listen to the sound
of his master's breathing.

But in spite of this great love he bore John
Thornton, which seemed to bespeak 'he soft
civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive,
which the Northland had aroused in him, re
mained alive and active. Faithfulness and de
votion, things born of fire and roof, were his,
yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He
was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild
to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a
dog of the soft Southland stamped with the
marks of generations of civilization. Because
of his very great love, he could not steal from
this man, -but from any other man, in any
other camp, he did not hesitate an instant;
while the cunning with which he stole enabled
him to escape detection.

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 141

His face and body were scored by the teeth
of many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever
and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too
good-natured for quarrelling, — besides, they
belonged to John Thornton; but the strange
dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly
acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found him
self struggling for life with a terrible antagonist.
And Buck was merciless. He had learned
well the law of club anc fang, and he never
forewent an advantage or drew back from a
foe he had started on the way to Death. He
had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief
fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew
there was no middle course. He must master
or be mastered; while to show mercy was a
weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primor
dial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and
such misunderstandings made for death. Kill
or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and
this mandate, down out of the depths of Time,
he obeyed.

He was older than the days he had seen and
the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past

1 42 THE CALL OF THE WILD

with the present, and the eternity behind him
throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to
which he swayed as the tides and seasons
swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a
broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-
furred; but behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves,
urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the
meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank,
scenting the wind w'.h him, listening with him
and telling him the sounds made by the wild
life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing
his actions, lying down to sleep with him when
he lay down, and dreaming with him and be
yond him and becoming themselves the stuff
of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon him,
that each day mankind and the claims of man
kind slipped farther from him. Deep in the ,
forest a call was sounding, and as often as he
heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and lur
ing, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the
fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge
into the forest, and on and on, he knew not

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 143

where or why; nor did he wonder where or
why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the
forest. But as often as he gained the soft un
broken earth and the green shade, the love for
John Thornton drew him back to the fire
again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of man
kind was as nothing. Chance travellers might
praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all,
and from a too demonstrative man he would
get up and walk away. When Thornton's
partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-
expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till
he learned they were close to Thornton; after
that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way,
accepting favors from them as though he fa
vored them by accepting. They were of the
same large type as Thornton, living close to
the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly;
and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by
the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck
and his ways, and did not insist upon an in
timacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to

144 THE CALL OF THE WILD

grow and grow. He, alone among men, could
put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer
travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to
do, when Thornton commanded. One day
(they had grub-staked themselves from the pro
ceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head
waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were
sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away,
straight down, to naked bed-rock three hun
dred feet below. John Thornton was sitting
near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew
the attention of Hans and Pete to the experi
ment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he
commanded, sweeping his arm out and over
the chasm. The next instant he was grappling
with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans
and Pete were dragging them back into safety.

" It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over
and they had caught their speech.

Thornton shook his head. " No, it is splen
did, and it is terrible, too. Do you know, it
sometimes makes me afraid."

" I'm not hankering to be the man that lays

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 145

hands on you while he's around, " Pete an
nounced conclusively, nodding his head toward
Buck.

" Py Jingo ! " was Hans's contribution.
" Not mineself either."

It was at Circle City, ere the year was out,
that Pete's apprehensions were realized.
" Black " Burton, a man evil-tempered and
malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a
tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped
good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his cus
tom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watch
ing his master's every action. Burton struck
out, without warning, straight from the shoul
der. Thornton was sent spinning, and saved
himself from falling only by clutching the rail
of the bar.

Those who were looking on heard what was
neither bark nor yelp, but a something which
is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's
body rise up in the air as he left the floor for
Burton's throat. The man saved his life by
instinctively throwing out his arm, but was
hurled backward to the floor with Buck on top

146 THE CALL OF THE WILD

of him. Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh
of the arm and drove in again for the throat.
This time the man succeeded only in partly
blocking, and his throat was torn open. Then
the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven
off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding,
he prowled up and down, growling furiously,
attempting to rush in, and being forced back by
an array of hostile clubs. A " miners' meet
ing," called on the spot, decided that the dog
had sufficient provocation, and Buck was dis
charged. But his reputation was made, and
from that day his name spread through every
camp in Alaska.

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved
John Thornton's life in quite another fashion.
The three partners were lining a long and nar
row poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids
on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans and Pete
moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin
Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton
remained in the boat, helping its descent by
means of a pole, and shouting directions to the
shore. Buck, on the bank, worried and anx-

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 147

ious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off
his master.

At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of
barely submerged rocks jutted out into the
river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thorn
ton poled the boat out into the stream, ran down
the bank with the end in his hand to snub the
boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it
did, and was flying down-stream in a current as
swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with
the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat
flirted over and snubbed in to the bank bottom
up, while Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was
carried down-stream toward the worst part of
the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no
swimmer could live.

Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at
the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad
swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton.
When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck headed
for the bank, swimming with all his splendid
strength. But the progress shoreward was
slow, the progress down-stream amazingly
rapid. From below came the fatal roaring

148 THE CALL OF THE WILD

where the wild current went wilder and was rent
in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust
through like the teeth of an enormous comb.
The suck of the water as it took the beginning
of the last steep pitch was frightful, and Thorn
ton knew that the shore was impossible. He
scraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a
second, and struck a third with crushing force.
He clutched its slippery top with both hands,
releasing Buck, and above the roar of the
churning water shouted: " Go, Buck! Go! "

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on
down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable
to win back. When he heard Thornton's com
mand repeated, he partly reared out of the
water, throwing his head high, as though for a
last look, then turned obediently toward the
bank. He swam powerfully and was dragged
ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point
where swimming ceased to be possible and de
struction began.

They knew that the time a man could cling
to a slippery rock in the face of that driving
current was a matter of minutes, and they ran

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 149

as fast as they could up the bank to a point
far above where Thornton was hanging on.
They attached the line with which they had
been snubbing the boat to Buck's neck and
shoulders, being careful that it should neither
strangle him nor impede his swimming, and
launched him into the stream. He struck out
boldly, but not straight enough into the stream.
He discovered the mistake too late, when
Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-
dozen strokes away while he was being carried
helplessly past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as
though Buck were a boat. The rope thus
tightening on him in the sweep of the current,
he was jerked under the surface, and under the
surface he remained till his body struck against
the bank and he was hauled out. He was half
drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves
upon him, pounding the breath into him and the
water out of him. He staggered to his feet
and fell down. The faint sound of Thorn
ton's voice came to them, and though they
could not make out the words of it, they knew

150 THE CALL OF THE WILD

that he was in his extremity. His master's
voice acted on Buck like an electric shock. He
sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead
of the men to the point of his previous de
parture.

Again the rope was attached and he was
launched, and again he struck out, but this time
straight into the stream. He had miscalculated
once, but he would not be guilty of it a second
time. Hans paid out the rope, permitting no
slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck
held on till he was on a line straight above
Thornton; then he turned, and with the speed
of an express train headed down upon him.
Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck
him like a battering ram, with the whole force
of the current behind him, he reached up and
closed with both arms around the shaggy neck.
Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and
Buck and Thornton were jerked under the
water. Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one
uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging
over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks
and snags, they veered into the bank.

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 151

Thornton came to, belly downward and
being violently propelled back and forth across
a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance
was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently
lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while
Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes.
Thornton was himself bruised and battered,
and he went carefully over Buck's body, when
he had been brought around, finding three
broken ribs.

" That settles it," he announced. " We
camp right here." And camp they did, till
Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed
another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one
that put his name many notches higher on the
totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This exploit was
particularly gratifying to the three men; for
they stood in need of the outfit which it fur
nished, and were enabled to make a long-
desired trip into the virgin East, where miners
had not yet appeared. It was brought about
by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in
which men waxed boastful of their favorite

152 THE CALL OF THE WILD

dogs. Buck, because of his record, was the
target for these men, and Thornton was driven
stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an
hour one man stated that his dog could start
a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off
with it; a second bragged six hundred for his
dog; and a third, seven hundred.

" Pooh ! pooh ! " said John Thornton,
" Buck can start a thousand pounds. "

44 And break it out? and walk off with it for
a hundred yards?" demanded Matthewson, a
Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.

44 And break it out, and walk off with it for
a hundred yards," John Thornton said coolly.

44 Well," Matthewson said, slowly and de
liberately, so that all could hear, 4t IVe got a
thousand dollars that says he can't. And there
it is." So saying, he slammed a sack of gold
dust of the size of a bologna sausage down
upon the bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it
was, had been called. He could feel a flush
of warm blood creeping up his face. His
tongue had tricked him. He did not know

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 153

whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton ! The enormousness of it appalled
him. He had great faith in Buck's strength
and had often thought him capable of starting
such a load; but never, as now, had he faced
the possibility of it; the eyes of a dozen men
fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further,
he had no thousand dollars; nor had Hans or
Pete.

11 I've got a sled standing outside now, with
twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it," Mat-
thewson went on with brutal directness, " so
don't let that hinder you."

Thornton did not reply. He did not know
what to say. He glanced from face to face
in the absent way of a man who has lost the
power of thought and is seeking somewhere to
find the thing that will start it going again.
The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King
and old-time comrade, caught his eyes. It was
as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him to do
what he would never have dreamed of doing.

" Can you lend me a thousand? " he asked,
almost in a whisper.

154 THE CALL OF THE WILD

" Sure/' answered O'Brien, thumping down
a plethoric sack by the side of Matthewson's.
" Though it's little faith I'm having, John,
that the beast can do the trick."

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the
street to see the test. The tables were de
serted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came
forth to see the outcome of the wager and to
lay odds. Several hundred men, furred and
mittened, banked around the sled within easy
distance. Matthewson's sled, loaded with a
thousand pounds of flour, had been standing
for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it
was sixty below zero) the runners had frozen
fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered
odds of two to one that Buck could not budge
the sled. A quibble arose concerning the
phrase " break out." O'Brien contended it
was Thornton's privilege to knock the runners
loose, leaving Buck to " break it out " from
a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that
the phrase included breaking the runners from
the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the
men who had witnessed the making of the bet

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 155

decided in his favor, whereat the odds went up
to three to one against Buck.

There were no takers. Not a man believed
him capable of the feat. Thornton had been
hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and
now that he looked at the sled itself, the con
crete fact, with the regular team of ten dogs
curled up in the snow before it, the more
impossible the task appeared. Matthewson
waxed jubilant.

" Three to one ! " he proclaimed. " I'll lay
you another thousand at that figure, Thornton.
What d'ye say ?"

Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but
his fighting spirit was aroused — the fighting
spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize
the impossible, and is deaf to all save the
clamor for battle. He called Hans and Pete
to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his
own the three partners could rake together only
two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their for
tunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they
laid it unhesitatingly against Matthewson's six
hundred.

156 THE CALL OF THE WILD

The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and
Buck, with his own harness, was put into the
sled. He had caught the contagion of the ex
citement, and he felt that in some way he must
do a great thing for John Thornton. Mur
murs of admiration at his splendid appearance
went up. He was in perfect condition, without
an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hun
dred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so
many pounds of grit and virility. His furry
coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the
neck and across the shoulders, his mane, in
repose as it was, half bristled and seemed to lift
with every movement as though excess of vigor
made each particular hair alive and active.
The great breast and heavy fore legs were no
, more than in proportion with the rest of the
body, where the muscles showed in tight rolls
underneath the skin. Men felt these muscles
and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds
went down to two to one.

" Gad, sir! Gad, sir! " stuttered a member
of the latest dynasty, a king of the Skookum
Benches. " I offer you eight hundred for him,

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 157

sir, before the test, sir; eight hundred just as
he stands."

Thornton shook his head and stepped to
Buck's side.

" You must stand off from him," Matthew-
son protested. " Free play and plenty of

room."

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard
the voices of the gamblers vainly offering two
to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a
magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks
of flour bulked too large in their eyes for them
to loosen their pouch-strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He
took his head in his two hands and rested cheek
on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as
was his wont, or murmur soft love curses; but
he whispered in his ear. " As you love me,
Buck. As you love me," was what he whis
pered. Buck whined with suppressed eager
ness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The
affair was growing mysterious. It seemed like
a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet,

158 THE CALL OF THE WILD

Buck seized his mittened hand between his
jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in
terms, not of speech, but of love. Thornton
stepped well back.

" Now, Buck," he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them
for a matter of several inches. It was the way
he had learned.

"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp
in the tense silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the move
ment in a plunge that took up the slack and
with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred
and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and
from under the runners arose a crisp crackling.

"Haw!" Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to
the left. The crackling turned into a snapping,
the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and
grating several inches to the side. The sled
was broken out. Men were holding their
breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.

" Now, MUSH ! "

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 159

Thornton's command cracked out like a
pistol-shot. Buck threw himself forward,
tightening the traces with a jarring lunge.
His whole body was gathered compactly to
gether in the tremendous effort, the muscles
writhing and knotting like live things under
the silky fur. His great chest was low to the
ground, his head forward and down, while his
feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring
the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves.
The sled swayed and trembled, half-started
forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man
groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead
in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks,
though it never really came to a dead stop
again . . . half an inch ... an inch . . .
two inches. . . . The jerks perceptibly dimin
ished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught
them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again,
unaware that for a moment they had ceased to
breathe. Thornton was running behind, en
couraging Buck with short, cheery words.
The distance had been measured off, and as he

160 THE CALL OF THE WILD

neared the pile of firewood which marked the
end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to
grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he
passed the firewood and halted at command.
Every man was tearing himself loose, even
Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in
the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not
matter with whom, and bubbling over in a gen
eral incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck.
Head was against head, and he was shaking
him back and forth. Those who hurried up
heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him
long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the
Skookum Bench king. "I'll give you a
thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir — twelve
hundred, sir."

Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were
wet. The tears were streaming frankly down
his cheeks. u Sir," he said to the Skookum
Bench king, " no, sir. You can go to hell, sir.
It's the best I can do for you, sir."

Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth.

FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 161

Thornton shook him back and forth. As
though animated by a common impulse, the on
lookers drew back to a respectful distance, nor
were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt.

VII
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

VII
The Sounding of the Call

WHEN Buck earned sixteen hundred
dollars in five minutes for John
Thornton, he made it possible for
his master to pay off certain debts and to
journey with his partners into the East after a
fabled lost mine, the history of which was as
old as the history of the country. Many men
had sought it; few had found it; and more
than a few there were who had never returned
from the quest. This lost mine was steeped
in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one
knew of the first man. The oldest tradition
stopped before it got back to him. From the
beginning there had been an ancient and ram
shackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, and
to the mine the site of which it marked, clinching
their testimony with nuggets that were unlike
any known grade of gold in the Northland.

165

1 66 THE CALL OF THE WILD

But no living man had looted this treasure
house, and the dead were dead; wherefore
John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with
Buck and half a dozen other dogs, faced into
the East on an unknown trail to achieve where
men and dogs as good as themselves had
failed. They sledded seventy miles up the
Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart
River, passed the Mayo and the McQuestion,
and held on until the Stewart itself became a
streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which
marked the backbone of the continent.

John Thornton asked little of man or nature.
He was unafraid of the wild. With a handful
of salt and a rifle he could plungs into the
wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and
as long as he pleased. Being in no haste, In
dian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course
of the day's travel; and if he failed to find it,
like the Indian, he kept on travelling, secure in
the knowledge that sooner or later he would
come to it. So, on this great journey into the
East, straight meat was the bill of fare, am
munition and tools principally made up the load

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 167

on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon
the limitless future.

To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunt
ing, fishing, and indefinite wandering through
strange places. For weeks at a time they
would hold steadily, day after day, and for
weeks upon end they would camp here and
there, the dogs loafing and the men burning
holes through frozen muck and gravel and
washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of
the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, some
times they feasted riotously, all according to the
abundance of game and the fortune of hunting.
Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on
their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes,
and descended or ascended unknown rivers in
slender boats whipsawed from the standing
forest.

The months came and went, and back and
forth they twisted through the uncharted vast-
ness, where no men were and yet where men
had been if the Lost Cabin were true. They
went across divides in summer blizzards, shiv
ered under the midnight sun on naked moun-

1 68 THE CALL OF THE WILD

tains between the timber line and the eternal
snows, dropped into summer valleys amid
swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows
of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as
ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast.
In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird
lake country, sad and silent, where wild-fowl
had been, but where then there was no life
nor sign of life — only the blowing of chill
winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places,
and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely
beaches.

And through another winter they wandered
on the obliterated trails of men who had gone
before. Once, they came upon a path blazed
through the forest, an ancient path, and the
Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path
began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it
remained mystery, as the man who made it
and the reason he made it remained mystery.
Another time they chanced upon the time-
graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid
the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton
found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 169

for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young
days in the Northwest, when such a gun was
worth its height in beaver skins packed flat.
And that was all — no hint as to the men who
in an early day had reared the lodge and left
the gun among the blankets.

Spring came on once more, and at the end
of all their wandering they found, not the Lost
Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley
where the gold showed like yellow butter across
the bottom of the washing-pan. They sought
no farther. Each day they worked earned
them thousands of dollars in clean dust and
nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold
was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to
the bag, and piled like so much firewood out
side the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they
toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like
dreams as they heaped the treasure up.

There was nothing for the dogs to do, save
the hauling in of meat now and again that
Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours
musing by the fire. The vision of the short-
legged hairy man came to him more frequently,

1 7o THE CALL OF THE WILD

now that there was little work to be done; and
often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with
him in that other world which he remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed
fear. When he watched the hairy man sleep
ing by the fire, head between his knees and
hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept
restlessly, with many starts and awakenings,
at which times he would peer fearfully into the
darkness and fling more wood upon the fire.
Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the
hairy man gathered shell-fish and ate them as
he gathered, it was with eyes that roved every
where for hidden danger and with legs pre
pared to run like the wind at its first appear
ance. Through the forest they crept noise
lessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they
were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears
twitching and moving and nostrils quivering,
for the man heard and smelled as keenly as
Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the
trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground,
swinging by the arms from limb to limb, some
times a dozen feet apart, letting go and catch-

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 171

ing, never falling, never missing his grip. In
fact, he seemed as much at home among the
trees as on the ground; and Buck had memories
of nights of vigil spent beneath trees wherein
the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he
slept.

And closely akin to the visions of the hairy
man was the call still sounding in the depths
of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a
vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware of
wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not
what. Sometimes he pursued the call into the
forest, looking for it as though it were a tan
gible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the
mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose
into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil
where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at
the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for
hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-cov
ered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-
eared to all that moved and sounded about him.
It might be, lying thus, that he hoped to sur
prise this call he could not understand. But

1 72 THE CALL OF THE WILD

he did not know why he did these various
things. He was impelled to do them, and did
not reason about them at all.

Irresistible impulses seized him. He would
be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of
the day, when suddenly his head would lift and
his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he
would spring to his feet and dash away, and on
and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and
across the open spaces where the niggerheads
bunched. He loved to run down dry water
courses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life
in the woods. For a day at a time he would
lie in the underbrush where he could watch the
partridges drumming and strutting up and
down. But especially he loved to run in the
dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening
to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the for
est, reading signs and sounds as man may read
a book, and seeking for the mysterious some
thing that called — called, waking or sleeping,
at all times, for him to come.

One night he sprang from sleep with a start,
eager-eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 173

mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the
forest came the call (or one note of it, for the
call was many noted), distinct and definite as
never before, — a long-drawn howl, like, yet
unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he
knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound
heard before. He sprang through the sleeping
camp and in swift silence dashed through the
woods. As he drew closer to the cry he went
more slowly, with caution in every movement,
till he came to an open place among the trees,
and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with
nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber
wolf.

He had made no noise, yet it ceased from
its howling and tried to sense his presence.
Buck stalked into the open, half crouching,
body gathered compactly together, tail straight
and stiff, feet falling with unwonted care.
Every movement advertised commingled threat
ening and overture of friendliness. It was the
menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild
beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight
of him. He followed, with wild leapings, in a

I74 THE CALL' OF THE WILD

frenzy to overtake. He ran him into a blind
channel, in the bed of the creek, where a tim
ber jam barred the way. The wolf whirled
about, pivoting on his hind legs after the fash
ion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs,
snarling and bristling, clipping his teeth to
gether in a continuous and rapid succession
of snaps.

Buck did not attack, but circled him about
and hedged him in with friendly advances.
The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck
made three of him in weight, while his head
barely reached Buck's shoulder. Watching his
chance, he darted away, and the chase was
resumed. Time and again he was cornered,
and the thing repeated, though he was in poor
condition or Buck could not so easily have
overtaken him. He would run till Buck's
head was even with his flank, when he would
whirl around at bay, only to dash away again
at the first opportunity.

But in the end Buck's pertinacity was re
warded; for the wolf, finding that no harm was
intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 175

they became friendly, and played about in the
nervous, half-coy way with which fierce beasts
belie their fierceness. After some time of this
the wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner
that plainly showed he was going somewhere.
He made it clear to Buck that he was to come,
and they ran side by side through the sombre
twilight, straight up the creek bed, into the
gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak
divide where it took its rise.

On the opposite slope of the watershed they
came down into a level country where were
great stretches of forest and many streams,
and through these great stretches they ran
steadily, hour after hour, the sun rising higher
and the day growing warmer. Buck was
wildly glad. He knew he was at last answer
ing the call, running by the side' of his wood
brother toward the place from where the call
surely came. Old memories were coming upon
him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old
he stirred to the realities of which they were
the shadows. He had done this thing before,
somewhere in that other and dimly remembered

1 76 THE CALL OF THE WILD

world, and he was doing it again, now, running
free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot,
the wide sky overhead.

They stopped by a running stream to drink,
and, s opping, Buck remembered John Thorn
ton. He sat down. The wolf started on
toward the place from where the call surely
came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and
making actions as though to encourage him.
But Buck turned about and started slowly on
the back track. For the better part of an
hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining
softly. Then he sat down, pointed his nose
upward, and howled. It was a mournful howl,
and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard
it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in the
distance.

John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck
dashed into camp and sprang upon him in a
frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling
upon him, licking his face, biting his hand —
44 playing the general torn-fool," as John Thorn
ton characterized it, the while he shook Buck
back and forth and cursed him lovingly.

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 177

For two days and nights Buck never left
camp, never let Thornton out of his sight,
lie followed him about at his work, watched
him while he ate, saw him into his blankets at
night and out of them in the morning. But
after two days the call in the forest began to
sound more imperiously than ever. Buck's
restlessness came back on him, and he was
haunted by recollections of the wild brother,
and of the smiling land beyond the divide and
the run side by side through the wide forest
stretches. Once again he took to wandering
in the woods, but the wild brother came no
more; and though he listened through long
vigils, the mournful howl was never raised.

We began to sleep out at night, staying
away from camp for days at a time; and once
he crossed the divide at the head of the creek
and went down into the land of timber and
streams. There he wandered for a week,
seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild
brother, killing his meat as he travelled and
travelling with the long, easy lope that seems
never to tire. He fished for salmon in a broad

I78 THE CALL OF THE WILD

stream that empties somewhere into the seas
and by this stream he killed a large black bear,
blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise fishing,
and raging through the forest helpless and
terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and
it aroused the last latent remnants of Buck's
ferocity. And two days later, when he re
turned to his kill and found a dozen wolver
enes quarrelling over the spoil, he scattered
them like chaff; and those that fled left two
behind who would quarrel no more.

The blood-longing became stronger than
ever before. He was a killer, a thing that
preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided,
alone, by virtue of his own strength and
prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile
environment where only the strong survived.
Because of all this he became possessed of a
great pride in himself, which communicated
itself like a contagion to his physical being.
It advertised itself in all his movements, was
apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke
plainly as speech in the way he carried himself,
and made his glorious furry coat if anything

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 179

more glorious. But for the stray brown on his
muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash
of white hair that ran midmost down his chest,
he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic
wolf, larger than the largest of the breed.
From his St. Bernard father he had inherited
size and weight, but it was his shepherd
mother who had given shape to that size and
weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle,
save that it was larger than the muzzle of any
wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was
the wolf head on a massive scale.

His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild
cunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence
and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus
an experience gained in the fiercest of schools,
made him as formidable a creature as any that
roamed the wild. A carnivorous animal, liv
ing on a straight meat diet, he was in full
flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling
with vigor and virility. When Thornton
passed a caressing hand along his back, a snap
ping and crackling followed the hand, each hair
discharging its pent magnetism at the contact

l8o THE CALL OF THE WILD

Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and
fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and
between all the parts there was a perfect equi
librium or adjustment. To sights and sounds
and events which required action, he responded
with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a
husky dog could leap to defend from attack or
to attack, he could leap twice as quickly. He
saw the movement, or heard sound, and re
sponded in less time than another dog required
to compass the mere seeing or hearing. He
perceived and determined and responded in the
same instant. In point of fact the three actions
of perceiving, determining, and responding
were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the
intervals of time between them that they ap
peared simultaneous. His muscles were sur
charged with vitality, and snapped into play
sharply, like steel springs. Life streamed
through him in splendid flood, glad and ram
pant, until it seemed that it would burst him
asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth gener
ously over the world.

" Never was there such a dog," said John

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 181

Thornton one day, as the partners watched
Buck marching out of camp.

' When he was made, the mould was broke/'
said Pete.

" Py jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans
affirmed.

They saw him marching out of camp, but
they did not see the instant and terrible trans
formation which took place as soon as he was
within the secrecy of the forest. He no longer
marched. At once he became a thing of the
wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a pass
ing shadow that appeared and disappeared
among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his
belly like a snake, and like a snake to leap and
strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its
nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid
air the little chipmunks fleeing a second too
late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were
not too quick for him; nor were beaver, mend
ing their dams, too wary. He killed to eat,
not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat
what he killed himself. So a lurking humor

1 82 THE CALL OF THE WILD

ran through his deeds, and it was his delight
to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all
but had them, to let them go, chattering in
mortal fear to the tree-tops.

As the fall of the year came on, the moose
appeared in greater abundance, moving slowly
down to meet the winter in the lower and less
rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged
down a stray part-grown calf; but he wished
strongly for larger and more formidable quarry,
and he came upon it one day on the divide
at the head of the creek. A band of twenty
moose had crossed over from the land of
streams and timber, and chief among them was
a great bull. He was in a savage temper, and,
standing over six feet from the ground, was as
formidable an antagonist as even Buck could
desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his
great palmated antlers, branching to fourteen
points and embracing seven feet within the tips.
His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitter
light, while he roared with fury at sight of
Buck.

From the bull's side, just forward of the

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 183

flank, protruded a feathered arrow-end, which
accounted for his savageness. Guided by that
instinct which came from the old hunting days
of the primordial world, Buck proceeded to
cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight
task. He would bark and dance about in
front of the bull, just out of reach of the great
antlers and the terrible splay hoofs which could
have stamped his life out with a single blow.
Unable to turn his back on the fanged danger
and go on, the bull would be driven into parox
ysms of rage. At such moments he charged
Buck, who retreated craftily, luring him on by
a simulated inability to escape. But when he
was thus separated from his fellows, two or
three of the younger bulls would charge back
upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to
rejoin the herd.

There is a patience of the wild — dogged,
tireless, persistent as life itself — that holds
motionless for endless hours the spider in its
web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its
ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to
life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged

184 THE CALL OF THE WILD

to Buck as he clnng to the flank of the herds
retarding its march, irritating the young bulls,
worrying the cows with their half-grown calves,
and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless
rage. For half a day this continued. Buck
multiplied himself, attacking from all sides, en
veloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace,
cutting out his victim as fast as it could rejoin
its mates, wearing out the patience of creatures
preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than
that of creatures preying.

As the day wore along and the sun dropped
to its bed in the northwest (the darkness had
come back and the fall nights were six hours
long), the young bulls retraced their steps more
and more reluctantly to the aid of their beset
leader. The down-coming winter was harry
ing them on to the lower levels, and it seemed
they could never shake off this tireless creature
that held them back. Besides, it was not the
life of the herd, or of the young bulls, that
was threatened. The life of only one member
was demanded, which was a remoter interest

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 185

than their lives, and in the end they were con
tent to pay the toll.

As twilight fell the old bull stood with low
ered head, watching his mates — the cows he
had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls
he had mastered — as they shambled on at a
rapid pace through the fading light. He could
not follow, for before his nose leaped the
merciless fanged terror that would not let him
go. Three hundredweight more than half a
ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong
life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end
he faced death at the teeth of a creature whose
head did not reach beyond his great knuckled
knees.

From then on, night and day, Buck never
left his prey, never gave it a moment's rest,
never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees
or the shoots of young birch and willow. Nor
did he give the wounded bull opportunity to
slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling
streams they crossed. Often, in desperation,
he burst into long stretches of flight. At such

1 86 THE CALL OF THE WILD

times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but
loped easily at his heels, satisfied with the way
the game was played, lying down when the
moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when
he strove to eat or drink.

The great head drooped more and more
under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot
grew weaker and weaker. He took to stand
ing for long periods, with nose to the ground
and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck
found more time in which to get water for
himself and in which to rest. At such mo
ments, panting with red lolling tongue and with
eyes fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to
Buck that a change was coming over the face of
things. He could feel a new stir in the land.
As the moose were coming into the land, other
kinds of life were coming in. Forest and
stream and air seemed palpitant with their
presence. The news of it was borne in upon
him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by
some other and subtler sense. He heard noth
ing, saw nothing, yet knew that the land was
somehow different; that through it strange

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 187

things were afoot and ranging; and he resolved
to investigate after he had finished the business
in hand.

At last, at the end of the fourth day, he
pulled the great moose down. For a day and
a night he remained by the kill, eating and
sleeping, turn and turn about. Then, rested,
refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward
camp and John Thornton. He broke into the
long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour,
never at loss for the tangled way, heading
straight home through strange country with a
certitude of direction that put man and his mag
netic needle to shame.

As he held on he became more and more
conscious of the new stir in the land. There
was life abroad in it different from the life
which had been there throughout the summer.
No longer was this fact borne in upon him in
some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked
of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very
breeze whispered of it. Several times he
stopped and drew in the fresh morning air in
great sniffs, reading a message which made him

1 88 THE CALL OF THE WILD

leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed
with a sense of calamity happening, if it were
not calamity already happened; and as he
crossed the last watershed and dropped down
into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with
greater caution.

Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail
that sent his neck hair rippling and bristling.
It led straight toward camp and John Thorn
ton. Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily,
every nerve straining and tense, alert to the
multitudinous details which told a story — all
but the end. His nose gave him a varying de
scription of the passage of the life on the heels
of which he was travelling. He remarked the
pregnant silence of the forest. The bird life
had flitted. The squirrels were in hiding.
One only he saw, — a sleek gray fellow, flat
tened against a gray dead limb so that he
seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon
the wood itself.

As Buck slid along with the obscureness of
a gliding shadow, Jiis nose was jerked suddenly
to the side as though a positive force had

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 189

gripped and pulled it. He followed the new
scent into a thicket and found Nig. He was
lying on his side, dead where he had dragged
himself, an arrow protruding, head and feath
ers, from either side of his body.

A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon
one of the sled-dogs Thornton had bought in
Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a
death-struggle, directly on the trail, and Buck
passed around him without stopping. From
the camp came the faint sound of many voices,
rising and falling in a sing-song chant. Belly
ing forward to the edge of the clearing he
found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with
arrows like a porcupine. At the same instant
Buck peered out where the spruce-bough lodge
had been and saw what made his hair leap
straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust
of overpowering rage swept over him. He did
not know that he growled, but he growled aloud
with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in
his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning
and reason, and it was because of his great love
for John Thornton that he lost his head.

I9o THE CALL OF THE WILD

The Ycchats were dancing about the wreck
age of the spruce-bough lodge when they heard
a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them
an animal the like of which they had never seen
before. It was Buck, a live hurricane of fury,
hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to de
stroy. He sprang at the foremost man (it was
the chief of the Yeehats), ripping the throat
wide open till the rent jugular spouted a foun
tain of blood. He did not pause to worry the
victim, but ripped in passing, with the next
bound tearing wide the throat of a second man.
[There was no withstanding him. He plunged
about in their very midst, tearing, rending, de
stroying, in constant and terrific motion which
defied the arrows they discharged at him. In
fact, so inconceivably rapid were his move
ments, and so closely were the Indians tangled
together, that they shot one another with the
arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear
at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest
of another hunter with such force that the point
broke through the skin of the back and stood
out beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats,

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 191

and they fled in terror to the woods, proclaim
ing as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit,

And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate,
raging at their heels and dragging them down
like deer as they raced through the trees. It
was a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scat
tered far and wide over the country, and it was
not till a week later that the last of the survivors
gathered together in a lower valley and counted
their losses. As for Buck, wearying of the
pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp.
He found Pete where he had been killed in
his blankets in the first moment of surprise.
Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-
written on the earth, and Buck scented every
detail of it down to the edge of a deep pool.
By the edge, head and fore feet in the water,
lay Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool itself,
muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes,
effectually hid what it contained, and it con
tained John T^hornton; for Buck followed his
trace into the water, from which no trace led
away.

All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed

I92 THE CALL OF THE WILD

restlessly about the camp. Death, as a cessa
tion of movement, as a passing out and away
from the lives of the living, he knew, and he
knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great
void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a
void which ached and ached, and which food
could not fill. At times, when he paused to
contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he
forgot the pain of it; and at such times he
was aware of a great pride in himself, — a
pride greater than any he had yet experienced.
He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and
he had killed in the face of the law of club and
fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They
had died so easily. It was harder to kill a
husky dog than them. They were no match at
all, were it not for their arrows and spears and
clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid
of them except when they bore in their hands
their arrows, spears, and clubs.

Night came on, and a full moon rose high
over the trees into the sky, lighting the land
till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with
the coming of the night, brooding and mourn-

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 193

ing by the pool, Buck became alive to a stirring
of the new life in the forest other than that
which the Yeehats had made. He stood up,
listening and scenting. From far away drifted
a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of
similar sharp yelps. As the moments passed
the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck
knew JJhem as things heard in that other world
which persisted in his memory. He walked to
the centre of the open space and listened. It
was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more
luringly and compelling than ever before.
And as never before, he was ready to obey.
John Thornton was dead. The last tie was
broken. Man and the claims of man no longer
bound him.

Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats
were hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating
moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over
from the land of streams and timber and in
vaded Buck's valley. Into the clearing where
the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery
flood; and in the centre of the clearing stood
Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their

I94 THE CALL OF THE WILD

coming. They were awed, so still and large
he stood, and a moment's pause fell, till the
boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a
flash Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he
stood, without movement, as before, the
stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him.
Three others tried it in sharp succession; and
one after the other they drew back, streaming
blood from slashed throats or shoulders.

[This was sufficient to fling the whole pack
forward, pell-mell, crowded together, blocked
and confused by its eagerness to pull down the
prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility
stood him in good stead. Pivoting on his hind
legs, and snapping and gashing, he was every
where at once, presenting a front which was
apparently unbroken so swiftly did he whirl
and guard from side to side. But to prevent
them from getting behind him, he was forced
back, down past the pool and into the creek bed,
till he brought up against a high gravel bank.
He worked along to a right angle in the bank
which the men had made in the course of min
ing, and in this angle he came to bay, protected

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 195

on three sides and with nothing to do but face
the front.

And so well did he face it, that at the end
of half an hour the wolves drew back discom
fited. The tongues of all were out and lolling,
the white fangs showing cruelly white in the
moonlight. Some were lying down with heads
raised and ears pricked forward; others stood
on their feet, watching him; and still others
were lapping water from the pool. One wolf,
long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in
a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the
wild brother with whom he had run for a night
and a day. He was whining softly, and, as
Buck whined, they touched noses.

Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred,
came forward. Buck writhed his lips into the
preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with
him. Whereupon the old wolf sat down,
pointed nose at the moon, and broke out the
long wolf howl! The others sat down and
howled. And now the call came to Buck in un
mistakable accents. He, too, sat down and
howled. This over, he came out of his angle

196 THE CALL OF THE WILD

and the pack crowded around him, sniffing in
half-friendly, half-savage manner. The lead
ers lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang away
into the woods. The wolves swung in behind,
yelping in chorus. And Buck ran with them,
side by side with the wild brother, yelping as he
ran.

And here may well end the story of Buck.
The years were not many when the Yeehats
noted a change in the breed of timber wolves;
for some were seen with splashes of brown on
head and muzzle, and with a rift of white
centering down the chest. But more remark
able than this, the Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog
that runs at the head of the pack. They are
afraid of this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning
greater than they, stealing from their camps in
fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their
dogs, and defying their bravest hunters.

Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there
are who fail to return to the camp, and hunters
there have been whom their tribesmen found
with throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 197

prints about them in the snow greater than the
prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yee-
hats follow the movement of the moose, there
is a certain valley which they never enter.
And women there are who become sad when the
word goes over the fire of how the Evil Spirit
same to select that valley for an abiding-place.

In the summers there is one visitor, however,
to that valley, of which the Yeehats do not
know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf,
like, and yet unlike, all other wolves. He
crosses alone from the smiling timber land and
comes down into an open space among the trees.
Here a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-
hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with long
grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the
sun; and here he muses for a time, howling
once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.

But he is not always alone. When the long
winter nights come on and the wolves follow
their meat into the lower valleys, he may be
seen running at the head of the pack through
the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis,

198 THE CALL OF THE WILD

leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great
throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger
world, which is the song of the pack.

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