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THE CALL OF THE WILD
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON CHICAGO - DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY CALCUTTA
•
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
with a ferocious snarl, he bounded straight up
into the blinding day."— P. 22.
BY
JACK LONDON
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY
THEODOEF. .G. .MJTCHILL

PBINCIPA<L OF CAîfilCA ^GH sOHOOL
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1917
All rights reserved

COPTBIGHT, 1917,
bt the macmillan company.
Set up and eltctro^^^? I^îstfd I^cwember, 1917.
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Nor&jooli ^rfBS
J. S, Gushing Co. —
Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Geographical Setting of " The Call of the
Wild" vii
The Klondike ix
Placer-Mining x
The Dog in Literature xi
The Dog in the Northland of America
The Central Idea of the Book
Life of Jack London
.... . . xiii
xvi
xViii
Jack London's Writings xxv
Jack London's Place as a Writer . . . xxviii
Reference Material xxx
The Call of the Wild

I. Into the Primitive . ^1
II. The Law of Club and Fang . 16
III. The Dominant Primordial Beast 29
IV. Who has Won to Mastership 49
V. The Toil of Trace and Trail 62
VI. For the Love of a Man 83
VII. The Sounding of the Call . 102
Notes 125
2033400
INTRODUCTION
The Geographical Setting of "The CaU of the Wild."
— To get a broad view of the scene of this story turn
to the map of Alaska. Cutting that territory about in
two is the mighty river Yukon. In imagination pass
up this river from its mouth. Just after you cross
the Canadian boundary line you will reach Dawson,
the geographical centre of " The Call of the Wild."
The
region lying about Dawson and mostly east of the
Yukon is the famous gold region known as the Klondike.
Letting your eye wander slowly down the map from
Dawson toward the southwest you will catch the names
of the Stewart, Lewes, and Pelly rivers. Lake Lebarge,
White Horse, and Skagway.
Now let us look over the route of the story a bit more
closely, remembering that ours is the Klondike of a
score of years ago, not the railroad and steamboat
Klondike of to-day. Most of the scene of this story is
laid between Skagway, the ocean end of the Klondike

trail, and Dawson, the commercial centre of the Yukon
gold-fields of northwest Canada. Skagway lies well

up on an inlet of the Pacific called Lyn Canal. Across
the Canal, a short distance to the northwest, is Dyea
vii
Vlll INTRODUCTION
Beach. From Skagway the trail ^ mounted northwest

over the great coastal mountains, by way of Chilkoot
Pass or the more famous White Pass. Once across the
mountains travellers moved north, in winter taking ad-
vantage of the more level surface afforded by the many
frozen lakes and rivers. Thus on the customary route
they traversed Lakes Tagish, Marsh, and Lebarge.
Thence they passed down the Lewes River, over or
around the Rink Rapids, to the Yukon River at the
point of its formation by the junction of the Lewes
and Pelly rivers. Continuing north down the Yukon,
past the mouth of White River and of Sixty Mile Creek,
they arrived at Dawson, situated in latitude 60°
north and about fifty miles east of the international
boundary line between Alaska and the Dominion of
Canada. The journey back to Skagway lay over sub-
stantially the same ground, with variations according
to the condition of weather and ground.
TA\4ce Buck, the dog hero of this tale, made the trip
from Skagway to Dawson and back. On the third,
trip north he came under the protection of John Thorn-
ton, and from then on he moved with Thornton here
and there on prospecting tours with Dawson as a base.
Buck's wanderings carried him up Forty Mile Creek,
forty miles down the Yukon from Dawson; to Circle
^ In the maps of the Century Atlas and in those of several en-
cyclopaedias the Yukon trail is plainly indicated.

INTB OB UCTION IX
City, Alaska; and in among the Tanana which

hills,
lie in Alaska about three hundred miles west ofDawson.

On the trip that led to the finding of the Lost Mine and
to Buck's return to *'The Wild," the prospecting party
leftDawson and sledded south seventy miles up the
Yukon to the mouth of the Stewart River, up which
they moved past the tributaries Mayo and McQuestion
to the head waters. Of the rest of their journey we
know only that their route, running in a general way
to the northeast, carried them over the Arctic Circle.
In their wanderings they seem to have crossed the

Mackenzie River and to have reached the shores of
Great Bear Lake (see page 104).

The Klondike. —
The existence of gold in Alaska
was known in the nineteenth century. It was not,
however, before the late nineties of the last century
that the finding of rich deposits warranted permanent
settlements such as those at Forty Mile Creek and
Circle City. Discoveries of still greater value were those
made in the Klondike. The Klondike derives its name
from the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon. It
was on Bonanza Creek, a small feeder of the Klondike,
that indications of rich deposits of gold were dis-
covered on August 16, 1896. There followed a stam-
pede of gold-seekers to the region, with the resulting
development of the territory. It was this discovery
that brought into existence the important town of
X INTRODUCTION
Dawson and that led to the stealing of Buck for service

as a sled-dog.
Placer-Mining. — Broadly speaking gold is taken
from the earth by quartz-mining or by placer-mining.
In the former process the metal is separated by mechani-
cal and chemical processes from the rock in which it
occurs. Placer-mining seeks to recover from the

pebbles or sand in which it is found the *'free" gold.
This occurs in sizes from nuggets to minute pellets
or granular dust. Wet placers are the beds of existing
streams ; dry placers are ancient river beds from which
the water has disappeared. The gold-seeker, the pro-
spector, tests earth for free gold by 'Spanning." A cer-
tain amount of dirt is placed in a pan, which is then
filled with water. When the larger Ijimps have been
dissolved, the pan is so twirled as to spill the water
over the edge. After the removal of the larger stones,
the pan is shaken in order to spread out the remaining
contents on the bottom. Then the heavy gold, which,
if sunk as a result of the twirling, will be
present, has
found shining on the bottom of the pan.
When working a dry placer that warrants the expen-
diture of time and effort, the gold-miner's first step from
I
the crude and laborious method of panning is the con-
struction of a sluice-box. This consists of a wooden
trough (or a series of such troughs) on the bottom of
which are fastened cleats known as **
riffles." Through
INTR OD UCTION XI
the sluice is run a stream of water. The gold-bearing

earth is fed in at the upper end ; the lighter materials
are washed out at the lower end of the sluice, while
most of the heavy gold is caught by the riffles. Though
there are further refinements of this process where
necessary means are at hand, the sluicing done by John
Thornton and his companions at the Lost Mine was of
the simpler kind.
—
The Dog in Literature. The powerful appeal made
by "The Call of the Wild" is but another illustration of
the prominent place of the dog in the legend, folk-lore,
and romance of many nations. In prehistoric times,
with the horse, the sheep, and the cat, the dog became
domesticated. His faithfulness, patience, courage, and
ready adaptation to man's needs have in the course
of the centuries brought him to first place among man's
four-footed friends. To the readiness with which he
has responded to training in one kind of duty or an-
other is due in no small measure the preservation and
improvement of breeds so many and so different. It

is, therefore, but natural that side by side with records
of defamation of the dog —

the dog of Scripture, for
example —
there should have accumulated a mighty
testimony to " man's best friend."
His form was sculptured on the stones of Nineveh.
Regarded as sacred throughout Egypt, he was at his
death embalmed and buried in a special canine ceme-
Xll INTRODUCTION
tery. After a faithful slumbering watch over his

masters for untold years, Kitmer was at last rewarded
by being permitted to enter with them the Mohamme-
dan paradise. Old blind Argus alone recognized Odys-
seus on his return to Ithaca in his beggar garb. In
somewhat like manner it was Theron that knew his
master Roderick.
At King Arthur's Court, Cavall the " hound of deep-
est mouth " performed such wondrous deeds in pulling
down red deer, boar, and wolf that at his latter end the
great king himself placed him in a grave of honor.
Gorban, the white hound of Umhad the Welsh bard,
was honored by his master with a lay expressing the
expectation that they would again meet in heaven.
Indeed, from this same general belief of Celt and Nor-
man arose the custom of interring with the dead chief-
tain his favorite hound. So, too, later centuries show
us sculptured in marble the faithful friend of hunt and
household lying at the feet of the recumbent figure of
his master.
Legend tells us of the mighty Samr who avenged his
master's death ; of Vigr, who once steered a ship home
safely and who at Olaf's death remained on the grave
until he perished of starvation ; of Sauer, gifted with
human speech Houdain, who shared with Tristrem
; of
and Ysonde the " drink of might."
The pages of the past reveal other instances of dog
INTRODUCTION xin
heroes. Three saints have the dog under their protec-

tion : St. Eustace, St. Roche, and St. Hubert. In
Luxemburg on the festival of St. Hubert pilgrims throng
on themselves and their dogs.
his shrine for a blessing
He appears nameless or named as companion of the
great and noble of the earth. Velazquez and Land-
seer have rendered him homage on some of their
noblest canvasses. He has been the theme of our
English writers from Chaucer's day to our own. Great-
est of all friends of thedog is Scott. '' Every shade of
canine feeling, every development of canine nature
may be studied in the pages of Sir Walter." Rab, Bob
Son of Battle, and Greyfriars Bobby are more recent
testimonials. Divers regions of divers ages have
brought into being, each its great dog. In " The Call
of the Wild," Jack London has given us in Buck a
Northland dog worthy to take place side by side with
the famous dogs of the past.
The Dog in the Northland of America. —
The ability
to travel steadily on small amounts of food and water
has made the camel indispensable to the desert tribes
of Asia and Africa. Because of peculiar fitness for
arduous work in extremes of temperature, the dog
occupies a similar position in the sparsely civilized
regions of upper North America. He is able to with-
stand extremes of cold and heat. He requires little,
if any, artificial shelter against the elements. In

XIV INTRODUCTION
proportion to his size he displays great strength and

performs heavy labor with speed for long sustained
periods. His daily food is about a pound of dried
fish, which bulking small and weighing comparatively
little, can be taken long distances in quantity. Thus,
capable of transporting much more than his own food,
the dog has enabled explorers and prospectors to pene-
trate to regions otherwise inaccessible. It was a team
of Arctic dogs that drew Peary to the North Pole.
The dogs used in Upper Canada and in xA.laska were
in the earlier days of settlement principally "huskies,"
with their cross-breeds, and Malmutes. The *' huskies,"
Mackenzie River dogs, resemble the Arctic fox. The
Malmutes are Alaska Indian dogs crossed with the
wolf and resembling wolves in appearance. Such dogs
weigh between forty and eighty pounds. With the
rush of adventurers to the gold-fields came a demand
that could not be supplied from local sources. This
led to the shipping from Lower Canada and the United
States of larger breeds of dogs, such as the mastiff, the
Saint Bernard, and cross-bred dogs of good size and
heavy coat. Buck of "The Call of the Wild" was a
cross between a Saint Bernard and a Scotch shepherd
dog.
Prospector, gold-field adventurer, business man,
government official —
every one in the Klondike days
who needed to travel far and swiftly —
had to use the
INTRODUCTION XV
dog for passage inland from the coast. Around the

settlements he was the beast of all work. On the winter
snows transportation was (and for the most part still is)
by means of sleds. These sleds, long and narrow, were
built of strong, tough wood. The various parts of the
sled were fastened together, to an extent at least,
with rawhide thongs, not only because of the flexibility
thereby imparted to the sled, but also because of the

ease afforded in making repairs without tools. The
dogs of the Klondike Trail were harnessed tandem
fashion in teams of six or more. Next to the sled was
the wheel-dog, or wheeler; at the head of the line
was the lead-dog. The harness was simple, consisting
merely of long traces fastening into a collar-held breast-
band and further supported by loops in a band passing
over the back. The lack of pole or shafts made it
impossible for the dog team to have any part either in
backing the sled or retarding its forward movement.
The rear of the sled ended in two uprights slanting
backwards, between which ran horizontally the gee-
pole. By means of this gee-pole a man could steady the
course of the sled, push where the going was heavy, or
it
hold it back when the need arose. Moreover, by means

of the gee-pole he was able to " break out " the sled
when the runners were frozen to the ground after the
sled had stood for a time. The load was fastened to
the sled by lashings that ran under the upper crosspiece
XVI INTRODUCTION
of sleds of open construction or through holes pierced in

the upper part of those with solid runners. On such a
sled a strong team of eight well-fed dogs with Buck in
the lead drew a lightly laden sled an average of forty
miles a day, up hill and down, for forty days, in a tem-
perature well below zero. This, however, was over a
hard-packed trail. No such time was made with larger
loads or on unbroken trails after a heavy fall of snow
or at the beginning of the spring thaw.
In late spring and in summer the sled could no longer
be used. Then dogs acted as pack animals, each bear-
ing his burden snugly fastened on his back and held in
place by means of a belly-band.
The Central Idea of the Book. —
Every animal is the
descendant of wild ancestors. Through domestication
— association with man —
has come a certain dulling
of the senses and new habits of mind and of action.
Yet in every domestic animal there still remain in-
stincts — inheritances from the wild the primi-
state,
tive or primordial state — which cause an animal to act
automatically under given conditions. For example,
the dog turns around before lying down and on moon-
light nights bays at the moon.
Buck is represented as the perfect product of genera-
tions of careful breeding. He comes from a home where
he has thoroughly acquired man's ways. His sense of
sight, of smell, of hearing have become comparatively
INTRODUCTION XVll
dulled because not acutely needed for his existence.

Man has sheltered him and provided his food. Once
thrown on his own resources Buck's dulled senses and
slumbering instincts are aroused. One by one return
memories of life in the days when his ancestors hunted
with the pack of the first contact of the dog tribe with
;
early man, from whom we ourselves are descended.

The memory-seeds of the wild or half-tamed dog,
hidden away in the brain of Buck, begin to germinate.
Heredity is asserting itself. Some might consider
Buck's falling away from man-made habits as retro-
gression— a step backward in dog development.
Jack London seems to think otherwise. This big-
boned, big-muscled, heavy-coated brute he conceives
as framed by nature to withstand cold, to run down
large game, to be, like the best in the earlier days, the
leader, the *' dominant primordial brute." With in-
creasing fitness to live supremely well the life for which
he is fitted. Buck hears in more and more luring tones
the call of the ''Wild." After he has gloried in his big
kill, nothing could have held him but his love for John
Thornton. With Thornton dead he hearkens tp the

'*
Call " and returns to his kind.
Back in London's mind there seems to have been
some such thought as this " Relieved of man's inter-
:
erence. Nature knows best what to do with man's best

Droduct." Buck through selective breeding was mas-
X VIU INTR OD UCTION
sive and powerful. Through age-long association with

man his race had immensely added to the mental hori-
zon of the wild dog Buck had imagination. Man had

:
made him the best of his kind. Then Nature gathered

—
him to herself to improve her own children the wolves.
Life of Jack London. —
Jack London was born in
San Francisco on January 12, 1876. From his father,
a nomadic trapper, scout, and frontiersman, he seems
to have inherited his own massive frame and, to an
extent at least, his love of adventure. While he was
still a little boy, his parents settled on a ranch in the
Livermore Valley, where between the ages of eight and

ten Jack did hard, manual labor. During this time
he was a shy, diffident lad, whose little schooling in-
cluded a few volumes that were devoured again and
again. This early love of books he was soon able to
gratify for, when in his tenth year the London family
moved to Oakland, Jack devoted so much time to the
treasures of the pubhc library that he was threatened
with St. Vitus' Dance. His reading, which embraced
books of all sorts, was works of travel,
especially rich in
exploration, and adventure. This pleasant occupation
soon came to an end, since it became necessary for him
to help add to the scanty income of the family. He ran
about the city as a newsboy, and worked as helper on
an ice-wagon, as pin-boy in a bowling alley, and as
sweeper of Sunday picnic grounds. To him so lately
INTRODUCTION XIX
shut up on a ranch these occupations savored of adven-

ture. All of the Hfe he now Hved was Hnked up in his
mind with the heroes of his books. Meanwhile, he
had learned to sail a small boat on San Francisco Bay
and had developed into an able and daring swimmer.
Upon his graduation from Oakland Grammar School
at the age of fourteen, he took a position in a cannery,
where he slaved like a dog for ten cents an hour. To
escape what he describes as his *' bestial life at the
machine," he left home and joined a band of oyster
pirates. With them he stayed for several months,
subsequently working as a salmon fisher, serving as
petty officer of the Fish Patrol, and knocking about as
a general bayfaring adventurer.
Such a course of life spelled ruin for the average boy.
But to Jack London came a gradual realization of the
worthlessness of his career. Therefore, in 1893, when
but sixteen, to escape from his dangerous associates, he
shipped before the mast as able seaman and spent
several months on a sealing vessel in the Russian part
of Bering Sea. Returning home he picked up a few
dollars coal and by laboring as a long-
by shovelling
shoreman. During this time he made his first essay at
"writing. A local newspaper started a short-story con-
test. Urged by his mother, London wrote an account of
a typhoon in the Sea of Japan and won first prize.
It was this success that aroused in him a desire to become
XX INTRODUCTION
a writer. At the Oakland public library he resumed his
omnivorous reading. Moreover, in his leisure hours,

he constantly practised story writing while engaged
in hard daily labor for long hours at the local jute mills.
This latter place he left when refused a slight increase

in his daily wage.
He now sought to advance himself by working as coal-
passer at an electric light plant. Here he encountered
the acme of grinding toil. To continue thus meant
death of body and of soul. London, however, was not
of the kind to suffer in patience. Hence, in utter dis-
gust with labor conditions he threw down the shovel

and took up the life of a tramp. From
Pacific to
Atlantic he wandered in the United States and Canada,
now afoot, now on a river raft, now riding the brake-
rods of fast freight trains. He visited the slums of the
East and spent more than one term in jail for vagrancy.
What he saw in the underworld made of him a Socialist.
To one with London's zest of life all these adventures
were in a way enjoyable. But the tragic end of many
of his rude associates had taught him the inevitable out-
come of a career such as his. " I was," says he, **
scared
into thinking by what I saw in the cellar of society."
Having acquired this new view of life he returned
home and entered the Oakland High School. Here he
studied hard, read prodigiously, *'went with nice girls,"
got a glimpse of refinement at the club meetings held
INTRODUCTION xxi
in the homes of well-to-do pupils, and wrote for the

high school magazine stories of his adventures at sea
and on the road. Meanwhile he supported himself by
acting as a janitor and by accepting any odd job that
came his way, such as mowing lawns, and taking up,
beating, and laying carpets. Realizing that he could
not continue for long the strain of hard study and hard
manual labor, London quitted high school and after a
few weeks' stay in a "cramming" school started alone
upon a course of intensive study. So strong were his
natural powers of mind and so thorough was his applica-
tion to the task in hand that in three months, solely
through self -effort, he covered the last two years of the
high school course and was admitted to the University
of California. To support himself while carrying on
his studies he took a position in a steam-laundry.
However, as the money thereby earned was insufficient
for his needs he was compelled to leave the University
during his Freshman year. Continuing his work in the
laundry he tried again to win success with his pen. For
a few weeks he wrote copiously, but the failure of his
efforts to win attention convinced him of his educational
shortcomings.
At this time came news of the great discoveries of
gold in the Klondike. London, now in his twenty-
second year, joined the throngs that hastened to the
Northland. After a year of unsuccessful fortune-
XXll INTRODUCTION
hunting, he was stricken with the scurvy. Together

with a few companions he descended the Yukon in an
open boat, a trip of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen
days. During this journey he made the notes of his
Northland experiences upon which later were based a
number among others " The Call of
of his best stories,
the Wild." Though he had failed in his quest for gold
he had acquired what was of far greater value. " It
was in the Yukon I found myself. There nobody talks.
Everybody thinks. You get your true perspective.
I got mine."
Working as coal-passer on a steamer, he reached
British Columbia and thence made his way home.
As his father had meanwhile died, the support of the
family now fell upon London. Unequipped with any
trade he was once more compelled to undertake any
kind of manual labor that gave promise of a slight
reward. During this period he passed first in the Civil
Service examination for mail-carrier. The brusque-
ness of his reception by a post-office official was all that
prevented his entering the Government service.
Meanwhile he had returned to his writing, this time
determined to win public recognition. Of his bitter
struggles he gives graphic descriptions in several of his
books. Finally, in 1899, when in his twenty-fourth
year, he received from the Overland Magazine five
dollars for one of his stories. There soon followed
INTBODUCTION XXlll
acceptances from other periodicals, bringing better

and still better compensation. London had ''arrived."
Never again did he feel the pinch of poverty. With the
publication of " The Call of the Wild " in 1903 he
sprang into prominence as a writer. Regularly turning
out his thousand words a day he produced within less
than twenty years an astonishing amount of work.
London's literary career involved him in many activi-
ties. He wrote not only for the magazines but also
for the daily press. He delivered lectures, principally
on socialistic topics. In 1902 he visited the slums in the
East End of London and told of w^hat he saw there in
" The People of the Abj^ss," the book that he himself
regarded as his best. As correspondent for a newspaper
he sent from the East some good stories about the war
between Russia and Japan. While gathering literary
material he never ceased to satisfy his boyish love of
adventure. With his second wife, born Charmian
.Kittredge, he rounded the Horn in a sailing vessel, he
serving as a mate, she as stewardess. Later they made
an extended voyage in a small schooner from San
Francisco to numerous islands of the Pacific, finally
landing in Australia.Their homeward jom'ney carried
them through western South America.
A few^ minor events in London's life will help to fill
out the foregoing sketch. He was charged with being

a plagiarist and a ''natm'e fakir." At one time he con-
XXIV INTRODUCTION
templated acting for the moving pictures. S«"iie of his
stories were dramatized both for the stage and for the
films. On the charge of violating Mexican neutrality

he was arrested by the United States Government.
He was nominated for the office of Mayor of Oakland
on the Sociahst ticket. His attack on the evils of
drink brought him high office in the ranks of temper-
ance advocates, by whom he was seriously considered
as candidate for the Presidency of the United States on
the Prohibition Ticket. In 1914 he became head of a
grape-juice corporation.
His pleasantest hours were spent on his magnificent
ranch near the village of Glen Ellen, California, and
overlooking the beautiful Sonoma Valley. Here after
completing his daily task of a thousand words he spent
his time breeding horses, reclaiming worn-out soil by
scientific rotation of crops, aiid " scrawling [himself]
on the pages of time with a hundred thousand eucalyp-

tus trees." Here, too, he exercised his magnificent
horsemanship. From this home he departed on a
trip of several months, during which he drove four

spirited horses to a light wagon over some of the wildest
mountain country of California and Oregon.
It was at this ranch that he died in his forty-first
year, on November 22, 1916, writing almost to his last
hour. He had expressed a wish that he should he
cremated and that his a-shes should be scattered on
INTRODUCTION XXV
the seaV^ More appropriately, however, they were

placed in an urn set in a hillside that looked down upon
the peaceful valley that had in a sense called him from
''
the Wild."
Jack London's Writings. — Drawing upon his bitter
struggles for support ; upon his adventures on the road
and at Yukon and on the islands of the
sea, in the
southern Pacific upon his observation of the elements
;
of injustice done by man to man upon his dreams of

;
the prehistoric past and his forecast of social upheavals,

Jack London, in less than a score of years, brought into
being a truly remarkable array of books. Good as is
some of his other work, his stories make strongest appeal.
Best of all are his Yukon tales, — the vividness and
vigor of which caused him to be styled by certain critics
*'The Kipling of the North." By general consensus his
best piece of writing was " The Call of the Wild." In
other tales, most of which now appear collected in
volumes, the curious reader can get further glimpses
of life in the Northland and during
both before
Klondike days. The and the struggles,
aspirations
the scheming and the jealousy, the humor and the
tragedy, the sordid and the noble passions of white
man and of native —
all are portrayed forcefully.
Among such tales are " A Daughter of the Snows,"

giving vivid details of the Klondike rush " The Faith ;
of Men," two of the stories of which present scenes at

XX vi INTR OB UCTION
Bonanza, and one of which gives a picture of a dog

whose hatred for his master contrasts strongly with the
love of Buck for John Thornton " The Children of
;
the Frost," with a good portrayal of a gold-prospecting

site ;
" The Love of Life," considered by some Lon-
don's best collection of short stories, among which is

**
Brown Wolf," a dog whose excellences remind one of
Buck. " White Fang " offers an interesting contrast
to " The Call of the Wild " in that it tells of a dog,
half wolf, that is civilized by affection for a man. Other
stories laid wholly or partly in the Northland are
" Burning Daylight," *' Lost Face," and " Smoke
Bellew," the latter giving a vivid account of a stampede
to new gold-fields.
By their strong characterization, thrilling episodes,

and masterful grasp ''
The Cruise of the
of detail,
Dazzler," "The "
Sea Wolf," Tales of the Fish Patrol,"
and " The Mutiny of the Elsinore," show us how
thoroughly Jack London knew and loved the sea. It
must have been a return to his fondness for the small
boat of his bayfaring days that led to his long cruise
in the Pacific — ? cruise that furnished material for
many stories. " The Cruise of the Snark " offers
striking scenes of curious lands : the gentle lepers of

Molokai ; the savage and
the courteous folk of Tahiti ;
repulsive natives of theSolomon Islands, with the

Beche-de-Mer English jargon employed as the vehicle
INTRODUCTION xxvii
of communication between white and native. " Jerry

of the Islands," one of the latest products of London's
pen, gives yet another noble dog in tropic scenes of
murder and cannibalism. Further pictures of life
in the Pacific Islands appear in " Adventure," " Son
and " The House of Pride."
of the Sun,"
Of somewhat different character are the books in
which Jack London reveals his own career either di-
rectly or through the chief character. With these may
appropriately be classed others setting forth his views on
society and the future of civilization. Such are " The
People of the Abyss," a painful story of personal experi-
ences among
the poor of London —
his best work in his
own " When God Laughs," a classic on
estimation ;
"
the horrors of child labor '' The War of the Classes
;
and the '" Iron Heel," black pictures of the outcome of

the mutual hatred of rich and poor " The Road," an
;
account of London's adventures as a tramp " Martin

;
Eden," giving in the life of the principal character a

picture of London's own struggle for recognition as a
writer, and hinting at the bitterness he felt when success
was at last his. " John Barleycorn," a remarkable
self-revelation on the evils of drink, enables us to learn
many of the details of London's career.
Among the quasi-scientific flights of London's imagi-
nation are " Before Adam," a picture of primitive
!2ian ; " The Star Rover," a novel treatment of self-
xxviii INTRODUCTION
hypnosis and reincarnation ; the " Scarlet Plague/' a

story of the depopulation and the subsequent repopula-
tion of the earth in recurring periods. In similar vein
are such stories as those appearing in *'
The Strength of
the Strong."
Books of a rather less strenuous type than usually
came from his pen are the " Kempton-Wace Letters," a
few plays, at least one of which was presented on the
stage, and some poems of a romantic type.
Jack London's Place as a Writer. —
It is as yet too
early to reach a settled conclusion about Jack London's

place in American literature. The permanency of his
work will depend measure on
in a the reactions of the
great world war. At present, he cannot be lightly
set aside. Abroad, he is the best-known American
writer of this generation. His life history of successful
struggle against obstacles, his emphasis on the conquest
of physical nature by brain and brawn, and the sketchy
rush of his tales stamp him as typically American.
Because of his vigorous pictures of social conditions, he
is regarded as a
" mighty prophet " by Russians of his
school of philosophy.
In America, opinion is divided. Due recognition is
given to the strong qualities of his books — to his

"barbarian" curiosity, alertness, concreteness, and zest
and conquest to his unquestioned love of
of struggle ;
nature and his power to portray her bigness and her

INTRODUCTION XXlX
might; to the clearness and vigor, the sincerity or

plausibility of action, scene, and character; to his
broad sympathy for the victims of man's thoughtless-
ness and brutality to the frankness of his self -revela-
;
tions. At the same time the more thoughtful critics

feel that despite high ability. Jack London fell short of
greatness. The lineal descendant of Bret Harte and

Kipling, he never attained to the simplicity of the one
or the literary restraint of the other. He wrote too
much for his own good. He expanded, but he did not
grow. The reader is gradually impressed by a certain
narrowness of view ; by his continued failure properly
to evaluate the orderly phases of society to whose
endeavors he, himself, owed his own education and the
comforts of nearly twenty years of his life. One is struck
by a peculiar sameness in the men he holds up for
admiration : again and again he seems to rewrite himself
in his heroes. This inability to objectify — to dis-
associate himself from the phenomena of observation

— accounts for his poor depiction of women and —
that, too, notwithstanding his appreciation of their
great influence for good in the scheme of human exist-
ence. Where analysis and study might have yielded
characters, he gives us mere types. Adequate por-
trayal is sacrificed to action. He wrote for a public
whose support has given to the film drama of to-day
its present paramount importance. Even his essays
:
XXX INTRODUCTION
on the social order leave the impression of emotion-

alism. He seems more concerned with what has
happened or is happening than with cures for the ills
he depicts.
But for all his shortcomings, a book by Jack London
enlists our attention and holds us to the end. This of
itself is no small merit. His spirit and method are
preeminently those of the age of air-ships, motor-cars,
and movies ; a time when we are constantly admonished
to *'
step lively. " To have been the literary representa-
tive of his age — an age at least alive, even if a bit too
bustling — is surely no mean distinction.
Reference Material. —
At present those interested in
Jack London have no sources of information available
other than stray articles catalogued in libraries and the
clipping bureaus maintained by the daily papers. In
the '*
Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," volumes
one, two, and three, and the later current numbers,
may be found a large amount of Jack London material
his writings as they appeared currently, criticisms,
biographical sketches, and photographs.

The young reader of the Wild " will be
''
Call of the
interested in the edition illustrated by Paul Bransom
(Macmillan, 1916). There may be found pictures of
all the prominent characters of the story, human and
canine, as well as pictures of sleds, totems, incidents,

and scenery.
INTRODUCTION xxxi
For help received in the preparation of this book

the thanks of the Editor are due to the management
of the New York World, to Mr. Edwin Fairley and
Miss Adelaide Brown of Jamaica High School, and to
Miss Wilhelmina Hayes.
T. C. M.
INTO THE PRIMITIVE
**
Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain,
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain."
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have

known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself,
but for every tide-water dog,° strong of muscle and
with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had 5
found a yellow metal, and because steamship and trans-
portation companies 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 lo
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 15
B 1
2 THE CALL OF THE WILD
wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.

The house was approached by gravelled driveways
which wound about through wide-spreading lawns
and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At
5 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, or-
10 chards, and berry patches. Then was the pump-
there
ing plant for the artesian well, and the big cement
tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning
plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.
And over this great demesne° Buck ruled. Here
15 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, re-
sided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in
20 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
25 fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the
windows at them and protected by a legion of house-
maids armed with brooms and mops.
But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog.
The whole realm was his. He plunged into the
30 swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's
;
INTO THE PRIMITIVE 3
sons ; he escorted Mollie and x\lice, the Judge's

daughters, on long twihght or early morning rambles
on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet before
the roaring library fire he carried the Judge's grand-
;
sons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and 5

guarded their footsteps 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 10
king, — king over all creeping, crawling, flying things
ofJudge 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 15
— he
so large, weighed only one hundred and forty
pounds, — for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch
shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty
pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of
good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry 20
himself in right royal fashion. During the four years
since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated
aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was ever a
trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes be-
come because of their insular situation. But he had 25

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. 30
4 THE CAth OF THE WILD
And thiswas 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
5 Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an unde-
sirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin.
He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gam-
bling, he had one besetting weakness — faith in a
system°; and this made his damnation certain. For
10 to play a system requires money, while the wages
of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a
wife and numerous progeny.
The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers'
Association, and the boys were busy organizing an
15 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
20 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.
25 "Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel,
and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative.
Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity.
To be sure, it was an unwonted performance but :
he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give

30 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 intimated his displeasure, in his pride be-
lieving that to intimate was to command. But to
his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, 5
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 mercilessh^
while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out lo
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 tvvô men threw 15
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 20
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 un-
bridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang
for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His 25
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 30
"
boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that

he can cure 'm."
Concerning that night's ride the man spoke most
eloquentl}' for himself, in a Httle shed, back of a saloon
5 on the San Francisco water front.
''All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled, "an'
I wouldn't do it over for a thousand, cold cash."
His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief,
and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee to
10 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."
15 "That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-
keeper calculated " and he's worth it, or I'm a square-
;
°
head."
The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and
looked at his lacerated hand. "If I don't get the
20 hydrophoby —
"It'llbe 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
25 tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck
attempted to face his tormentors. 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
30 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 keep-
ing him pent up in this narrow crate ? He did not 5
know why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of
impending calamity. Several times during the night
he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open,
expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But
each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper 10
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. 15
More tormentors. Buck decided, for they were evil-
looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he
stormed and raged at them tlu-ough the bars. They
only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he
promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that 20
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 im-
prisoned, began a passage through many hands.
Clerks in the express office took charge of him; he 25
was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried
him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon
a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into
a great railway depot, and finally he was deposited
in an express car. 30
For two days and nights this express car was dragged
along at the tail of shrieking locomotives ; and for
two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank. In
his anger he had met the first advances of the express
5 messengers 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
10 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
15 and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him
into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his
parched and swollen throat and tongue.
He was glad for one thing the rope was off his neck.
:
That had given them an unfair advantage; but now

20 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 davs and nights
of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded
25 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
30 him off the train at Seattle.
Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon

into a small, high-walledback 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 5
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.
"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into 10
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, sinking his 15
teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever
the hatchet fell on the outside, 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. 20
"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had
made an opening sufficient for the passage 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-e^'ed devil, as he drew 25
himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth
foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight
at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds
of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days
and nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to 30
close on the man, he received a shock that checked

his body and brought his teeth together with an
agonizing chp. He whirled over, fetching the ground
on his back and He had never been struck by a
side.
5 club in his and did not understand. With a
life,
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
10 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,
15 the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his
beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver.
Then the man advanced 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
20 this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its feroc-
ity, he again hurled himself 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
downward and backward. Buck described a complete
25 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 withheld for so long,
and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly
30 senseless.
"He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's. wot I say,"

one of the men on the wall cried enthusiasticalh'.
"Driither break cayuses° any day, and twice on
Sundays," was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on
the wagon and started the horses. 5
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.
"'xA.nswers to th^ name of Buck,'" the man solil-
oquized,° quoting from the saloon-keeper's letter which 10

had announced the consignment of the crate and con-
tents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial
voice, "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'll 15
go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and
I'll whale the stufHn' outa you. Understand?"
As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so
mercilessly pounded, and though Buck's hair in-
voluntarily bristled at touch of the hand, he endured 20
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 25

against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson,
and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club
was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign
of primitive law,° and he met the introduction halfway.
The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and while he 30
;
;
faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the

latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days
went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of
ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as
5 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 per-
formance, the lesson was driven home to Buck a :
man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed,

10 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
15 for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who talked
excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions
man in the red sweater. And at such times
to the
money passed between them the strangers took
that
20 one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck
wondered where they went, for they never came back
but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and
he was glad each time when he was not selected.
Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a
25 little weazened man who spat broken English and
many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck
could not understand.
"Sacredam !" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck.
" Dat one dam bully dog ! Eh ? How moch ? "
30 "Three hundred, and a present at that," was the
prompt reply of the man in the red sweater. "And

government money, you ain't got no kick
seein' it's
coming, eh, Perrault?"
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of
dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted 5
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 com- lo
mented mentally.
Buck saw money pass between them, and was not
surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfound-
land, and he were led away by the little weazened
man. That was the last he saw of the man in the 15
red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding
Seattle from the deck of the Nanchal, it was the
last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he
were taken below b}- Perrault and turned over to a
black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a 20
French-Canadian, and swarthy°; but Francois 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 25
grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned
that Perrault and Fran9ois 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 30
Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a

big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen° who had
been brought away by a w^haling captain, and who had
later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens.
5 He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way,
smiling into one's face the while he meditated some
underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from
Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to
punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through
10 the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing re-
mained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was
fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began
his rise in Buck's estimation.
The other dog made no advances, nor received
15 any ; also, he did not attempt to steal from the new-
comers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and he
showed Curly plainl}^ that all he desired was to be
left alone, and further, that there would be trouble if
he were not left alone. "Dave" he was called, and
20 he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took
interest in nothing, not even when the Nanvhal 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
25 head as though annoyed, favored them with an in-
curious glance, yaw^ned, and went to sleep again.
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
30 was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning.
the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded

with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did
the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand.
Francois leashed them and brought them on deck.
At the first step upon the cold surface. Buck's feet 5
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 10
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
Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a night-

mare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise.
He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civili-
zation and flung into the heart of things primordial.
5 No lazy, sunkissed 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;
10 for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men.
They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but
the law of club and fang.
He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish crea-
tures fought, and his first experience taught him an
15 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 fullgrown
20 wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no
warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of
16
THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 17
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
; than this. Thirty
to it
or forty huskies° ran to the spot and surrounded the 5

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 wîth his chest, in a lO
peculiar fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She
never regained them. This was what the onlooking
huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,
snarling and yelping, and she wâs buried, screaming
with agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies. 15
So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck
was taken aback. He saw Spitz run out his scarlet
tongue in a wây he had of laughing; and he saw
Francois, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of
dogs. Three men with clubs were helping him to scat- 20
ter 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 25
cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck
to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No
f airplay. 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 30
18 TEE CALL OF THE WILD
moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless

hatred.
Before he had recovered from the shock caused by
the tragic passing of Curly, he received another shock.
5Fran9ois 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
Fran9ois on a sled to the forest that fringed the valley,
10 and returning with a load of firewood. Though his
dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draugiit
animal, he was too wise to rebel. He buckled down
with a will and did his best, tliough it was all new and
strange. Franyois was stern, demanding instant obedi-
15 ence, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedi-
ence; while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler,°
nipped Buck's hind quarters whenever he was in error.
Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced, and while
he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp
20 reproof now and again, or cunningly threw his weight
in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should
go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined
tuition of his two mates and Fran9ois made remarkable
progress. Ere they returned to camp he knew enough
25 to stop at "ho," to go ahead at "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
30 as anything."
By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be

on the trail with his despatches, returned with two
more dogs. "Billce" and "Joe" he called them,
tv/o brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one
mother though they were, they were as different as 5
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 lO
one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail ap-
peasingly,° turned to run when he saw that appeasement
was of no avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz's
sharp teeth scored his flank. But no matter how
Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face 15
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 20
to cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inof-
fensive 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 25
face and a single eye which flashed a warning of prow-
ess 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, 30
even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity

which Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did
not like to be approached on his blind side. Of this
offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first
5 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 comrade-
ship had no more trouble. His only apparent ambition,
10 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 sleep-
ing. The tent, illumined by a candle, glowed warmly
15 in the midst of the white plain ; and when he, as a
matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and Francois
bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till
he recovered from his consternation and fled ignomini-
ously° into .the outer cold. A chill wind was blowing
20 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 soon drove him
shivering to his feet. Miserable and disconsolate,^
he wandered about among the many tents, only to
25 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
30 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 ? 5
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 un- 10
known. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and
he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air
ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under
the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined pla-
catingly,° squirmed and wriggled to show his good 15
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 wîth much
fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a hole for himself. 20
In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined
space and he wâs asleep. The day had been long and
arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though
he growled and barked and wrestled wîth bad dreams.
Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of 25
the waking camp. At first he did not know where he
was. It had snowed during the night and he was com-
pletely 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 30
a token that he was harking back through his own

to the lives of his forbears° for he was a civilized
life ;
dog, an unduly civilized" dog, and of his own experi-

ence knew no trap and so could not of himself fear it.
5 The muscles whole body contracted spasmodi-
of his
cally and on his neck and shoul-
instinctively, the hair
ders stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he
bounded straight up into the blinding day, the snow
about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he landed
flying
10 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 liad dug for himself the night
before.
15 A from Francois hailed his appearance.
shout
"Wot say?" the dog-driver cried to Perrault. "Dat
I
Buck for sure learn queek as anyt'ing."
Perrault nodded gravely. As courier" for the
Canadian Government, bearing important despatches,
20 he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he was
particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.
Three more huskies were added to the team inside
an hour, making a total of nine, and before another
quarter of an hour had passed they were in harness
25 and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Canon.
Buck was glad to be gone, and though the work was
hard he found he did not particularly despise it. He
was surprised at the eagerness which animated the
whole team, and which was communicated to him;
30 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 un-
concern 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, 5
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
; lO
team was strung out ahead', single file, to the leader,
which position was filled by Spitz.
Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and
Sol-leks so that he might receive instruction. Apt
scholar that he was, they were equally apt teachers, 15
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 without cause,
and he never failed to nip him when he stood in need of
it. As Francois's whip backed him up. Buck found it 20
to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate.
Once, during a brief halt, w^hen he got tangled in the
"tracesand 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 25
care to keep the traces clear thereafter; and ere the
day was done, so well had he -mastered his work, his
mates about ceased nagging him. Francois's whip
snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck
by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them. 30
"
It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through

Sheep Camp, past the Scales and the timber Hne, across
glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and
over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between
5 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
10 of gold-seekers were building boats against the breakup
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.
15 That day they made forty miles, the trail being
packed; but the next day, and for many days to fol-
low, they broke their own trail, worked harder, and
made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead
of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to
20 make it easier for them. Fran9ois, guiding the sled
at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places with him,
but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided
himself on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was
indispensable, for the was very thin, and where

fall ice
25 there was swift water, there was no ice at all.

Day days unending. Buck toiled in
after day, for
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
30 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 5
they weighed less and were born to the life, received a

pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good
condition.
He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had char-
acterized his old life. A
dainty eater, he found that lo
his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished
ration. There was no defending it. While he was
fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the
throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast
as they and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he
; 15
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 malingererand thief, slyly steal a
slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he
duplicated the performance the following day, getting 20
away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was
raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awk-
ward blunderer who was always getting caught, was
punished for Buck's misdeed.
This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the 25
hostile Northland environment. It marked his adapt-
ability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing
conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift
and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or
going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a 30
handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It

was all v.ell enough in the Southland, under the law
of love and fellowship, to respect private property and
personal feelings but in the Northland, under the law
;
5 of club and fang, whoso took such things mto account

was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would
fail to prosper.
that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was
Not
and unconsciously he accommodated himseK to
all,
10 the new mode of life. All liis 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
15 defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but the com-
pleteness of his decivilization° was now evidenced by
his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consider-
ation° and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy
of but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did
it,
20 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.
His development (or retrogression^) was rapid. His
25 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 particle of
30 nutriment; and liis blood carried it to the farthest
;
reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and

stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably
keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in
his sleephe heard the faintest sound and knew whether
itheralded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice 5
out with his teeth when it collected between his toes
and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of
iceover the water hole, he would break it by rearing
and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most con-
spicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and 10
forecastit a night in advance. No matter how breath-
less the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the
wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward,^
sheltered and snug.
Andnot only did he learn by experience, but instincts 15
long dead became alive again. The domesticated
generations fell from him. In vague ways he remem-
bered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the
wdld dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest
and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no 20
task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the
quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten
ancestors. They quickened the old life within him,
xind the old tricks which they had stamped into the
heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to 25
him without effort or discovery, as though they had
been his alwa\^s. And when, on the still cold nights,
he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-
like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose
at star and howling down through the centuries and 30
through him. And his cadences° were their cadences,

the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them
was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and
dark.
5 Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life° is, the
ancient song surged through him and he came into his
own again and he came because men had found a
;
yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a

gardener's helper whose wages did not lap over the
I0needs° of his wife and divers small copies of himself.
I
III
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, 5
and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided
them whenever possible. A certain deliberateness
characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rash-
ness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred
between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, lO
shunned all offensive acts.
On the other hand, possibly because he divined in
Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz never lost an oppor-
tunity of showing his teeth. He even went out of
his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start 15
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 20
the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind
that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness, had
29
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
5 sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent
they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light.
A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire
that thawed down through the ice and left them to
eat supper in the dark.
10 Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made
his nest. So snug and warm was it, that he was
loath to leave it when Francois distributed the fish
which he had first thawed over the fire. But when
Buck finished his ration and returned, he found his
15 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,
20 for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach
him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who
managed to Jiold his own only because of his great
weight and size.
Fran9ois was surprised, too, when they shot out
25 in a tangle from the disrupted nest and he divined
the cause of the trouble. "A-a-ah!" he cried to
Buck. " Gif it to heem, by Gar Gif it to heem,
!
!"
the dirty t'eef
Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer
30 rage and eagerness as he circled back and forth for a
THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 31
chance to springin. Buck was no less eager, and no

he likewise circled back and forth for
less cautious, as
the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected
happened, the thing which projected their struggle
for supremacy far into the future, past many a weary 5
mile oftrail and toil.
An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of
a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill yelp of pain,
heralded the breaking forth of pandemonium. ° The
camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulk- lo
ing 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 15
fought back. They were crazed by the smell of the
food. Perrault found one with head buried in the
grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs,
and the grub-box was capsized on the ground. On
the instant a score of the famished brutes were scram- 20
bling 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.
In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had 25
burst out of their nests only to ])e set upon by the
fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such dogs.
It seemed as though their bones would burst through
their skins. They wtre mere skeletons, draped loosel}^
in draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. ° 30
But the hunger-madness made them terrifying, irre-

There was no opposing them. The team-
sistible.
dogs were swept back against the cHff at the first onset.
Buck was beset b\' three huskies, and in a trice his
5 head and shoulders ripped and slashed. The
wêre
din was frightful. was crying as usual. Dave
Billee
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
10 of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone.
Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon the crippled ani-
mal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth
and a Buck got a frothing adversary by the
jerk.
throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth
15 sank through the jugular. The warm taste of it in
his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He
flung himself upon another, and at the same time
felt teeth sink into his own throat. It was Spitz,
treacherously attacking from the side.
20 Perrault and Fran9ois, 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
25 back to save the grub upon which the huskies returned
;
to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified into bra-

very, 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
3) himself together to spring after them, out of the tail
THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL ÊAST 33
of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evi-
dent 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 charge, then joined the flight out on the 5
lake.
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 lo
were wounded grievously. 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 15

the night. At daybreak 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 20
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 Francois's whip. He broke
from a mournful contemplation of it to look over 25
his wounded dogs.
**Ah, my frien's," he said softly, ^'mebbe it mek
you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad
dog, sacredami Wot you t'ink, eh, Perrault?"
The courier shook his head dubiously. With 30
34 JHE CALL OF THE WILD
four hundred miles of trail between him and Daw-

still
son, he could ill have madness break out

afford to
among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion
got the harnesses into shape, and the wound-stiffened
5 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
10 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
15 life to dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault, nosing
the way, broke through the ice bridges, being saved
by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it
fell each time across the hole made by his body. But
a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering
20 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
25 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,
30 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, sweat-
ing and thawing, so close that they were singed by the 5
flames.
At another time Spitz wênt through, dragging the
whole team after him up to Buck, who strained back-
ward with all his strength, his fore paws on the slip-
pery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all 10
around. But behind him was Dave, likewise strain-
ing backward, and behind the sled was Francois,
pulling till his tendons cracked.
Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind,
and there was no escape except up the cliff. Per- 15
rault scaled it by a miracle, while Fran9ois 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
cliffcrest. Fran9ois came up at last, after the sled 20
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 25
ice. Buck was played out. The rest of the dogs were
in like condition
; but Perrault, to make up lost time,
pushed them late and early. The first day they
covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon ; the next
day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon; the third 30
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
5 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
ioFran9ois 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
loPerrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when

Fran9ois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his
back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and
refused to budge without them. Later his feet grew
hard to the trail, and the worn-out footgear was thrown
20 away.
At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing
up, Dolly, who had never been conspicuous for any-
thing, went suddenly mad. She announced her
condition by a long, heart-breaking wolf howl that
25 sent every dog bristling 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
30 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
down to the lower end, crossed
breast of the island, flew
a back channel filled with rough ice to another island,
gained a third island, curved back to the main river, 5
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. Fran9ois 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 10

faith in that Fran9ois wôuld save him. The dog-
driver held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck
shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's
head.
Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, 15
sobbing for breath, helpless. This was Spitz's oppor-
tunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice his teeth
sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the -
flesh to the bone. Then Fran9ois's lash descended,
and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz receive 20
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 Francois's rejoinder. 25
" All de
tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen :
some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell an' den heem
chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow.
Sure. I know."
From then on it was war between them. Spitz, .30
as lead-dog and acknowledged master of the team,

felt his supremacy threatened by this strange South-
land dog.. And strange Buck was to him, for of the
many Southland dogs he had known, not one had
5 shown up worthily in camp and on trail. They were
all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and star-
vation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured

and prospered, matching the husky in strength, sav-
agery, and cunning. Then he was a masterful dog,
10 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.
15 It was inevitable that the clash for leadership
should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it be-
cause 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
20 the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joy-
fully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they
are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of
Dave wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with
as
all his the pride that laid hold of them at
strength;
25 break of camp, transforming them from sour and
sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious crea-
tures; the pride that spurred them on all da}' and
dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them
fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This
30 was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thi'ash
THE DOMINANT PRIMOBDIAL BEAST 39
the sled-dogs who bhmdered and shirked in the traces

or bid away at harness-up time in the morning. Like-
wise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a
possible lead-dog. And this wâs Buck's pride, too.
He openly threatened the other's leadership. He 5
came between hira and the shirks he should have
punished. And he did it deliberately. One night
there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike,
the malingerer," did not appear. He was securely
hidden in his nest under a foot of snow. rran(;'ois lO
called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild
with wrath. He raged through the camp, smelling
and digging in every likely place, snarling so fright-
fully that Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-place.
But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew 15
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 over- 20
thrown leader. Buck, to whom fairplay was a for-
gotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Fran-
cois, chuckling at the incident while unswerving in
the administration of justice, brought his lash down
upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive 25
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 pun-
ished the many times offending Pike. 30'
In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer

and closer. Buck still continued to interfere between
Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily, when
Fran9ois was not around. With the covert° mutiny
oof Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and
increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but
the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things
no longer went right. There was continual bicker-
ing and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and
10 at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Fran9ois
busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehen-
sion 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"
15 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 i^resent itself, and

they pulled into Dawson one dreary afternoon with
20 the great fight still to come. Here were many men,
and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work.
It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs
should work. All day they swung up and down the
main street in long teams, and in the night their jing-
25 ling bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and
firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did all manner
of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here
and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main
they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night,
30 regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a
nocturnal song, a weird and eerie° chant, in which it

was Buck's deHght to join.
With the aurora boreaHs° 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 5
the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only
it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings
and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the

articulate travail of existence.° It was an old song,
old as the breed itself— one of the first songs of the lO
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 pain of living
that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the 15
fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to
them fear and mystery. And that he should be
stirred by it marked the completeness with which he
harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the
raw beginnings of life in the howling ages. 20
Seven days from the time they pulled into Daw-
son, they dropped down the steep bank by the Bar-
racks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and
Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if
anything more urgent than those he had brought in 25 ;
also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed

tx)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 30
later journey ers. And further, the poKce 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
5 the first day; and the second day saw them booming
up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But such
splendid running was achieved not without great
trouble and vexation on the part of Fran9ois. The
insidious^ revolt led by Buck had destroyed the soli-
10 darity° of the team. It no longer was as one dog leap-
ing 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
15 his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one
night, and gulped it down under the protection of
Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought Spitz
and made him forego the punishment they deserved.
And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-na-
20 tured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former
days. Buck never came near Spitz without snarling
and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct ap-
proached that of a bully, and he was given to swag-
gering up and down before Spitz's very nose.
25 The breaking dowm of discipline likewise affected
the dogs in their relations with one another. They
ciuarrelled and bickered" more than ever amon^
themselves, till at times the camp was a howling
bedlam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered,
30 though they were made irritable by the unending
squabbling. Fran9ois 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 5
whip, while Buck backed up the remainder of the
team. Fran9ois 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 10
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. Dubturned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered 15
it, and missed. In a second the whole team was in
full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the
Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who
joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river,
tm-ned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of 20
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 25
flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moon-
light. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith,°
the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.
All that stirring of old ins-tincts which at stated
periods drives men out from the sounding cities to 30
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
5 wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own
teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.
There is an ecstasy" that marks the summit of life,
and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the
paradox" of living, this ecstasy comes when one is
10 most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness
that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of
living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of him-
self in a sheet of flame° it comes to the soldier, war-
;
mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it

15 came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding 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
20 the womb of Time.° He was mastered by the sheer
surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy
of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it
was everything that was not death, that it was aglow
and rampant," expressing itself in movement, flying
25 exultantly" under the stars and over the face of dead
matter that did not move.
But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme
moods," left the pack and cut across a narrow neck
of land where the creek made a long bend around.
30 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 its
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, 10
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 15
clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he
backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting
lips that writhed and snarled.
In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come.
It was to the death. As they circled about, snarl- 20
keenly watchful for the advantage,
ing, ears laid back,
the scene came Buck with a sense of familiarity.
to
He seemed to remember it all, —
the white woods,
and earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle.
Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly 25
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 30
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 noth-
ing new It was as
or strange, this scene of old time.
6 though had always been, the wonted° wây of things.
it
Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen

through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Bar-
rens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs
and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was
10 his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and
destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like
passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till
he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked
till he had first defended that attack.
15 In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck

ofthe big white dog. Wherever his fangs struck
for the softer flesh, they were countered b}' the fangs
of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and
bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's
20 guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Spitz
in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he
tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled
near to the surface, and each time and every time
Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to
25 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 by which to overthro-sy him. But instead,
Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz
30 leaped lightly away.
;
THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 4T
Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming

with blood and panting hard. The fight was grow-
ing 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 5
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 lO
greatness — imagination. He fought by instinct,"
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 15
breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three
legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated
the trick and broke the right fore leg. Despite the
pain and helplessness. Spitz struggled madly to keep
up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, loll- 20
ing tongues, and silver}^ breaths drifting upward, clos-
ing 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. ° 25
Mercy was a thing reserved for gentler climes. He
manoeuvred for the final rush. The circle had tight-
ened 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 30
fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every ani-

mal 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
5 frighten off impending death. Then Buck sprang
in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at^
last squarely met shoulder. The dark circle became
a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared
from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful
10 champion, the dominant primordial beast who had
made his kill and found it good.
IV
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP
" Eh ? Wot I say ? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck

two devils."
This was Francois's speech next morning when he
discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with
wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its Hght5
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 Francois's
answer. " An' now we make good time. No more 10
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 wôuld have occupied
as leader but Francois, not noticing him, brought 15
;
Sol-leks 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.
"Eh? eh?" Francois cried, slapping his thighs 20
gleefully. "Look at dat Buck. Heem keel dat
Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."
E 49
"
"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
5 side and replaced Sol-leks. The old dog did not like
it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.
Fran9ois was obdurate, but when he turned his back,

Buck again displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all un-
willing to go.
10 Francois was angry. " Now, by Gar, I feex you !
he cried, coming back with a heavy club in his hand.

Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and
retreated slowly nor did he attempt to charge in when
;
Sol-leks was once more brought forward. But he

15 circled just 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 Fran-
cois, for he was become wise in the way of clubs.
The driver went about his work, and he called
20 to Buck when he was ready to put him in his old
place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two or three
steps. Francois followed him up, whereupon he again
retreated. After some time of this, Francois threw
down the club, thinking that Buck feared a thrashing.
25 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 wdth less.
Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran
30 him about for the better part of an hour. They
WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 51
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 genera-
tion, and every hair on his body and drop of blood in
his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and 5
kept out of their reach. He did not try to run away,
but retreated around and around the camp, advertising
plainly that when his desire was met, he would come
in and be good.
Francois sat down and scratched his head. Per- lo
rault looked at his watch and swore. Time was
flying, and they should have been on the trail an
hour gone. Francois scratched his head again. He
shook it and grinned sheepishly" at the courier, who
shrugged his shoulders in sign that they were beaten. 15
Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks stood and
called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet
kept his distance. Francois unfastened Sol-leks's
traces and put him back in his old place. The team
stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready 20
for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at
the front. Once more Fran9ois called, and once more
Buck laughed and kept away.
"T'row down de club," Perrault commanded.
Fran9ois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, 25
laughing triumphantly, and swung around into po-
sition 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.
Higlily as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, 30
with his two devils, he found, while the day was yet
young, that he had undervalued. At a bound Buck
took up the duties of leadership and where judgment
;
was required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he

5 showed himself the superior even of Spitz, of whom
Francois had never seen an equal.
But it was in giving the law and making his mates
live up to that Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-
it,
leks did not mind the change in leadership. It was

10 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 hap-
pened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all
they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of
15 the team, however, had grown unruly during the
last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great now
that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.
Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never
put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-
20 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,
waspunished roundly —
a thing that Spitz had
25 never succeeded in doing. Buck sim.ply 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 immedi-
ately. It recovered its old-time solidarity, and once
30 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 awây Francois's breath.

" Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck " he cried.
!
" No, nevaire ! Heem worth one t'ousan' dollair, by 5

Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?"
And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record
then, and gaining day by day. The trail was in
excellent condition, well packed and hard, and there
was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It 10
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 15
with ice, and they covered in one day going out what
had taken them ten days coming in. In one run thej^
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 20
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. 25
It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days
they had averaged forty miles. For three days Per-
rault and Francois threw chests° up and down the main
street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to
drink, while the team was the constant centre of a 30
"54 THE CALL OF THE WILD
worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers.° Then

three or foui* 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
Fran9ois called Buck to him, threw his
5 official orders.
arms around him, wept over him. And that was the
last of Francois and Perrault. Like other men, they
passed out of Buck's life for good.
A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his
10 mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams
he started back oêr 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

15 men who sought gold under the shadow of the Pole.
Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the
work, taking pride in it after the manner of Dave
and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates, whether
they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It
20 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,
25 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
30 fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day,
WHO HAS }VON TO MASTERSHIP 55
though itwas 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 5
his teeth, they got out of his way.
Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire,
hind legs crouched under him, fore legs stretched
out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking dreamily
at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge 10
Miller's big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara
Valley, and of the cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel,
the Mexican 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 15
good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was
not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and dis-
tant, 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 20
familiarity; the instincts (which were but the mem-
ories 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 25
at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of an-
other and that as he* crouched by this other fire

fire,
he saw another and different man from the half-breed

cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg
and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and 30
knotty rather than rounded and swelhng. 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,
5 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
10 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 forward
from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About
15 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 oc-
20 casions his elbows were on his knees, his hands clasped
above his head as 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
25 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
30 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 5
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 condition when they made Dawson,
and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at lo
least. 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 15
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 sleep- 20
ing-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 tough- 25
est. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their
work and maintaining discipline, 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. 30
But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Some-

thing 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.
5 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
stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he
would cry out with pain. The driver examined
10 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
15 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.
20 The Scotch half-breed called a halt and took him out of
the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the
sled. His intention was to rest Dave, letting him
run free behind the sled. Sick as he was, Dave
resented being taken out, grunting and growling while
25 the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-
heartedly when he saw Sol-leks in the position he had
held and served so long. For the pride of trace and
trail was and, sick unto death, he could not bear
his,
that another dog should do his work.
30 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 his traces and get between
inside
him and the sled, and all the while whining and yelping 5
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 10
continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where
the going 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 15
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. 20
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 comrades to witness
called his
the sight. Dave had bitten through both of Sol-leks's 25
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 30
work that killed it, and recalled instances the}' had

known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured,
had died because they were cut out of the traces.
Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
5 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
oncehe cried out involuntarily from the bite of
inward hurt.
his Several times he fell down and
10 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
15 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, staggered, and fell. Then he
wormed his way forward slowly toward where the
harnesses were being put on his mates. He would
20 advance 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 miore
inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates
saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning°
25 toward them. But they could hear him mournfully
howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of
river timber.
Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed
slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left.
30 The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out.
I
The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped,
the bells tinkled merrily, churned along
the sleds
the trail;but Buck knew, and every dog knew,
what had taken place behind the belt of river
trees.
;
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,
arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched state,
worn out and worn down. Buck's one hundred and
5 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 successfully feigned
a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was
10 limping, and Dub was suffering from a v/renched
shoulder-blade.
They were all terribly footsore. No spring or re-
bound was left in them. Their feet fell heavily on
the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling the fatigue
15 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 exces-
sive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours
but it was the dead tiredness that comes through the
20 slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of
toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no
62
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 63
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 hundreds
of which they had had but five days' rest. When they
arrived at Skaguay, they were apparently on their last
legs. They could barely keep the traces taut, and on
the down grades just managed to keep out of the way
of the sled. lo
"Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged
them as they tottered down the main street of Skag-
uay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get one long res'.
Eh? For sure. One bully long res'."
The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. 15
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, 20
wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the con-
gested mail was taking on Alpine proportions also, ;
there were official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson

Bay dogs were to take the places of those worthless for
the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and, 25
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 30
from the States came along and bought them, har-

ness and all, for a song. The men addressed each
other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles was a
middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and
5 watery eyes and a mustache that twisted fiercely
and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply droop-
ing 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 belt that fairly bristled
10 with cartridges. This belt was the most salient thing
about him. It advertised his callowness° — a callow-
ness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly
out of place, and why such as they should adventure the
North is part of the mystery of things that passes
15 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
20Perrault and Francois and the others who had gone
before. When driven with his mates to the new
owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly
affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, every-
thing in disorder; also, he saw a woman. "Mer-i
25 cedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife
and Hal's sister — a nice family party.
Buck watched them apprehensively as they pro-
ceeded to take down the tent and load the sled.
There was a great deal of effort about their manner,
30 but no businesslike method. The tent- was rolled
5
into an awkward bundle three times as large as it

should have been. The tin dishes were packed away
unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way
of her men and kept up an unbroken chattering of
remonstrance and advice. When they put a clothes-
sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should
go on the back and when they had it put on the back,
;
and covered it over with a couple of other bundles,

she discovered overlooked articles which could abide
nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded 10
again.
Three men from a neighboring tent came out and
'.ooked on, grinning and winking at one another.
"You've got a right smart load as it is," said one
>f them " and it's not me should tell you your business,
; 15
)ut I wouldn't tote that tent along if I was you.'*
Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up
ler hands in dainty dismay. "However in the world
jould I manage without a tent?"
It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold 20
veather," the man replied.
She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and
3al put the last oddsand ends on top the mountainous
oad.
"Think it'll ride?" one of the men asked. 25
"Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded rather
hortly.
jpil
"Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the man
astened meekly to say. " I was just a-wonderin', that
y all.
5 It seemed a mite top-heavy." 30
I
^
6Q THE CALL OF THE WILD
Charles turned his back and drew the lashings

.
down as well as he could, which was not in the least

well.
"An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with
5 that contraption behind them," affirmed a second of
the men. »
"Certainly/' said Hal, with freezing politeness,

taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging
his whip from the other. "Mush I" he shouted.
10 "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, pre-
15 paring 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
20 the trip, or I won't go a step."
"Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother
sneered " and I wish you'd leave me alone.
; They're
and you've got to whip them to get
lazy, I tell you,
anything out of them. That's their way. You ask
25 any one. Ask one of those men."
Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold re-
pugnance 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,

30 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 5
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 10
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 15
around his neck.
"You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically,
" why don't you pull hard ? — then you wouldn't be
whipped." did not like her, but he was feeling
Buck
too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the 20
day's miserable work.
One of the onlookers, who had been clenching 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, 25
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, 30
following the ad\'ice, 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
5 hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped
steeply into the main street. It would have required
an experienced man to keep the top-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
10 the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The
lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They
were angry because of the ill treatment they had
and the unjust load. Buck was raging. He
received
broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal
15 cried "Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He
tripped and was pulled off his feet. The capsized sled
ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the street,
adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the
remainder of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.
20 Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered
up the scattered belongings. Also, they gaAê 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
25 tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were
turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods
on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. " Blankets
for a hotel," quoth one of the men who laughed and

helped. " Half as many is too much get rid of them.
— who's
;
"30 Throw away that tent, and all those dishes,

going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you

think you're traveUing 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 articles
was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried
in particular over each discarded thing. She clasped
hands about knees, rocking back and forth broken-
heartedly. She averred she would not go an inch, not
for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody lo
and to everytliing, finally wiping her eyes and pro-
ceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were
imperative necessaries. And in her zeal, when she had
finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of
her men and went through them like a tornado. 15
This accomplished, the outfit, though cut 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 20
on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen.
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 25
breed. They did not seem to know anything, these
newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon
them with disgust, and though he speedily taught them
their places and what not to do, he could not teach
them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace 30
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
6 mongrels were without spirit at all bones were the
;
only things breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and
the old team worn out by twenty-five hundred miles
of continuous trail, the outlook was anything but
10 bright. The two men, however, were quite cheer-
ful. 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
15 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
20 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
25 street. There was nothing lively about it, no snap
or go in him and his fellows. They were starting dead
weary. Four times he had covered the distance
between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge
that, jaded and tired, he was facing the same trail
30 once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in
the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Out sides
were timid and frightened, the Insides without confi-
dence in their masters.
Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon
these two men and the woman. They did not knows
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 10
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 15
half the distance used by the men as a basis in their
dog-food computation.
It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-
food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing
the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. 20
The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained
by chronic famine to make the most of little, had vora-
cious 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 25
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 was not food that
Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though 30
they were making poor time, the heavy load they

dragged sapped their strength severely.
Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day
to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the
5 distance only quarter covered; further, that for love
or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained.
So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to
increase the day's travel. His sister and brother-in-
law seconded him but they were frustrated by their
;
10 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
15 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 less been a faitliful worker. His \^Tenched
20 shoulder-blade, untreated 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 husk}^ so the
six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less than die
25 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.
By this time all the amenities° and gentlenesses of
30 the Southland had fallen away from the three people.
Shorn of its glamour° and romance, Arctic travel became
to them a reaUty 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 5
I
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 10
speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and
the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience.
They were stiff and in pain their muscles ached, their
;
bones ached, their very hearts ached ; and because of

this they became sharp of speech, and hard words 15
were first on then* lips in the morning and last at night.
Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes
gave them a chance. It was the cherished belief
of each that he did more than his share of the work,
and neither forbore to speak his belief at every op- 20
portunity. Sometimes Mercedes sided with her hus-
band, sometimes with her brother. The result was
a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting
from a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks
for the fire (a dispute which concerned only Charles 25
and Hal), presently would be lugged in the rest of the
I
family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thou-
sands of miles awa^^, 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 30
with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood passes

comprehension ;nevertheless the quarrel was as
likely to tend in that direction as in the direction of
Charles's political prejudices. And that Charles's
5 sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to° the
Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes,
building of a
who disburdened herself of copious opinions upon that
topic, and incidentally upon a few other traitsun-
pleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the
10 meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half
pitched, the dogs unfed.
Mercedes nursed a special grievance the griev- —
ance of sex.She was pretty and soft, and had been
chivalrousl3^° treated all her days. But the present
15treatment by her husband and brother was every-
thing save chivalrous. It was her custom to be help-
less. They complained. Upon which impeachment
of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,
she made their lives unendurable. She no longer con-
20sidered 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
25 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
30 strength. They never did it again. She let her legs
THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL .0
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 b}' main strength put her on
the sled again. 5
In the excess of their own misery they were callous
to the suffering of their animals. 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 lo
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 15
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 innutritions
leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating 20
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 25
to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone
out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down,
limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood where
Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted
away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had dis-30
appeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame

were outUned cleanly through the loose hide that was
wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heart-breaking,
only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the
5 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
10 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
15 faintly. When a halt was made, they dropped down in
the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and
paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or
whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and
they tottered to their feet and staggered on.
20 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
25 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 con-

;
scious and not conscious enough longer to malinger;

30 Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace
and trail, and mournful in that he had so Httle 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 5
or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the
time and keeping the trail by the loom° of it and by
the dim feel of his feet.
It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs
nor humans were aware of it. Each day the sun rose 10
earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in the
morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night.
The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The
ghostly winter silence had given way to the great
spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur 15
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 20
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 wôodpeckers were booming and knocking in the 25
forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and
overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the
south in cunning wedges that split the air.
From every hill slope came the trickle of running
water, the music of unseen fountains. All things 30
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,
5 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.
10 With the dogs falling, ]\Iercedes weeping and riding,
Hal swearing innocuously," and Charles's eyes wistfully
watering, they staggered into John Thornton's camp
at the mouth of White River. When they halted,
the dogs dropped down as though they had all been
15 struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at
John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log to rest.
He sat down very slowly and painstakingly, what of
his great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thorn-
ton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he
20 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 followed.
" They told us up above that the bottom was dropping
25 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 triumph
30 in it.
THE TOIL OF TBACE AND TRAIL 79
"And they told you true," John Thornton answered.

" The bottom's Hkely 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
Alaska."
ice for all the gold in 5
"That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said
Hal. "All the same, we'll go on to Dawson." He
uncoiled his whip. " Get up there. Buck Hi
! Get
!
up there! Mush on!"

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, 10
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 command. It
had long since passed into the stage where blows were 15
required to rouse it. The whip flashed out, here and
there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton com-
pressed 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, 20
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 25
his mind. A moisture came into his eyes, and, as the
whipping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely
up and down.
This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a
sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage. He ex- 30
changed the whip for the customary club. Buck re-

fused to move under the rain of heavier blows which
now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely
able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up
5 his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of
impending doom.° This had been strong upon him
when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not de-
parted from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he
had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed
10 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
15 flickered and went down. It was nearly out. He
felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance,
he was aware that he was being beaten. The last
sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything,
though very faintly he could hear the impact of the
20 club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it
seemed so far away.
And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a
cry that was inarticulate° and more like the cry of an
animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who
25 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
30 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 came back. " Get out of my way, or
as he
I'll fix I'm going to Dawson."
you. 5
Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced
no intention of getting out of the way. Hal drew
his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed, cried,
laughed and manifested the chaotic abandonment of
hysteria. ° Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the lO
axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He
rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
Then he stopped, picked it up himself, and with two
strokes cut Buck's traces.
Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands 15
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 20
was at the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek.
They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was
riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole,
and Charles stumbled along in the rear.
As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him 25
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
sledwas a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man
watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly 30
82 THE CALL OF TEE WILD
they saw back end drop down, as into a rut, and the
its
gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air.

Mercedes's scream came to their ears. They saw
Charles turn and make one step to run back, and then
5 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
10 licked his hand.
I
VI
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN
When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous

December, his partners 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 at the time he rescued Buck, but 5
with the continued warm weather even the slight limp

left him. And here, lying by the river bank through
the long spring days, watching the running water,
listening lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of
nature, Buck slowly won back his strength. 10
A rest comes very good after one has travelled
three thousand miles, and it must be confessed that
Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his muscles
swelled out, and the fleshcame back to cover his bones.
For that matter, they were all loafing, —Buck, John 15
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 20
which some dogs possess and as a mother cat washes
;
her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's wounds.

83
;
Regularly, each morning after he had finished his break-

fast, she performed her self-appointed task, till he came
to look for her ministrations as much as he did for
Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly, though less demon-
5strative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and
half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a bound-
less good nature. To Buck's surprise these dogs
manifested no jealousy toward him. They seemed
to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thorn-
10 ton. As Buck grew stronger they enticed him into
all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thornton. him-
self could not forbear to join and in this fashion Buck

;
romped through his convalescence and into a new

existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his
15 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 tramp-
ing, it had been a working partnership with the
;
Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship

20 and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified
friendship. But love that was feverish and burning,
that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken
John Thornton to arouse.
This man had saved his life, which was something;
25 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 ifthey were his own children, because he could not

help it. And he saw further. He never forgot a kindly
30 greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a long
"
FOB THE LOVE OF A MAN 85
talk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his

delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's
head roughly between his hands, and resting his own
head upon Buck's, of shaking him back and forth
the while calling him ill names that to Buck were 5
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 10
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 15

to hurt. He would often seize Thornton's hand in
his mouth and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the
impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And
as Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the
man understood tliis feigned bite for a caress. 20
For the most part, however, Buck's love was ex-
pressed in adoration. While he went wild with happi-
ness when Thornton touched 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 25
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, follow- 30
ing with keenest interest each fleeting expression,

every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance
might have it, he would lie farther away, to the side
or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the
5 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
10 out.
For a long time after his rescue. Buck did not like
Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment
he left the tent to when he entered it again. Buck would
follow at his heels. His transient^ masters since he
15 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 Fran9ois and the Scotch half-breed had passed
out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted
20 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.
Butin spite of this great love he bore John Thorn-
25 ton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influ-
ence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland
had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faith-
fulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof,
were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness.
30 He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to
FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 87
sitby John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog of the

softSouthland stamped with the marks of generations
of civiHzation. Because of his very great love, he
could not steal from this man, but from any other man,
in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; 5
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 10
quarrelling, —
besides, they belonged to John Thorn-
ton; but the strange dog, no matter what the breed
or valor, swiftly acknowledged Buck's supremacy or
found himself struggling for life with a terrible antag-
onist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned 15
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 mas- 20
ter 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 misunderstand-
ings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten,
was the law ; and this mandate, down out of the depths 25
of Time, he obeyed.
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 30
tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thorn-

ton'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 prompt-
5 ing, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for
the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listen-
ing 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 witli him when he lay
10 down, and dreaming with him and beyond 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
15 was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mys-
teriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to
turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth
around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and
on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder
20 where or why, the call sounding imperiously, ° deep
in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft un-
broken earth and the green shade, the love for John
Thornton drew him back to the fire again.
Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind
25 was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or
pet him but he was cold under it all, and from a
;
too demonstrative man he would get up and 'walk

away. When Thornton's partners, Hans arid Pete,
arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to
30 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, living close to the earth, thinking
simply and seeing clearly ;and ere they swung the 5^
eddy by the sawmill at Dawson, they
raft into the big
understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon
an intimacy such as obtained with Sheet and Nig.
For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow
and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack 10
upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Noth-
ing wâs too great forBuck to do, when Thornton com-
manded. One day (they had gTub-staked° themselves
from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the
head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were 15
sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight
down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below.
John Thornton was sitting near the edge. Buck at his
shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and
he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experi-20
ment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he com-
manded, 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. 25
"It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and
they had caught their speech.
Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and
it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes
me afraid." 30
"I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands

on you while he's around," Pete announced conclu-
sively, nodding his head toward Buck.
"Py Jingo !" was Hans's contribution, "not mineself
5 either."
It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that
Pete's apprehensions were realized. "Black" Bur-
ton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been
picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot° at the bar, when
10 Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck,
as wâs 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 frofn
15 falling only by clutching the rail of the bar.
Those who were looking on heard what was neither
bark nor yelp, but a something which is best described
as a roar, and they saw Buck's body rise up in the air
as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man saved
20 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 suc-
ceeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was
25 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 furi-

ously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back
by an array of hostile clubs. A "miners' meeting,"^
30 called on the spot, decided that the dog had suffi-
cient provocation, and Buck was discharged. 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 threes
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 Thorn-
ton remained in the boat, helping its descent by means 10
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 15
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 he 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 20
rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted
over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while
Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream
toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild
water in which no swimmer could live. 25
Buck had sprung in on the instant and at the
;
end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water,

he overhauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp
his tail. Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all
his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward 30
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
5 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.
Hescraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a
and struck a third with crushing force. He
second,
10 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
15 back. When he heard Thornton's command repeated,
he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head
high, as though for a last look, then turned obedi-
ently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was
dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point
20 where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction
began.
They knew that the time a man could cling toa
slippery rock in the face of that driving current was
a matter of minutes, and the\' ran as fast as they could
25 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 shoul-
it should neither strangle him
ders, being careful that
nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the
30 stream. He struck out boldly, but not straight enough
FOE THE LOVE OF A MAN 93
into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late,

when Thornton was abreast ofhim and a bare half-
dozen strokes away while he was being carried help-
lessly past.
Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though 5
Buck were a boat. The rope thus tightening on
him in the swêep 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 10
threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath
into him and the water out of him. He staggered to
his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thornton's
voice came to them, and though they could not make
out the words of it, they knew that he was in his ex- 15
tremity. His master's voice acted on Buck like an
electric shock. He sprang to his feet and ran up the
bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.
Again the rope was attached and he was launched, 20
and again he struck out, but this time straight into
the stream. He had miscalculated once, but he
would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid
out the rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it
clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line 25
straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with
the speed of an express train headed down upon him.
Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him
ram, with the whole force of the current
like a battering
behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms 30
around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope

around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked
under the water. StrangHng, suffocating, sometimes
one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over
5 the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags,
they veered into the bank.
Thornton came to, belly downward and being vio-
back and forth across a drift log by
lently propelled
Hans and Pete.° His first glance was for Buck, over
10 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
15 broken ribs.
"That settles it," he announced. "We camp
right here." And camp they did, till Buck's ribs
knitted and he was able to travel.
That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another
20 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 grati-
fying to the three men; for they stood in need of
the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to
25 make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where
miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about
by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which
men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck,
because of his record, was the target for these men,
30 and Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him.
At the end of half an hour one man stated that his

dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and
walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for
his dog ; and a third, seven hundred.
"Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck cans
start a thousand pounds."
"And break it out? and walk off with it for a hun-
dred yards?" demanded Matthew^son, a Bonanza
King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.
"x\nd break it out, and walk off with it for a hun-io
dred yards," John Thornton said coolly.
"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately,
so that all could hear, "I've got a thousand dollars
that says he can't. And there it is." So saying,
he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna 15
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 20
pounds. Half a ton 1 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 wait- 25
ing. Further, he had no thousand dollars; nor had
Hans or Pete.
"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twênty
fifty-pound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on
with brutal directness ;
" so don't let that hinder vou." 30
Thornton did not repl}^ He did not know what

to say. He glanced from face to face in the absent
way of a man who has lost the power of thought and
is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start
5 it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon
King° and old-time comrade, caught his e\'es. 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
10 a whisper.
"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a ple-
thoric° sack by the side of Matthewson's. "Though
it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast can do
the trick."
15 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
20 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
25 Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble° arose
concerning the phrase "break out." O'Brien con-
tended it was Thornton's privilege to knock the run-
ners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a
dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase
30 included breaking the runners from the frozen grip
of the snow. A majority of the men who had wit-

nessed 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 5
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 be-
fore it, the more impossible the task appeared. Mat-iO
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 15
fighting spirit was aroused —
the fighting spirit that
soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible,
and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called
Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks Vvêre slim, and
with his own the three partners could rake together 20
only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes,
this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it un-
hesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred.
The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck,
with his own harness, was put into the sled. He 25
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 splen-
did appearance went up. He was in perfect condition,
without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hun- 30
dred and pounds that he weighed were so many

fifty
pounds of and viriHty. His furry coat shone
grit
with the sheen of silk. Dov»rn the neck and across the
shouklers, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled
5 and seemed to lift with every movement, as though ex-
cess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active.
The great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than
in proportion with the rest of the body, where the
muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin.
10 Men felt these muscles and proclaimed them hard
as iron, and the odds went down to two to one.
"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the
latest dynasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. "I
offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before the test,
15 sir; eight hundred just as he stands."
Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.'
"You must stand off from him," Matthewson pro-
tested. "Free play and plenty of room."
The crowd fell silent only could be heard the voices
;
20 of the gamblers vainly offering two to one. Every-

body acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal, but
twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in
their eyes forthem to loosen their pouch-strings.
Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took
25 his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek.
He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or
murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his
ear."As you love me. Buck. As you love me,"
was what he whispered. Buck whined with suppressed
.30 eagerness.
The crowd was watching curiously. The affair

was growing mysterious. It seemed Hke a con jura-
tion. ° As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his
mittened hand between his jaws, pressing it with his
teeth and releasing slowly, half-reluctantly. It was 5
the answer, in terms, not of speech, but of love. Thorn-
ton 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 hadio
learned.
!
*'
Gee " Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the
tense silence.
Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in
a plunge that tookup the slack and with a sudden jerk 15
arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The
load quivered, and from under the runners arose a
crisp crackling.
" Haw !" Thornton commanded.
Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the 20
left. The crackling turned into a snapping, the sled
pivoting and the runners slipping and grating several
inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men
were holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of
the fact. 25
"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 together in the tremendous ef-30
°
fort, muscles writhing and knotting Uke live

the
things under
the silky fur. His great chest was
low to the ground, his head forAvard and down, while
his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the
shard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled
swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of
his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then
the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid suc-
cession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead
10 stop again half an inch ... an inch
. . . . two
. .
inches. . . .The jerks perceptibly diminished; as

the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till
it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware
15 that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thorn-
ton 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
20 grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood
and halted at command. Every man was tearing him-
self loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were
Men were shaking hands, it did not
flying in the air.
matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general
25 incoherent babel.
But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head
was against head, and he was shaking him back and
forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck,
and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and
30 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. 5
"Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench king, "no,
sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do
for you, sir."
Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thorn-
ton shook him back and forth. As though animated 10
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
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,°
5 the history of which was as old as the history of the
country. INIany men had sought it; few had found
it; and more than a few there were who had never
returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped
in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew 'of
10 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 it, and to the mine the site of which it marked,
clinching their testimony with nuggets that were un-
15 like any known grade of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had looted this treasure house,
and the dead wêre 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
20 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
102
THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 103
Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stew-

art itself became a streamlet, threading the upstand-
ing peaks which marked the backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He
was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of salt and 5
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 Indians, he kept on traveUing, secure in lO
the knowledge that sooner or later he would come to

it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight
meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools prin-
cipally made up the load on the sled, and the time-
card was drawn upon the limitless future.° 15
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 20
men burning holes through frozen muck° and gravel
and washing 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, 25
and dogs and men packed° on their backs, rafted across
blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended un-
known rivers in slender boats whipsawed° from the
standing forest.
The months came and went, and back and forth 30
they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where

no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost
Cabin were true. They went across divides" in sum-
mer bHzzards, shivered under the midnight sun on
5 naked mountains between the timber Une° 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
10 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.
15 And through another winter they wandered on the
obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once,
they came upon a path blazed tlu-ough the forest, an
ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near.
But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and
20 it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the
reason he made it remained mystery. Another time
they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a
hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets
John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock.°
25 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
30 blanliets.
;
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 5
they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean
dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The
gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to
the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the
spruce-bough lodge, hike giants they toiled, days 10
flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped
the treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the
haiding in of meat now and again that Thornton killed,
and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The 15
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 v/hich he remembered.
The salient thing° of this other world seemed fear. 20
When he watched the hairy man sleeping 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 fear-
fully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the 25
fire. Did they wâlk 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 30
Buck at the hairy man's heels; and

crept noiselessly,
they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears
twitching and moving and nostrils quivering, for the
man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The
5 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, let-
ting go and catching, never falling, never missing his
grip. fact, he seemed as much at home among the
In
10 trees ason 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
him with a great unrest and strange desires.
15 filled
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 asthough it were a tangible thing,
20 barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate.
He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or
into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort
with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch
for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered
25 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,
30 and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be ly-

ing in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when
suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, in-
tent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and
dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the 5
and across the open spaces where the nig-
forest aisles
gerheads° bunched. He loved to run down dry water-
courses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the
woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the under-
brush where he could watch the partridges drumming 10
and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to
run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listen-
ing 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 15 —
•
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 bris-
tling in recurrent waves. ° From the forest came the
call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted), 20
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 25
he drew closer to the cry he went more slowly, with
caution in everj^ 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. 30
He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling

and tried to sense his presence. Buck stalked into the
open, half body gathered compactly to-
crouching,
gether, tail and stiff, feet falling with un-
straight
6 wonted care. Every movement advertised commingled
threatening 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.
10 He ran him into a blind channel, in the bed of the
creek, where a timber jam barred the way. The
wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the
fashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling
and bristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous
15 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

20 shoulder. Watching his chance, he darted away, and
the chase was resumed. Time and again he was cor-
nered, 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
25 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 rewarded;
for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally
sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly,
30 and played about in the nervous, half-coy° way with
which fierce beasts belie their fierceness: After some

time of this the wolf started an easy lope in a
off at
manner that plainly showed he was going somewhere.
He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and
they ran side by side .through the sombre twilight, 5
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 10
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 15
the place from where the call surely came. Old

memories were comin'g 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 re- 20
membered world, and he was doing it again, now,
running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot,
the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and,
stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton. He sat 25
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 encour-
age him. But Buck turned about and started slowly
on the back track. For the better part of an hour the 30
;
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
5 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 — " playing the general tom-
10 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
15 into his blankets at night and out of them in the morn-
ing. But after two days the call in the forest began to
sound more imperiously" than "ever. Buck's restless-
ness came back on him, and he was haunted by recol-
lections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land
20 beyond the divide and the run side by side through the
wide forest stretches. Once again he took to wander-
ing in the woods, but the wild brother came no more
and though he listened through long vigils, the mourn-
ful howl was never raised.
25 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 dow^n into the
land of timber and streams. There he wandered for
a week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother,
meat as he travelled and travelling with
30 killing his
the long, easy lope that seems never to tire. He fished

for salmon broad stream that emptied somewhere
in a
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 and terrible. 5
Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last
latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days
later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen
wolverenes quarrelling over the spoil, he scattered them
like chaff ; and those that fled left two behind who 10
would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever be-
fore. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on
the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his
own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in 15
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, 20
spoke plainly as speech in the wây 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 w^hite hair that
ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been 25
mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of
the breed. From his St. Bernard father he had in-
herited 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 30
;
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
5 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, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full
flower, at the high tide of his overspilling with
life,
10 vigor and virility. When Thornton

passed a caressing
hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed
the hand, each hair discharging its pent° magnetism
at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve
and fibre, was kej'ed to the most exquisite pitch
tissue
15 and between all the parts there was a perfect
equilibrium^ or adjustment. To sights and sounds
and events which required action, he responded with
lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could
leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap
20 twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard
sound, and responded in less time than another dog
required to compass the mere seeing or hearing. He
perceived and determined and responded in the same in-
stant. In point of fact the three actions of perceiving,
25 determining, and responding were sequentiaP but so
;
infinitesimal^ were the intervals of time between them

that the}' appeared simultaneous. His muscles were
surcharged with vitality, and snapped into pla}' sharply,
like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splen-
30 did flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it
would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour

forth generous!}' over the world.
"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton
one day, as the partners watched Buck marching out
of camp. 5
"When he was made, the mould was broke," said
Pete.
"Py Jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans affirmed.
They saw him marching out of camp, but they did
not see the instant and terrible transformation which
lo
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
passing shadow that appeared and disappeared among
the shadows. He knew how to take advantage of 15
every cover, to crawl on his bell}' like a snake, and like
a snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan°
from its nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid
air the little chipmunks fleeing a second too late for
the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick for 20
him; nor were the 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

himior ran through his deeds, and it was his delight
to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had 25
them, to let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the
tree-tops.
As the the year came on, the moose appeared
fall of
in greaterabundance, moving slowly down to meet the
winter in the lower and less rigorous valleys. Buck 30
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
5 crossed o^'er 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
10 great palmated° antlers, branching to fourteen points
and embracing seven feet within the tips. His small
eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light, while he
roared with fury at sight of Buck.
From the bull's side, just forward of the flank.
15 protruded a feathered arrow-end, w^hich accounted for
his savageness. Guided by that instinct which came
from the old hunting days of the primordial world,
Buck proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd.
It was no slight task. He would bark and dance about
20 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
25 such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily,
luring him on by a simulated" inability to escape.
But when he was thus separated from his fellows, two
or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon
Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.
30 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 be-

longs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food;
and belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of 5

it
the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls,

worrying the cows with their half -grown calves, and
driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For
half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself,
attacking from all sides, en^'eloping the herd in a whirl- 10
wind 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 15
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 20
it seemed they could ne\'er shake off this tireless crea-
ture that held them back. Besides, it was not the life
of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threat-
ened. The life of only one member was demanded,
which was a remoter interest than their lives, and in 25
the end they were content to pay the toll.°
As twilight fell the old bull stood with 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 30
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
5 fightand struggle, and at the end he faced death at
the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach be-
yond his great knuckled knees.
From then on, nightand day, Buck never left his
prey, never gave ita moment's rest, never permitted
10 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
15 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, attack-
ing him fiercely when he strove to eat or drink.
The great head drooped more and more under its
20 tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weaker
and weaker. He took to standing for long periods,
with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped
hmply; and Buck found more time in which to get
water for himself and in which to rest. At such mo-
25 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.
30 Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant" with their
presence. The news was borne in upon him, not

of it
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 5 ;
and he resolved to investigate after he had finished the

business in hand.
At last, end of the fourth day, he pulled the
at the
great moose down. For a day and a night he remained
by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn and turn about, lo
Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his
face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke
into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour,
never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home
through strange country with a certitude of direction 15
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 through-
out the sum^mer. No longer was this fact borne in 20

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, read-
ing a message which made him leap on with greater 25
speed. He was oppressed with a sense of calamity
happening, if it v/ere not calamity already happened;
and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped
down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with
greater caution. 30
Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that

sent his neck hair rippling and bristling. It led straight
toward camp and John Thornton. Buck hurried on,
and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense,
swiftly
5 alert to the multitudinous details which told a story —
all but the end. His nose gave him a varj'ing descrip-
tion 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
10 were in hiding. One only he saw, — a sleek gray fel-
low, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed
a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding
shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly to the side as
15 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.
20 A hundred yards farther on. Buck came upon one
of the sled-dogs Thornton had bought in Dawson.
This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle,
directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him
without stopping. From the camp came the faint
25 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 ar-
rows like a porcupine. At the same instant Buck peered
out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and saw
30 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 5
that he lost his head.
The Yeehats° were dancing about the wreckage of
the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful
roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal the
like of which they had never seen before. It was 10
Buck, a live hurricane 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 15
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 dis-20
charged 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 25
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.
x\nd truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at 30
their heels and dragging them down like deer as they

raced through the trees. It was a fateful day for the
Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the coun-
try, and it was not till a week later that the last of the
5 survivors gathered together in a lower valley and
counted their losses. x-Vs 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 strug-
lOgle was fresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented
every detail of it down to the edge of a deep pool.
By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay

Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool itself, muddy
and discolored from the sluice boxes,° effectually hid
15 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 rest-
lessly about the camp. Death, as a cessation of move-
20 ment, as a passing out and away from the lives of the
living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was
dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to
hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which
food could not fill. At times, and when he paused to
25 contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot
the pain of it; a,nd 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
30 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 speai^ and clubs. Thenceforward
he would be unafraid of them except when they bore
in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. 5
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, brood-
ing and mourning by the pool. Buck became alive to
a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that lO
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 15
world which persisted in his memory. He walked to
the centre of the open space and listened. It was the
call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly°
and compelling than ever before. And as never be-
fore, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. 20
The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man
no longer bound him.
Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were
hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating moose,
the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land 25
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 still and large he 30
stood, and a moment's pause fell, till the boldest one

leaped straight for him. Like a flash Buck struck,
breaking the neck. Then he stood, without move-
ment, as before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony be-
5 hind 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 sufflcient to fling the whole pack forward,
pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by
10 its eagerness to pull down Buck's marvel-
the prey.
lous 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
15 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
20 the course of mining, and in this 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, tliat at the end of half
an hour the wolves drew back discomfited. The
25 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

30 wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in
a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the wild

brother with whom he had run for a night and a day.
He wâs whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they
touched noses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came 5
forward. Buck writhed his lips into the preiiminar}^
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. x\nd now came to Buck in un-
the call lo
mistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled.
This over, he came out of his angle and the pack
crowded around him, sniffing in half-friendly, half-
savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the
pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves 15
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 20
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 25
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.
124 th:bj call of the wild
Nay, the talegrows worse. Hunters there are who

fail camp, and hunters there have been
to return to the
whom then' tribesmen found with throats slashed
cruelly open and with wolfprints about them in the
5 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. iVnd
women there are who become sad when the vvôrd goes
over the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that
10 valley for an abiding-place.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that
valley, of which the Yeehats do not know. It is a
great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yet unlike, all
other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling
15 timber land and comes down into an open space among
the trees. Here a yellow stream flows from rotted
moose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with
long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun;
20 and here he muses for a time, howling once, long and
mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter
nights come on and the wolves follow their m.eat into
the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head
25 of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering
borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great
throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world,
which is the song of the pack.
;
NOTES
1 : tidewater dog. Dog living on the Pacific coast.
3.
1 : booming the find. Advertising the discovery of
7.
the gold in an exaggerated manner in order to stimulate
travelon their lines.
2:14. demesne (pronounced, de men'). A landed
estate.
4 2.: strike. Discovery of a rich deposit of precious
metal.
4 : 9. system. The particular plan of making bets by
means which confirmed gamblers, ignorant of the laws
of
of chance, believe they can overcome the odds that are
always against them in any professional gambling game.
6 17.
: squarehead. Stupid fellow.
8 26.
: metamorphosed. Changed.
11 3. : break cayuses. Train Indian ponies for the
saddle.
11 10. :soliloquized. Said to himseK.
11 29. primitive law.
: The law as at first developed
the law as administered in earliest times.
12 10. :conciliated. Won over by gentle behavior.
13 21. :swarthy. Of dark complexion.
13 22. :French- Canadian half-breed. person one of A
whose parents is French-Canadian the other, Indian. ;
13 30. :'tween decks. Between decks down below. ;
14 2. Spitzbergen. An island of the Arctic Ocean

:
about four hundred miles north of Norway.

14 23. :bucked. Acted like a bucking horse, which
by plunging jumps on stiff fore legs tries to throw its rider.
14 23. : possessed. Occupied by an evil spirit.
125
126 NOTES
16 : 16. vicarious experience. Experience gained not

from participation in the event but by noticing what
happened to another dog.
17 5. huskies. Native sled dogs. See Introduction,
:
" The Dog in the Northland."

17 25. swart. Swarthy of dark complexion.
: ;
18 16. wheeler. That dog of a team which is

:
harnessed next to the sled. See Introduction, " The Dog

in the Northland."
19 8. introspective. Thinking about himself
: not ;
turning his mind to matters outside of himself, malig-

nant. Malicious harboring ill-will.
;
19 12. appeasingly. In a manner intended to allay

:
anger.
19 19. Incarnation of belligerent fear. An example
:
in the flesh of a fear so great that it drove the dog to fight

for his life.
20 19. ignominiously. Disgracefully.
:
20 23. disconsolate. Sorrowful sad dejected.

: ; ;
21 15. placatingly. In a way intended to dispel anger.

:
22 2. harking
: back forbears.
. Returning
. . . . .
in imagination to the lives of his ancestors.

22 3. unduly civilized. More civilized than was good
:
for him —
to Jack London's way of thinking.
22 18. courier. Rapidly traveUing messenger.
:
26 13. fundamental and primitive code. A body of

:
laws of first importance for the preservation of the life of

a dog.
26 16. decivilization. The remo^dng from his dog
:
mind of the habits developed in the domesticated dog.

26 18. ability to flee
: consideration.
. . Abihty to
.
ignore aU ideas of right and A\Tong in his actions.

26 24. retrogression. Mo\dng back from the condi-
:
tion of body of the civilized dog to that of the -uild dog.

See Introduction, " The Central Idea of the Book."
26 27. He: achieved economy. He
. .acquired
.
NOTES 127
ability not only to meet the hardships of the world with-

out, but also to withstand the rough usage to which his
organs of digestion were subjected.
27 13. to leeward. On the side opposite to that
:
struck by the wdnd.

28 1. cadences. Succession of notes in the musical
:
scale; the " tune " howled by the dogs.

28 5. puppet thing life is. Nature casts people and
:
events together as carelessly as a child throws down his

doll here or there on the ground.
28 10. lap over the needs. More than cover the
:
needs more than meet the needs.

;
29 1. dominant primordial beast. The desire to be

:
the beast that leads the pack, as in the first days of the
dog —the early days of the wild dog.
31 9. pandemonium. A noise like that made by all
:
the devils together.

31 30. slavered fangs. Dripping jaws.
:
36:6. cave-dweller or river man. For an interesting

and substantially accurate picture of primitive man, see
Jack London's " Before Adam."
39 9. malingerer. Shirker.
:
40 4. covert. Hidden concealed.

: ;
41 1. eerie. Weird mysterious ghostly.

: ; ;
41 3. aurora borealis. The northern lights.

:
41 9. articulate travail of existence. Vocal expression

:
of the burden of living.

42 9. insidious. Slyly carried out hard to detect.
: ;
42 10. solidarity. Sense of common responsibility.

:
42 27. bickered. Indulged in petty wrangling.

:
43 27. wraith. A spectre a ghost.

: ;
44 7. ecstasy. Exaltation
: strong feeling that lifts
;
one beyond himself.

44 9. paradox. Contradiction.
:
44 13. caught up
: flame.
. . Carried beyond him-
.
self by some great surge of feeling.

128 NOTES
44 20.
: womb of Time. Beginnings of things.
44 24.
: rampant. Unchecked ; unrestrained ; exu-
berant.
44 25. exultantly. In triumph with great rejoicing.
: ;
44 28. supreme moods. Times of strongest feeling.

:
46 5. wonted. Customary usual.

: ;
47:11. instinct. Inherited knowledge. See Intro-

duction, "The Central-Idea of the Book."
47 25. inexorable. Unrelenting
: pitiless merciless.
; ;
51 14. sheepishly. In a silly manner

: in a manner
;
that showed how fooUsh he felt.

53: 28, threw chests. Slang for " swaggered."
54:1. dog-busters and mushers. Dog-team trainers
and dog-team drivers.
55 22. lapsed. Shpped away.
:
60 24. yearning toward them. Looking toward them

:
with sorrowful longing to join them.

64:11. callowness. Immaturity; lack of knowledge
and experience.
67 4. clannish. Standing up for her family.
:
69 4. inexorable elimination of the superfluous.

:
Merciless discarding of what was not needed.

70 21. : Q. E. D. Abbreviation of the Latin, Quod erat
demonstrandum, " which was to be proved," the customary
wording at the end of a geometrical proof.
70 22. comprehensively. " Understandingly " seems
:
to be London's meaning.
71 25. orthodox. Here means "usual," " customary."
:
72 29. amenities. Agreeable manners.

:
73 1. glamour. Enchantment.
:
74 5. be relevant to. Have any connection with.

:
74 14. chivalrously. Gallantly courteously.

: ;
74 27. importuned. Here apparently used in the

:
sense of " annoyed."

77 7. loom. Vague outline or signs seems to be the
:
meaning here.
NOTES 129
78:11. innocuously. Harmlessly. It here seems to

mean " uselessly."
80 6. impending doom. Here " coming disaster."
:
80 23. inarticulate. Not in sounds of words of ordi-

:
nary speech.
80 27. wistfully. Pensively with melancholy thought-
: ;
fulness.
81 10. chaotic
: abandonment of hysteria. Unre-
strained giving way to hysterics.
86 14. transient. Passing out of his life temporary.
: ;
87 18. lessoned. Learned. An unusual verb in an

:
unusual sense.
88 12. peremptorily.
: Commandingly in a way ;
that demands obedience.

88 20. imperiously. In a commanding manner
: in ;
a way
not to be disobeyed.
89 4. same large type. Same kind of simple, big-
:
hearted man.
89 13. grub-staked themselves. Bought themselves
:
food and equipment for a prospecting tour in search of

gold.
90 9. tenderfoot. A new-comer, a " greenhorn."
:
90:29. "miners' meeting." A trial jury selected

from those who happened to be present.
91 6. Poling-boat. A boat propelled and guided by
:
pushing with poles on the river bottom.

91:8. snubbing. Checking the progress of.
94:9. being violently propelled .Pete. Crude first
. .
aid for a man nearly drowned.

94:21. totem-pole. A tall piece of timber fantas-
tically carved with the " totem " or token of a particular
family or elan. Those of some western Indian tribes of
North America are brilliantly colored. In a sense the
totem-pole has religious significance. The totem-pole
'Was not erected to commemorate some great deed, as
London seems to think.
130 NOTES
95 17. Thornton's bluff. Bluff, slang for an act or a

:
statement of a boastful sort intended to deceive or frighten

by pretended resources or power.
96 6. Mastodon King. One who had grown wealthy
:
from the riches of the Mastodon mine.

96 12. plethoric. Crammed full,
:
96 18. lay odds. Offer betting odds.

:
96 25. quibble. Argument on a mere trifle

: petty
;
discussion.
99 : 3. It seemed like a conjuration. Thornton seemed
to be using magic words by which to secure supernatural
aid.
100 25. incoherent babel. Loud talking by so many
:
at once that a listener could understand nothing.

102 4. fabled lost mine.
: A mine of which stories
were told but the location of which was no longer known.
102 10. tradition. Story handed down from man to
:
man for long periods.

102:12. ramshackle. Tumble-down; in a state of
decay.
103 15. time card was drawn upon the limitless future.
:
They had planned to take as long a time as might be

needed to succeed in their search.
103:21. Muck. A mass of decomposed vegetable
matter forming a top-soil.
103 22. washing countless pans of dirt. Testing for
:
the presence of gold. See Introduction, " Placer-Mining."

103 26. packed on their backs. Men and dogs carried
:
ammunition, tools, camp equipment, and food in packs on

their backs.
103 28. whipsawed. Cut with a saw of narrow blade.
:
104 3. divides. Ridges or conspicuous elevations are

:
here meant.
104 5. timber-line. The elevation above the sea level
:
at which timber ceases to grow.

104 24. flint-lock. An old-time muzzle-loading gun,
:
;
NOTES 131
the powder in which was ignited by a spark produced by

the striking on a piece of steel of a fragment of flint set in
the hammer.
104 25. Hudson Bay Company. An English corpora-
:
tion nearly two and a half centuries old that does an

immense business in the Dominion of Canada. The com-
pany collects furs, sells general merchandise, and outfits
hunters and trappers. In out-of-the-way places its agents
administer the laws.
105:3,5. Placer, washing-pan. See Introduction,
" Placer-Mining."
105 20.
: The thing that forced itself
salient thing.
on the attention the prominent thing.
;
107 7. niggerheads. This word generally means

:
rounded boulders, or rocks.

107:19. .recurrent waves. Waves that occur re-
peatedly.
108 6. overture. Proposal.
:
108 7. menacing truce. Outward signs of friendliness

:
carrying with them a threat of ^dolence.

108 27. pertinacity. Dogged perseverance.
:
108:30. half-coy. " Coy " means bashful shy. ;
109 9. watershed. The line of high ground separat-

:
ing the water flowing into two different rivers or river

basins.
110 : 17. imperiously. Commandingly ; in a way that
demanded obedience.
112 pent. Shut in.
equilibrium. Balance.
were sequential. Followed one another.
infinitesimal. Exceedingly small.
ptarmigan. A
bird of the grouse family.
palmated. Like an open palm of the hand
resembling a hand open with the fingers mdely separated.
114 21. splay hoofs. Broad, flat hoofs.
:
114 24. paroxysms. Sudden outbursts fits.

: ;
132 NOTES
114 26. simulated. Pretended.

:
115 19. beset. Set upon attacked.

: ;
115 26. pay the toll. Pay the tax on the herd in-
:
volved in the loss of the wounded moose stand the loss.

;
116 30. palpitant. Throbbing.

:
118 8. pregnant silence. Silence filled Tvdth meaning.

:
119 7. Yeehats. A native tribe.

:
120:14. sluice boxes. See Introduction, " Placer-Min-

ing.
121: 18. Luringly. Enticingly; in a winning way.
Printed in the United States of America.

i
.."'^ REGIONAL LIBRARY
I lllllini'ir.. „
B 000 003 008

:i\\m

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LONDON'S

A Series of English Texts, edited for use in Elementary and

i6mo Cloth 25 cents each

Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, Emerson's Early Poems.

De Quincey's Joan of Arc, and The Eng- Kingsley's The Heroes.

A Series of English Texts, edited for use in Elementary and

i6mo Cloth 25 cents each

Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Shakespeare's Henry V.

Poe's Poems. Southern Poets Selections.

Poe's Prose Tales (Selections). Southey's Life of Nelson.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY

THEODOEF. .G. .MJTCHILL

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

All rights reserved

bt the macmillan company.

Set up and eltctro^^^? I^^istfd I^cwember, 1917.

c e < tee c c a /,. «•

' < c t < •

The Call of the Wild

laid between Skagway, the ocean end of the Klondike

gold-fields of northwest Canada. Skagway lies well

Beach. From Skagway the trail ^ mounted northwest

^ In the maps of the Century Atlas and in those of several en-

cyclopaedias the Yukon trail is plainly indicated.

City, Alaska; and in among the Tanana which

lie in Alaska about three hundred miles west ofDawson.

In their wanderings they seem to have crossed the

Great Bear Lake (see page 104).

Dawson and that led to the stealing of Buck for service

occurs. Placer-mining seeks to recover from the

the sluice is run a stream of water. The gold-bearing

improvement of breeds so many and so different. It

of defamation of the dog —

tery. After a faithful slumbering watch over his

heroes. Three saints have the dog under their protec-

if any, artificial shelter against the elements. In

proportion to his size he displays great strength and

dog for passage inland from the coast. Around the

with rawhide thongs, not only because of the flexibility

thereby imparted to the sled, but also because of the

hold it back when the need arose. Moreover, by means

of sleds of open construction or through holes pierced in

dulled because not acutely needed for his existence.

early man, from whom we ourselves are descended.

Thornton. With Thornton dead he hearkens tp the

erence. Nature knows best what to do with man's best

sive and powerful. Through age-long association with

zon of the wild dog Buck had imagination. Man had

made him the best of his kind. Then Nature gathered

Livermore Valley, where between the ages of eight and

shut up on a ranch these occupations savored of adven-

a writer. At the Oakland public library he resumed his

omnivorous reading. Moreover, in his leisure hours,

This latter place he left when refused a slight increase

gust with labor conditions he threw down the shovel

in the homes of well-to-do pupils, and wrote for the

hunting, he was stricken with the scurvy. Together