W. A. Setchell
THE
ALL OF THE WILD
EDOC
P$',;<
um
BY
JACK LONDON
AUTHOR OF "THE SEA WOLF," "WHITE FANG,"
"MARTIN EDEN," ETC.
Illustrated by Philip R. Goodwin, and Charles Livingston Bull
Decorated by Chas. Edw. Hooper
THE REGENT PRESS
NEW YORK
COPYBIGHT, 1003,
BY JACK LONDON
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1903. Reprinted July,
August, September, December, 1903; January, March, September,
November, 1904; February, April, July, 1905; January, April,
November, 1906; June, 1907; May, June, 1908; April, 1909;
February, 1910; September, December, 1911; April, September,
October, 1912; April, 1913.
New edition May, September, 1910.
.
Printed and Bound by
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York
T:
CONTENTS
Chapter
I. INTO THE PRIMITIVE. • . , • 13
II. THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANO . * • 41
III. THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST • t 6$
IV. WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 4 • • lot
V. THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL • • 121
VI. FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN • • • 159
VII. THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL • • • 991
INTO THE PRIMITIVE
OVER THIS GREAT DEMESNE—
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Into the Primitive
€t Old longings nomadic leap, T
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 him self ,
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
becauss steamship and transportation companies
16 THE CALL OF THE WILD
were booming the find, thousands of men were
rushing into the Northland. These men
wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were
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 approached by gravelled drive
ways which wound about through wide-spread
ing 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 arbors, green
pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then
there was the pumping plant for the artesian
well, and the big cement tank where Judge
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 17
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
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 Ysabel, 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 pro
tected 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
1 8 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
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 royai 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
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 19
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
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 undesir
able acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting
sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also,
in his gambling, he had one besetting weak
ness — faith in a system ; and this made his
damnation certain. For to play a system re
quires 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
20 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
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 between 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
affirmative.
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
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 21
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
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 threw 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 cf a kidnapped king. The
man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too
22 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
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;
<f 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
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 23
saloon-keeper calculated; "and he's worth it,
or I'm a squarehead."
The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings
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
rope 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, but
he felt oppressed by the vague sense of im
pending calamity. Several times during the
24 THE CALL OF THE WILD
night he sprang to his feet when the shed door
rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or the
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 hands. 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
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 25
a great railway depot, and finally he was de
posited in an express car.
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,
he knew; 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
26 THE CALL OF THE WILD
advantage ; but now that it was off, he would
show them. They would never get another
rope around his neck. Upon that he was
resolved. 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 have recognized him; and the express
messengers breathed with relief when they
bundled 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 ? "
the driver asked.
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 27
cc Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet
into the crate for a pry.
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 out
side, he was there on the inside, snarling and
growling, 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
28 THE CALL OF THE WILD
nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were, bout
to close on the man, he received a shock that
checked his body and brought his teeth together
with an agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetch
ing 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
'And beyond that fire . . . Buck could see many gleaming
coals, two by two, always two by two."
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 31
at the man. But the man, shifting the club
from right to left, coolly caught him by the
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.
cc He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot
j say," one of the men on the wall cried
<::i;'husiastically.
u Druther break cayuses any day, and twice
n 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.
" c 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
32 THE CALL OF THE WILD
boy," he went on in a genial voice, cc we've had
our little ruction, and the best thing we can do
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 a!i 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 aspect ;
and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he
faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 33
aroused. As the days went by, other dogs
came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some
docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had
come ; and, one and all, he watched them pass
under the dominion of the man in the red
sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each
brutal performance, the lesson was driven home
to Buck : a man with a club was a lawgiver, a
master to be obeyed, though not necessarily
conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty,
though he did see beaten dogs that fawned
upon the man, and wagged their tails, and
licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that
would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed
in the struggle for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who
talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds
of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And
at such times that money passed between them
the strangers took one or more of the dogs
away with them. Buck wondered where they
went, for they never came back ; but the fear
of the future was strong upon him, and he was
glad each time when he was not selected.
34 THE CALL OF THE WILD
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form
of a little weazened man who spat broken
English and many strange and uncouth excla
mations which Buck could not understand.
cc 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 un
wonted 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
PERRAULT
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 37
of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly
and he looked at receding Seattle from the
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 Fra^ois. Perrault was a
French-Canadian, and swarthy ; but Fra^ois
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 Fra^ois 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
38 THE CALL OF THE WILD
some underhand trick, as, for instance, when
he stole from Buck's food at the first meal.
As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of
Francis's whip sang through the air, reaching
the culprit first; and nothing remained to
Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair
of Fran9ois, 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. cc 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 incurious glance, yawned, and
went to sleep again.
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 39
Day and night the ship throbbed to the
tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one
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. Fra^ois 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
IJClub and Fang
BUCK'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 moment'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.
43
44 THE CALL OF THE WILD
He had never seen dogs fight as these
wolfish creatures fought, and his first experi
ence 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 intent and silent circle. Buck did not
comprehend 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
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 45
never regained them. This was what the on-
looking huskies had waited for. They closed
in upon her, snarling and yelping, and she
was buried, screaming with 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
laughing; and he saw Fran9ois, swinging an
axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three
men with clubs were helping him to scatter
them. It 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 hor
ribly. 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 rnd . lies., hatred,
46 THE CALL OF THE WILD
Before he had recovered from the shock
caused by the tragic passing of Curly, he
received another shock. Fran9ois fastened
upon him an arrangement of straps and
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 return
ing 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.
Fran£ois was stern, demanding instant obe
dience, and by virtue of his whip receiving
instant obedience ; while Dave, who was an
experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quar
ters 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
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 47
easily, and under the combined tuition of his
two mates and Fran£ois made remarkable
progress. Ere they returned to camp he
knew enough to stop at " ho," to go ahead
at Ci mush," to swing wide on the bends,
and to keep clear of the wheeler when the
loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.
" T'ree vair* good dogs," Francois told
Perrault. " 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 introspective, with a perpetual snarl
and a malignant eye. Buck received them
in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them,
while Spitz proceeded to thrash first one and
then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeas-
ingly, turned to run when he saw that ap-
48 THE CALL OF THE WILD
peasement 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, lips writhing
and snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as
he could snap, and eyes diabolically gleaming
— the incarnation of belligerent 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 riot like to be
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 49
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. Forever after Buck avoided his
blind side, and to 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 Fra^ois 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
attempted to sleep, but the frost 10011 drove
$o THE CALL OF THE WILD
him shivering to his feet. Miserable and
disconsolate, he wandered about among the
many tents, only to find that one place was
as cold as another. 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.
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 possibly
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. Something
wriggled under his feet. He sprang back,
bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen
and unknown. But a friendly little yelp
reassured him, and he went back to investi
gate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 51
nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow
in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placat-
ingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good
will and intentions, 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,
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 comfort
ably, 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
52 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 instinctively, 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 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 Fra^ois hailed his appear
ance. <c 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
FRANCOIS
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 55
team inside an hour, making a total of
and before another quarter of an hour had
passed they were in harness and swinging up
the trail toward the Dyea Cafton. Buck was
glad to be gone, and though the work was
hard he found he did not particularly despise
it. He was surprised at the eagerness which
animated the whole team and which was com
municated to him ; but still more surprising
was the change 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.
56 THE CALL OF THE WILD
Buck had been purposely placed between
Dave and Sol-leks so that he might receive
instruction. Apt schojar that he was, they
were equally apt teachers, never allowing him
to linger long in error, and enforcing their
teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair
and very wise. He never nipped Buck with
out cause, and he never failed to nip him
when he stood in need of it. As Fra^ois's
whip 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 trouncing. The resulting tangle was
even worse, but Buck took good care to keep
the traces clear thereafter ; arid ere the day was
done, so well had he mastered his work, his
mates about ceased nagging him. Fra^ois'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 LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 57
the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts
hundreds 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 gold-
seekers were building boats 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,
58 THE CALL OF THE WILD
and he prided himself on his knowledge of ice,
which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall
ice was very thin, and where there was swiu
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
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
defending it. While he was fighting oft two
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 59
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 com
pel 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 Perrault's back was turned, he
duplicated the performance the following day,
getting away with the whole chunk. A great
uproar was raised, 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 ad
just 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 private prop-
60 THE CALL OF THE WILD
erty and personal feelings ; but in the North-
land, 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 accommo
dated 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 a more fundamental and primitive code.
Civilized, he could have died for a moral
consideration, 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 cunningly, 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*
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 6f
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
economy. 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 acute-
ness that in his 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 collected 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 ths
wind and forecast it a night in advance. IS) o mat
ter how breathless the air when he dug his nest
by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevi-
tably found him to leeward, sheltered and snugo
62 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 man
ner had fought forgotten ancestors. They
quickened the old life within him, and the old
tricks which they had stamped into the hered
ity of the breed 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 an
cestors, 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 still
ness, and the cold, and dark.
Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 63
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 attitude. He was not pront to rashness
and precipitate action ; and in the bitter hatred
between him and Spitz he betrayed no impa
tience, shunned all offensive acts.
67
68 THE CALL OF THE WILD
On the other hand, possibly because he
divined in Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz never
lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He
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 perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and
Fran9ois were compelled to make their fire
and spread their sleeping rotes on the ice of
the lake itself. The tent ad discarded
at Dyea in order to travel 11, d.-, .A f-w 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 69
he was loath to leave it when Frar^ois dis'
tributed the fish which he had first thawed ovei
the fire. 'But when Buck finished his ration
and returned, 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
particularly, for his -whole experience with Buck
had gone to teach him that his rival was an
unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his
own only because of his great weight and size,
j?ran9ois 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 i
Gif it to heeiii, 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 likewise circled back and forth for the
advantage. But it was then that the unex
70 THE CALL OF THE WILD
pected happened, the thing which projected
their struggle for supremacy far into the futures
past many a weary mile of trail and toil.
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 ot 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 struggled none the less madly till the last
crumb had been devoured*
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 71
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 such dogs. It seemed as though thei:
bones would burst through their skins. They
were mere skeletons, draped loosely in drag
gled 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 frightful. 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.
f2 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 was Spitz, treacher
ously attacking from the side.
Perrault and Fra^ois, 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
himself free. But it was only for a moment.
The two men were compelled to run back to
save the grub; upon which the huskies re
turned 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 under 'that mass
of huskies, there was no hope for him. But
he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
sharge, then joined the flight out on the iake*
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 73
Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together
and sought shelter in the forest. Though
unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There
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
Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out
of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash
from the end of Francis's whip. He broke
from a mournful contemplation of it to look
over his wounded dogs.
"Ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe
74 THE CALL OF THE WILD
it mek you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe
all mad dog, sacredam ! Wot you t'ink, eh,
Perrault?"
J£he courier shook his head dubiously. With
four hundred miles of trail still between him
and Dawson, he could ill afford to have
madness 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 75
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
compelled 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,
76 THE CALL OF THE WILD
his fore paws on the slippery edge and the
ice quivering and snapping all around. But
behind him was Dave, likewise straining back
ward, and behind the sled was Fra^ois,
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
Perrauit, to make up lost time, pushed them
late and early. The first day they covered
thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon ; the next
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 77
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
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 Fra^ois forgot the moccasins
and Buck lay on his back, his four feet waving
appealingly in the air, and refused to budge with
out 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
78 THE CALL OF THE WILD
harnessing up, Dolly, who had never been
conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad.
She announced her condition by a long, heart
breaking wolf howl that sent every dog bris
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 madness. 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, curved 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.
Fran 9013 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 79
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
was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon
Buck, and twice his teeth sank into his un
resisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh
to the bone. Then Fra^ois's 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."
" Dat Buck two devils," was Fran9ois's
rejoinder. "All de tarn I watch dat Buck
I know for sure. Lissen : some dam fine
day heem g&t 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
of the team, felt his supremacy threatened
by this strange Southland dog. And strange
<c
<€
8o THE CALL OF THE WILD
Buck was to 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 and prospered, matching the
husky in strength, savagery, and cunning.
Then he was a masterful 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 rashness 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 leader
ship 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 81
he pulled with all his strength ; the pride that
laid hold of them at break of camp, trans
forming them from sour and sullen brutes into
straining, eager, ambitious creatures ; the pride
that spurred them on all day and dropped
them at pitch of camp at night, letting them
fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent.
This was the pride that bore up Spitz and
made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered
and shirked in the traces or hid away at
harness-up time1 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 leader
ship. 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 malin
gerer, did not appear. He was securely hid
den in his nest under a foot of snow. Fra^ois
called him and sought him in vain. Spitz
was wild with wrath. He raged through the
camp, smelling and digging in every likely
82 THE CALL OF THE WILD
place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard
and shivered in his hiding-place.
But when he was at last unearthed, and
Spitz flew at him to punish him, Buck flew,
with equal rage, in between. So unexpected
was it, and so shrewdly managed, that Spitz
was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike,
who had been trembling abjectly, took heart
at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his
overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fairplay
was a forgotten code, likewise sprang upon
Spitz. But Fra^ois, chuckling at the inci
dent 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 offend
ing 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 83
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
bickering and jangling. Trouble was always
afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He
kept Fra^ois busy, for the dog-driver was
in constant apprehension of the life-and-death
struggle between the two which he knew must
take place sooner or later ; and on more than
one night the sounds of quarrelling and strife
among the other dogs turned him out of his
sleeping robe, fearful that Buck and Spitz were
at it.
But the opportunity did not present itself,
and they pulled into Dawson one dreary 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
84 THE CALL OF THE WILD
jingling bells still went by. They hauled
cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the
mines, and did ail manner of work that horses
did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here and
there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the
main they were the wild wolf husky breed.
Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at
three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and
eerie chant, in which it was Buck's delight to
join.
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly
overhead, or the stars leaping in the 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 wail-
ings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading
of life, the articulate travail of existence. It
was an 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 unnumbered generations, this
plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred.
When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the
"With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead."
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 87
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 mys
tery. 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
Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank
by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and
pulled for Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault
was carrying despatches if anything more ur
gent 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 further, the police had ar
ranged 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
88 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 Fra^ois. 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 petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz
a leader greatly to be feared. The old awe
departed, and they grew equal to challenging
his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish
one night, and gulped it down under the pro
tection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe
fought Spitz and made him forego the punish
ment 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
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 89
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.
Fra^ois swore strange barbarous oaths, and
stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his
hair. His lash was always singing among the
dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his
back was turned they were at it again. He
backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Fran-
£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
90 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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, his splendid
body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan
white moonlight. And leap by leap, like
some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit
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
ranging 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.
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 91
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 ?«• comes
as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.
This ecstasy, 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, sound
ing the old wolf-cry, straining after the food
that was alive and that fled swiftly before him
through the moonlight. 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
wr.s 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.
92 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 another 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 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
himself, 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 foot-
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 93
ing, 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 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
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
94 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 pas
sion to rend and destroy. He never rushed
till he was prepared to receive a rush ; never
attacked till he had first defended that at
tack.
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 penetrate his enemy's guard. Then
he warmed up and enveloped Spitz in a whirl
wind 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, suddenly drawing back his head
and curving in from the side, he would drive
his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram
'It was to the death.'
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 97
by which to overthrow 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
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.
98 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
inexorable. Mercy was a thinn; reserved for
gentler climes. He manoeuvred for the final
rush. The 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.
Every animal was motionless as though turned
to stone. Only Spitz quivered and bristled
as he staggered back and forth, snarling with
horrible menace, as though to frighten off im
pending death. Then Buck sprang in and
out ; but while he was in, shoulder had at last
squarely met shoulder. The dark circle be
came a dot on the moon-flooded snow as
DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 99
Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and
looked on, the successful champion, the domi
nant primordial beast who had made his kill
and found it good.
IV
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
IT SNOWED EVERY DAY.
IV
Who has won to Mastership
* T~^H ? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I
i say dat Buck two devils."
This was Frar^ois'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 Perrault, as
he surveyed the gaping rips and cuts.
" An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was
Francis's answer. " An' now we make good
time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure."
While Perrault 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
Fran9ois> not noticing him, brought Soi-leks
103
104 THE CALL OF THE WILD
to the 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.
<c Eh? eh?" Fran9ois cried, slapping his
thighs gleefully. cc Look at dat Buck. Heem
keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."
" Go 'way, Chook ! " he cried, but Buck
refused 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. Fra^ois was
obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck
again displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all
unwilling to go.
Fra^ois 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
attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once
more brought forward. But he circled just
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 105
beyond 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 Francis, 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 re
treated two or three steps. Fra^ois followed
him up, whereupon he again retreated. After
some time of this, Fra^ois 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
106 THE CALL OF THE WILD
he answered curse with snarl and kept out of
their reach. He did not try to run away, but
retreated around and around the camp, adver
tising plainly that when his desire was met, he
wouid come in and be good.
Francois 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. Fran£ois 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. Fran9ois unfastened
SoJ-leks'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.
" Trow down de club," Perrault commanded.
Francois complied, whereupon Buck trotted
in, tauyhing triumphantly, and swung around
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 107
into position at the head of the team. His
traces were fastened, the sled broken out, and
with both men running they dashed out on to
the river trail.
Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued
Buck, with his two devil;,, 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
Fran9ois 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.
to8 THE CALL OF THE WILD
Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who
never put an ounce more of his weight against
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 Francis's breath.
" Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck ! " he
cried. " No, nevaire ! Heem worth one
t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you
say, Perrault ? "
And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 109
the record then, and gaming day by day,
The trail was in excellent condition, well
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 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 Fran$ois threw chests up
«io THE CALL OF THE WILD
and down the main street of Skaguay and were
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. Fra^ois called Buck to him, threw
his arms around him, wept over him. And
that was the last of Fra^ois 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
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP m
mates, whether they prided in it or not, did
their fair share. It was a monotonous life,
operating with machine-like regularity. One
day was very like another. At a certain time
each morning the cooks turned out, fires were
built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while
some broke camp, others harnessed the dogs>
and they were under way an hour or so before
the darkness fell which gave warning of dawn.
At night, camp was made. Some pitched the
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
Ii2 THE CALL OF THE WILD
blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes
he thought of Judge Miller's big house in the
sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the
cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the 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
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 113
and knotty rather than rounded and swelling.
The hair of this man was long and matted,
and his head slanted back under it from the
eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed
very much afraid of the darkness, into which
he peered continually, clutching in his hand,
which hung midway between knee and foot, a
stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end.
He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-
scorched skin hanging part way down his
back, but on his body there was much hair.
In some places, across the chest and shoulders
and down the outside of the arms and thighs,
it was matted into almost a thick fur. He did
not stand erect, but with trunk inclined 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
H4 THE CALL OF THE WILD
though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And
beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck
could see many gleaming coals, two by two,
always two by two, which he knew to be the
eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could
hear the crashing of their bodies through the
undergrowth, and the noises they made in the
night. And dreaming there by the Yukon
bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these
sounds and sights of another world would
make the hair to rise along his back and stand
on end across his shoulders and up his neck,
till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or
growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted
at him, " Hey, you Buck, wake up ! "
Whereupon the other world would vanish and
the real world come into his eyes, and he would
get up and yawn and stretch as though he had
been asleep.
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 con
dition when they made Dawson, and should
have had a ten days' or a week's rest at least.
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 115
But in two days* time they dropped down the
Yukon bank from the Barracks, loaded with
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*
n6 THE CALL OF THE WILD
But it was Dave who suffered most of alL
Something had gone wrong with him. He
became more morose and irritable, and when
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 ex
amined 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
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 117
next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled. His in
tention was to rest Dave, letting him run free
behind the sled. Sick as he was, Dave re
sented being taken out, grunting and growling
while the traces were unfastened, and whimper
ing 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
traces 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
Ii8 THE CALL OF THE WILD
was most difficult, 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
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
bitten 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
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 119
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
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 the snow and yearning toward them. But
120 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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-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
tinkled 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 Dub
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
123
124 THE CALL OF THE WILD
doubling the fatigue of a day's travel. There
was nothing the matter with them except that
they were dead tired. It was not the dead-
tiredness that comes through brief and ex
cessive effort, from which recovery is a
matter of hours; but it was the dead-tired
ness that comes through the slow and pro
longed strength drainage 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
gkaguay 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
encouraged them as they tottered down the
main street of Skaguay. "Dis is de las'.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 125
Den we get one long res'. Eh? For sure.
One bully long res'."
The drivers confidently expected a long
stopover. Themselves, they had covered
twelve hundred miles with two days' rest,
and in the nature of reason and common
justice they deserved an interval of loafing.
But so many were the men who had rushed
into the Klondike, and so many [were the
sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not
rushed in, that the congested mail was tak
ing 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
126 THE CALL OF THE WILD
other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles
was a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with
weak and watery eyes and a mustache that
twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the
lie to the limply drooping lip it concealed.
Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty,
with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-
knife strapped about him on a bek that
fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was
the most salient thing about him. It adver
tised 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 Fran9ois
and the others who had gone before. When
driven with his mates to the ne-w owners'
camp, Buck saw a slipshod and. slovenly
affair, tent . half stretched, dishes unwashed,
HAL.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 129
everything in disorder ; also, he saw a
woman. " 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 their manner, but no businesslike
method. The tent was rolled into an awk
ward 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 un
broken 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.
I3o THE CALL OF THE WILD
<c You've got a right smart load as it is,**
said one of them ; <c 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. €f How
ever in the world could I manage without a
tent?"
" 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. <c 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
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 131
all day with that contraption behind them,"
affirmed 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 breast-bands,
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 ; <c 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, un-
132 THE CALL OF THE WILD
told repugnance at sight of pain written in her
pretty face.
"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."
"Rest be blanked," said Hal, with his
beardless 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.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 133
" 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 mis
erable work.
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 hun
dred yards ahead the path turned and sloped
steeply into the main street. It would have
required an experienced man to keep the top-
I34 THE CALL OF THE WILD
heavy sled upright, 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 be
hind them. They were angry because of the
ill treatment they had received 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 re
mainder 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
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 135
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 ? "
And so it went, the inexorable elimination
of the superfluous. Mercedes cried when her
clothes-bags 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-heart-
edly. She averred she would not go an inch,
not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to
everybody and to everything, finally wiping
her eyes and proceeding to cast out even
articles of apparel that were imperative neces
saries. 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
136 THE CALL OF THE WILD
in half, was still a formidable bulk. Charles
and Hal went out in the evening and bought
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 four
teen. But the Outside dogs, though practically
broken in since their landing, did not amount
to much. Three were short-haired pointers,
one was a Newfoundland, and the other two
were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They
did not seem to know anything, these new
comers. 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 mongrels, 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.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 137
With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn,
and the old team worn out by twenty-five
hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook
was anything but bright. The two men, how
ever, were quite cheerful. And they were
proud, too. They were doing the thing in
style, with fourteen dogs. They had seen
other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson,
or come in from Dawson, but never had they
seen a sled with so 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 shoulders 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
138 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 Outsides were timid and frightened, the
Insides without confidence in their masters.
Buck felt vaguely that there was no de
pending upon these two men and the woman.
They did not know how to do anything, and
as the 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 unable to
get started at all. And on no day did they
succeed in making more than half the distance
used by the men as a basis in their dog-food
computation.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 139
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 Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes
and a quaver 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 I 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 c^me 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
140 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
thief that he was, always getting caught and
punished, he had none the i^s 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
revolver. 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, followed by the three short-haired pointers,
the two mongrels hanging more grittily on to
life, but going in the end.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 141
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
upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful
patience 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 ink
ling 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 became 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-
i42 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
concerned only Charles and Hal), presently
would be lugged in the rest of the family,
fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people
thousands of 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 anything to do with the chopping
of a few sticks of firewood, passes compre
hension ; neverthless the quarrel was as likely
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 143
to tend in that direction as in the direction
of Charles's political prejudices. And that
Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should
be relevant to the building of a Yukon fire,
was apparent only to Mercedes, who disbur
dened herself of copious opinions upon that
topic, and incidentally upon a few other traits
unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family.
In the meantime the fire remained 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-
I44 THE CALL OF THE WILD
plained. Upon which impeachment of what
to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,
she 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 importuned Heaven
with a recital of their brutality.
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.
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 145
Hal's theory, which he practised on others,
was that one must get hardened. He had
started out 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 hunting-knife company at
Hal's hip. A poor substitute 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 till blows from whip or club drove
him to his feet again. All the stiffness and
gloss had gone out of his beautiful furry coat.
L
146 THE CALL OF THE WILD
The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or
matted with dried blood where Hal's club
had bruised him. His muscles had wasted
away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads
had disappeared, so that each rib and every
bone in his frame were outlinec 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.
There were seven all together, including him.
In their very great misery they had become
insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise
of the club. The pain of the beating was
dull and distant, 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*
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 147
And when the club or whip fell upon them,
the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered
to their feet and staggered on.
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 enforce it, blind with
weakness half the time and keeping the trail
148 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 sun rose earlier and set later. It
was dawn by three in the morning, and twi
light 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 putting on fresh garbs of green.
Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days
all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled
forth into the sun. Partridges and wood
peckers were booming and knocking in the
forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds sing
ing, and overhead honked the vdld-fowl driving
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 149
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.
The Yukon was straining to break loose the
ice 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 stag
gered into John Thornton's camp at the
mouth of 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
I5o THE CALL OF THE WILD
slowly and painstakingly what of his great
stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thorn
ton was whittling the last touches on an axe-
handle he had made from a stick of birch.
He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic
replies, and, when it was asked, terse advice.
He knew the breed, and he gave his advice
in the certainty that it would not be fol
lowed.
"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. cc 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*
cc
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 151
pose," said Hal. " All the same, we'll go on
to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. " Get up
there, Buck ! Hi ! Get up there 1 Mush on ! "
Thornton went on whittling. It was idle,
he knew, to get between a fool and his folly ;
while two or three fools more or less would
not alter the scheme of things.
But the team did not get up at the com
mand. It had long since passed into the stage
where blows were required to rouse it. The
whip flashed out, here and there, on its merci
less errands. 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 managed 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 whipping continued, he arose
and walked irresolutely up and down.
152 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 custom
ary club. Buck refused to move under the
rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him.
Like his mates, he was barely able to get upy
but, unlike them, he had made up his mind
not to get up. He had a vague feeling of im
pending 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 continued 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
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 153
of the club upon his body. But it w<*s 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
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
Dawson."
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 mani-
154 THE CALL OF THE WILD
fested 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 him
self, and with two strokes cut Buck's traces.
Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his
(lands 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 stag
gering. Mercedes was riding the loaded sled,
Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stum-
bled along in the rear.
As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt
beside 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
"John Thornton and Buck locked at each other.'
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 157
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 cling
ing 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 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
Dawson. He was still limping slightly a'c
the time he rescued Buck, but with the con
tinued warm weather even the slight limp left
him. And here, lying by the river bank
through the long spring days, watching the run
ning water, listening 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
travelled three thousand miles, and it muet
be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his
wounds healed, his muscles swelled out, and
M 161
162 THE CALL OF THE WILD
the flesh came back to cover his bones. For
that matter, 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. Regularly, 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 Thorn
ton's. Nig, equally friendly, though less
demonstrative, was a huge black dcg, half
bloodhound and half deerhound, 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 en
ticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games,
in which Thornton himself could not forbear
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 163
to join; and in this fashion Buck romped
through his convalescence and into a new
existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was
his for the first time. This he had never
experienced at Judge Miller'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 guardianship ;
and with the Judge himself, a stately and dig
nified friendship. But love that was -feverish
and burning, that was adoration, that was mad
ness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.
This man had saved his life, which was
something; 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 saw to the welfare of his as if
they were his own children, because he could
not help it. And he saw farther. 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
164 THE CALL OF THE WILD
head roughly between his hands, and resting
his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him
back and forth, the while calling him ill names
that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no
greater joy than that rough embrace 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 eloquent, his
throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in
that fashion remained without movement, John
Thornton would reverently exclaim, " God !
you can all but speak ! "
Buck had a trick of love expression that was
akin to hurt. He would often seize Thorn ton'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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 165
him or spoke to him, he did not seek these
tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to
shove 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 Thornton's feet, looking up
into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it,
following with keenest interest each fleeting
expression, every movement or change of fea
ture. 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
166 THE CALL OF THE WILD
heels. His transient masters since he had
come into the Northland had bred in him a
fear that no master could be permanent. He
was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his
life as Perrault and Fran£ois 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 the soft
civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive,
which the Northland had aroused in him,
remained alive and active. Faithfulness and
devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his ;
yet he retained his wildness and wiliriess. 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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 167
other camp5 he did not hesitate an instant;
while the cunning with which he stole enabled
him to escape detection.
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 quarrelling5 — 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 and 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 weak
ness* Mercy did not exist in the primordial
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 man
date, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
s68 THE CALL OF THE WILD
He was older than the days he had seen
and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the
past 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 bj 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 with 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
mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in
the forest a call was sounding, and as often as
he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and
hrnng, he felt compelled to turn his back upon
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 171
the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to
plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew
not 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
unbroken earth and the green shade, the love
for John Thornton drew him back to the fire
again.
Thornton alone held him. The rest of
mankind 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 Thorn
ton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the
long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice
them till he learned they were close to Thorn
ton ; after that he tolerated them in a passive
sort of way, accepting favors from them as
though he favored them by accepting. They
were of the same large type as Thornton, liv
ing 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
1 72 THE CALL OF THE WILD
not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained
with Skeet and Nig.
For Thornton, however, his love seemed to
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
proceeds 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
hundred feet below. John Thornton was sit*
ting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he
drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the
experiment he had in mind. cc 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. cc No, it is
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 173
splendid, and it is terrible, too. Do you
know, it sometimes makes me afraid."
" I'm not hankering to be the man that lays
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
custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws,
watching his master's every action. Burton
struck out, without warning, straight from
the shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning,
and saved himself from falling only by clutch
ing the rail of the bar.
Those who v/ere 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
i74 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
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
narrow 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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 175
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 anxious, 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
Thornton 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 sud
denly. 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.
176 THE CALL OF THE WILD
But the progress shoreward was slow; the
progress down-stream amazingly rapid. From
below came the fatal roaring 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 Thornton
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 Thorn
ton's command 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 pos
sible and destruction began.
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 177
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
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 them
selves upon him, pounding the breath into
him and the water out of him. He staggered
N
178 THE CALL OF THE WILD
to his feet and fell down. The faint sound of
Thornton's voice came to them, and though
they could not make out the words of it, they
knew that he was in his extremity. His mas
ter'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
departure.
Again the rope was attached and he was
launched, and again he struck out, but this
time straight into the stream. He had mis
calculated 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 com
ing, and, as Buck struck him like a battering
ram, with the whole force of the current be
hind 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*
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 179
Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one upper
most and sometimes the other, dragging over
the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and
snags, they veered in to the bank.
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, it 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 furnished, and were enabled to make
I8o THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 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.
cc Pooh ! pooh ! " said John Thornton |
<c Buck can start a thousand pounds."
€C And break it out ? and walk off with it
for a hundred yards ? " demanded Matthewson,
a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred
vaunt.
"And break it out, and walk off with it
for a hundred yards," John Thornton said
coolly.
"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and de
liberately, so that all could hear, " I've got a
thousand dollars that says he can't. And
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 181
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
whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Haifa 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.
" I've got a sled standing outside now, with
twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it,"
Matthewson 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
1 82 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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.
" Sure/' answered O'Brien, thumping down
a plethc -i-: 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
deserted, 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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 183
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. Mat-
thewson 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 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
concrete fact, with the regular team of ten
dogs curled up in the snow before it, the
more impossible the task appeared. Mat-
thewson 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
1 84 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 fortunes, this sum was their total
capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against
Matthewson's six hundred.
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 excitement, and he felt that in some way
he must do a great thing for John Thornton.
Murmurs of admiration at his splendid ap
pearance went up. He was in perfect condi
tion, without an ounce of superfluous flesh,
and the one hundred 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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 185
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 under
neath the skin. Men felt these muscles and
proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds
.^own to two to one.
^ Gad, sir ! .Gad., sir ! '* sti. t! ered a member
of the latest dynasty, a king o ,Ke Skcrkunr
Benches. " I oiler you eight hundred for
him, 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
1 86 THE CALL OF THE WILD
took his head in his two hands and rested
cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake
hinij 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 whispered. Buck whined with sup
pressed eagerness.
The crowd was watching curiously. The
affair was growing mysterious. It seemed like
a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet,
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
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 187
K-
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 snap
ping, the sled pivoting and the runners slip
ping and grating several inches to the side.
The sled was broken out. Men were hold
ing their breaths, intensely unconscious of the
fact.
"Now, MUSH!"
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
1 88 THE CALL OF THE WILD
ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of
jerks, though it never really came to a, <\cid
stop again . . . half an inch ... an inch . . .
two inches. . . . The jerks perceptibly di
minished ; 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,
encouraging Buck with short, cheery words.
The distance had been measured off, and as he
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. Flats and mittens were flying
in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did
not matter with whom, and bubbling over in
a general incoherent babel.
But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck.
Head was against head, and he was shaking
him back arid forth. Those who hurried up
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 189
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. " Sir," he said to the Skookum
Bench king, cc 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.
Thornton shook him back and forth. As
though animated by a common impulse, the
onlookers 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 re
turned 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 ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn
to st, and to the mine the site of which it
roarkedj clinching their testimony with nuggets
o 193
194 THE CALL OF THE WILD
that were unlike any known grade of gold in
the Northland.
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 conti
nent.
John Thornton asked little of man or
nature. He was unafraid of the wild. With
a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge
into the wilderness and fare wherever he
pleased and as long as he pleased. Being
in no haste, Indian 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
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 195
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 on the sled^and the time-card was drawn
upon the limitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this
hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering
through strange places. For weeks at a time
they would hold on steadily, day after day;
and for weeks upon end they would camp,
here and there, the dogs loafing and the
men burning holes thror^h frozen muck and
gravel and washinr countless pans of dirt by
the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went
hungry, sometimes 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-
196 THE CALL OF THE WILD
ness, where no men were and yet where men
had been if the Lost Cabin were true. They
went across divides in summer blizzards,
shivered under the midnight sun on naked
mountains 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, arid it
remained mystery, as the man who made it
and the reason he made it remained mystery*
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 197
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 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 man 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, flfty
pounds to the bag, and piled like so much fire
wood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like
giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels
of days like dreams as they heaped the treas
ure up.
I98 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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, 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 everywhere for hidden danger and
with legs prepared to run like the wind at
its first appearance. Through the forest they
crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's
heels ; and they were alert and vigilant, the
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 199
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, sometimes
a dozen feet apart, letting go and catching,
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 tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly,
as the mood might dictate. He would thrust
his nose into the cool wood moss, or into
200 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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-covered 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 surprise this call he
could not understand. But 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 watercourses, 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
s trailing up and down. But especially he
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 201
loved to run in the dim twilight of the sum
mer midnights, listening to the subdued and
sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs
and sounds as man may read a book, and
seeking for the mysterious something 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
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
202 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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
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,
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 203
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, rinding that no harm was
intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then
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,
204 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 answering 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 world, and he was doing it
again, now, running free in the open, the un
packed earth underfoot, the wide sky over
head.
They stopped by a running stream to drink,
and, stopping, Buck remembered John Thorn-
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 205
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 — <c playing the general torn- fool," as
John Thornton characterized it, the while he
shook Buck back and forth and cursed him
lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left
camp, never let Thornton out of his sight.
He followed him about at his work, watched
him while he ate, saw him into his blankets at
206 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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.
He 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 stream that emptied somewhere into the
sea, and by this stream he killed a large black
bear, blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise
fishing, and raging through the forest helpless
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 207
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, un
aided, 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
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
2o8 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 con
tact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tis
sue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite
pitch ; and between all the parts there was a
perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 209
ind 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 responded in less time than an
other 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, deter^
mining, and responding were sequential ; but
so infinitesimal were the intervals of time be
tween them that they appeared simultaneous.
His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and
snapped into play sharply, like steel springs.
Life streamed through him in splendid flood,
glad and rampant, until it seemed that it
would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and
pour forth generously over the world.
cc Never was there such a dog," said John
Thornton one day, as the partners watched
Buck marching out of camp.
" When he was made, the mould was broke,"
said Pete.
aio THE CALL OF THE WILD
ccPy 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 poolsj,
were not too quick for him ; nor were beaver,
mending their dams, too wary. He killed
to eat, not from wantonness ; but he preferred
to eat what he killed himself. So a lurking
humor 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.
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 211
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 four
teen 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
Hank, 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
212 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 of 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 paroxysms 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 sepa
rated 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 to Buck as he clung to the flank
of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the
young bulls, worrying the cows with their
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 213
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, enveloping 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
harrying 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 w?« a re
moter interest than their lives, and in the end
they were content to pay the toll.
As twilight fell the old bull stood with
214 THE CALL OF THE WILD
lowered 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
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.
"Lying down when the moose stood still."
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 217
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 nothing, saw nothing, yet knew that the
land was somehow different; that through it
strange 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 dav and
2i3 THE CALL OF THE WILE*
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, head
ing straight home through strange country
with a certitude of direction that put man and
his magnetic 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 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.
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 219
Three miles away he came upon a fresh
trail that sent his neck hair rippling and bris
tling. It led straight toward camp and John
Thornton. 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 description 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, flattened against a gray dead limb so
that he seemed a part of it, a woody excres
cence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness
of a gliding shadow, his nose was jerked
suddenly to the side as though a positive
force had 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 feathers, from either side of his body.
A hundred yards farther on, Buck came
220 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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.
Bellying 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.
The Yeehats were dancing about the wreck
age of the spruce-tough 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 hurri-
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 221
cane of fury, hurling himself upon them in
a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the fore
most man (it was the chief of the Yeehats),
ripping the throat wide open till the rent
jugular spouted a fountain 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, destroying, in
constant and terrific motion which defied the
arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so
inconceivably rapid were his movements, 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, and they fled in terror to the
woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent
of the Evil Spirit.
And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate,
222 THE CALL OF THE WILD
raging at their heels and dragging them dowtt
like deer as they raced through the trees. It
was a fateful day for the Yeehats. They
scattered 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 dis
colored from the sluice boxes, effectually hid
what it contained, and it contained John
Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into
the water, from which no trace led away.
All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed
restlessly about the camp. Death, as a ces
sation of movement, as a passing out and
away from the lives of the living, he knew,
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 223
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
ing by the pool, Buck became alive to a
stirring of the new life in the forest other
224 THE CALL OF THE WILD
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 them 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 cal!5
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 migrat
ing moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed
over from the land of streams and timber and
invaded 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 coming. They were awed, so
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 225
still and large he stood, and a moment's
pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight
for him. Like a flash Buck struck, break
ing the neck. Then he stood, without move
ment, 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 everywhere 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 mining, and in this
q
226 THE CALL OF THE WILD
angle he came to bay, protected 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
discomfited. 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 for
ward ; 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 man
ner, 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 unmistakable accents. He, too,
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 227
sat down and howled. This over, he came
out of his angle and the pack crowded around
him, sniffing in half-friendly, half-savage man
ner. The leaders 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
centring down the chest. But more re
markable 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
228 THE CALL OF THE WILD
there have been whom their tribesmen found
with throats slashed cruelly open and with
wolf prints about them in the snow greater
than the prints of any wolf, Each fall, when
the Yeehats follow the movement of the
moose, there is a certain valley which they
never enter. And women there are who be
come sad when the word goes over the fire
of how the Evil Spirit came to select that
valley for an abiding-place.
In the summers there is one visitor, how
ever, 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 vege
table mould overrunning it and hiding its yellow
from the sun ; and here he muses for a time, howl
ing once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long
winter nights come on and the wolves follow
'In the summers there is one visitor ... to that valley
... a great, gloriously coated wolf."
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 231
their meat into the lower valleys, he may be
seen running at the head of the pack through
the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leap
ing 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.
FINIS
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