автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Call of the Wild

Jack London

“Old long­ings no­madic leap,
Chaf­ing at cus­tom’s chain;
Again from its bru­mal sleep
Wak­ens the fer­ine strain.”

I Into the Primitive

Buck did not read the news­pa­pers, or he would have known that trou­ble was brew­ing, not alone for him­self, but for ev­ery tide­wa­ter dog, strong of mus­cle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Be­cause men, grop­ing in the Arc­tic dark­ness, had found a yel­low metal, and be­cause steamship and trans­porta­tion 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 coats to pro­tect them from the frost.

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

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

But Buck was nei­ther house-dog nor ken­nel-dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swim­ming tank or went hunt­ing with the Judge’s sons; he es­corted Mol­lie and Alice, the Judge’s daugh­ters, on long twi­light or early morn­ing ram­bles; on win­try nights he lay at the Judge’s feet be­fore the roar­ing li­brary fire; he car­ried the Judge’s grand­sons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their 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 king—king over all creep­ing, crawl­ing, fly­ing things of Judge Miller’s place, hu­mans in­cluded.

His fa­ther, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s in­sep­a­ra­ble com­pan­ion, and Buck bid fair to fol­low in the way of his fa­ther. He was not so large—he weighed only one hun­dred and forty pounds—for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shep­herd dog. Nev­er­the­less, one hun­dred and forty pounds, to which was added the dig­nity that comes of good liv­ing and uni­ver­sal re­spect, en­abled him to carry 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 even a tri­fle ego­tis­ti­cal, as coun­try gen­tle­men some­times be­come be­cause of their in­su­lar sit­u­a­tion. But he had saved him­self by not be­com­ing a mere pam­pered house-dog. Hunt­ing and kin­dred out­door de­lights had kept down the fat and hard­ened his mus­cles; and to him, as to the cold-tub­bing races, the love of wa­ter had been a tonic and a health pre­server.

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

The Judge was at a meet­ing of the Raisin Grow­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, and the boys were busy or­ga­niz­ing an ath­letic club, on the mem­o­rable night of Manuel’s treach­ery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the or­chard on what Buck imag­ined was merely a stroll. And with the ex­cep­tion of a soli­tary man, no one saw them ar­rive at the lit­tle flag sta­tion known as Col­lege Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked be­tween them.

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

“Twist it, an’ you’ll choke ’m plen­tee,” said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready af­fir­ma­tive.

Buck had ac­cepted the rope with quiet dig­nity. To be sure, it was an un­wonted per­for­mance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wis­dom that out­reached his own. But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger’s hands, he growled men­ac­ingly. He had merely in­ti­mated his dis­plea­sure, in his pride be­liev­ing that to in­ti­mate was to com­mand. But to his sur­prise the rope tight­ened around his neck, shut­ting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him half­way, grap­pled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tight­ened mer­ci­lessly, while Buck strug­gled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest pant­ing fu­tilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so an­gry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew noth­ing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the bag­gage car.

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

“Yep, has fits,” the man said, hid­ing his man­gled hand from the bag­gage­man, who had been at­tracted by the sounds of strug­gle. “I’m takin’ ’m up for the boss to ’Frisco. A crack dog-doc­tor there thinks that he can cure ’m.”

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

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

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

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

“A hun­dred,” was the re­ply. “Wouldn’t take a sou less, so help me.”

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

The kid­nap­per un­did the bloody wrap­pings and looked at his lac­er­ated hand. “If I don’t get the hy­drophoby—”

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

Dazed, suf­fer­ing in­tol­er­a­ble pain from throat and tongue, with the life half throt­tled out of him, Buck at­tempted to face his 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 crate.

There he lay for the re­main­der of the weary night, nurs­ing his wrath and wounded pride. He could not un­der­stand what it all meant. What did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keep­ing him pent up in this nar­row crate? He did not know why, but he felt op­pressed by the vague sense of 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 that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tal­low can­dle. And each time the joy­ful bark that trem­bled in Buck’s throat was twisted into a sav­age growl.

But the sa­loon-keeper let him alone, and in the morn­ing four men en­tered and picked up the crate. More tor­men­tors, Buck de­cided, for they were evil-look­ing crea­tures, ragged and un­kempt; and he stormed and raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he promptly as­sailed with his teeth till he re­al­ized that that was what they wanted. Where­upon he lay down sul­lenly and al­lowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was im­pris­oned, be­gan a pas­sage through many hands. Clerks in the ex­press of­fice took charge of him; he was carted about in an­other wagon; a truck car­ried him, with an as­sort­ment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great rail­way de­pot, and fi­nally he was de­posited in an ex­press car.

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 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 was all very silly, he knew; but there­fore the more out­rage to his dig­nity, and his anger waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of wa­ter caused him se­vere suf­fer­ing and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that mat­ter, high-strung and finely sen­si­tive, the ill treat­ment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the in­flam­ma­tion of his parched and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given them an un­fair ad­van­tage; but now that it was off, he would show them. They would never get an­other rope around his neck. Upon that he was re­solved. For two days and nights he nei­ther ate nor drank, and dur­ing those two days and nights of tor­ment, he ac­cu­mu­lated a fund of wrath that boded ill for who­ever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned blood­shot, and he was meta­mor­phosed into a rag­ing fiend. So changed was he that the Judge him­self would not have rec­og­nized him; and the ex­press mes­sen­gers breathed with re­lief when they bun­dled him off the train at Seat­tle.

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

“You ain’t go­ing to take him out now?” the driver asked.

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

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

Buck rushed at the splin­ter­ing wood, sink­ing his 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.

“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-eyed devil, as he drew 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 close on the man, he re­ceived a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth to­gether with an ag­o­niz­ing clip. He whirled over, fetch­ing the ground on his back and side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not un­der­stand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he was brought crush­ingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was the club, but his mad­ness knew no cau­tion. A dozen times he charged, and as of­ten the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a par­tic­u­larly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He stag­gered limply about, the blood flow­ing from nose and mouth and ears, his beau­ti­ful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man 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 this. With a roar that was al­most li­on­like in its fe­roc­ity, he again hurled him­self at the man. But the man, shift­ing the club from right to left, coolly caught him by the un­der jaw, at the same time wrench­ing down­ward and back­ward. Buck de­scribed a com­plete 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 sense­less.

“He’s no slouch at dog-breakin’, that’s wot I say,” one of the men on the wall cried en­thu­si­as­ti­cally.

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

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

“ ‘An­swers to the name of Buck,’ ” the man so­lil­o­quized, quot­ing from the sa­loon-keeper’s let­ter which had an­nounced the con­sign­ment of the crate and con­tents. “Well, Buck, my boy,” he went on in a ge­nial voice, “we’ve had our lit­tle ruc­tion, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at that. You’ve learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all ’ll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I’ll whale the stuf­fin’ outa you. Un­der­stand?”

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

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not bro­ken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the les­son, and in all his af­ter life he never for­got it. That club was a rev­e­la­tion. It was his in­tro­duc­tion to the reign of prim­i­tive law, and he met the in­tro­duc­tion half­way. The facts of life took on a fiercer as­pect; and while he faced that as­pect un­cowed, he faced it with all the la­tent cun­ning of his na­ture aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some rag­ing and roar­ing as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass un­der the do­min­ion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked at each bru­tal per­for­mance, the les­son was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a law­giver, a mas­ter to be obeyed, though not nec­es­sar­ily con­cil­i­ated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would nei­ther con­cil­i­ate nor obey, fi­nally killed in the strug­gle for mas­tery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked ex­cit­edly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fash­ions to the man in the red sweater. And at such times that money passed be­tween them the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck won­dered where they went, for they never came back; but the fear of the fu­ture was strong upon him, and he was glad each time when he was not se­lected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a lit­tle weazened man who spat bro­ken English and many strange and un­couth ex­cla­ma­tions which Buck could not un­der­stand.

“Sa­credam!” he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. “Dat one dam bully dog! Eh? How moch?”

“Three hun­dred, and a present at that,” was the prompt re­ply of the man in the red sweater. “And seem’ it’s gov­ern­ment money, you ain’t got no kick com­ing, eh, Per­rault?”

Per­rault grinned. Con­sid­er­ing that the price of dogs had been boomed sky­ward by the un­wonted de­mand, it was not an un­fair sum for so fine an an­i­mal. The Cana­dian Govern­ment would be no loser, nor would its despatches travel the slower. Per­rault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one in a thou­sand—“One in ten t’ou­sand,” he com­mented men­tally.

Buck saw money pass be­tween them, and was not sur­prised when Curly, a good-na­tured New­found­land, and he were led away by the lit­tle weazened man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at re­ced­ing Seat­tle from the deck of the Nar­whal, it was the last he saw of the warm South­land. Curly and he were taken be­low by Per­rault and turned over to a black-faced gi­ant called François. Per­rault was a French-Cana­dian, and swarthy; but François was a French-Cana­dian half­breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which he was des­tined to see many more), and while he de­vel­oped no af­fec­tion for them, he none the less grew hon­estly to re­spect them. He speed­ily learned that Per­rault and François were fair men, calm and im­par­tial in ad­min­is­ter­ing jus­tice, and too wise in the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the ’tween-decks of the Nar­whal, Buck and Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fel­low from Spitzber­gen who had been brought away by a whal­ing cap­tain, and who had later ac­com­pa­nied a Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey into the Bar­rens. He was friendly, in a treach­er­ous sort of way, smil­ing into one’s face the while he med­i­tated some un­der­hand trick, as, for in­stance, when he stole from Buck’s food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to pun­ish him, the lash of François’s whip sang through the air, reach­ing the cul­prit first; and noth­ing re­mained to Buck but to re­cover the bone. That was fair of François, he de­cided, and the half­breed be­gan his rise in Buck’s es­ti­ma­tion.

The other dog made no ad­vances, nor re­ceived any; also, he did not at­tempt to steal from the new­com­ers. He was a gloomy, mo­rose fel­low, and he showed Curly plainly that all he de­sired was to be left alone, and fur­ther, that there would be trou­ble if he were not left alone. “Dave” he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned be­tween times, and took in­ter­est in noth­ing, not even when the Nar­whal crossed Queen Char­lotte Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing pos­sessed. When Buck and Curly grew ex­cited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as though an­noyed, fa­vored them with an in­cu­ri­ous glance, yawned, 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 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. François leashed them and brought them on deck. At the first step upon the cold sur­face, Buck’s feet sank into a white mushy some­thing very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was fall­ing through the air. He shook him­self, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it cu­ri­ously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next in­stant was gone. This puz­zled him. He tried it again, with the same re­sult. The on­look­ers laughed up­roar­i­ously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.

II The Law of Club and Fang

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

He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish crea­tures fought, and his first ex­pe­ri­ence taught him an un­for­get­table les­son. It is true, it was a vi­car­i­ous ex­pe­ri­ence, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the vic­tim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, made ad­vances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warn­ing, only a leap in like a flash, a metal­lic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly’s face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

It was the wolf man­ner of fight­ing, to strike and leap away; but there was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and sur­rounded the com­bat­ants in an in­tent and silent cir­cle. Buck did not com­pre­hend that silent in­tent­ness, nor the ea­ger way with which they were lick­ing their chops. Curly rushed her an­tag­o­nist, who struck again and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a pe­cu­liar fash­ion that tum­bled her off her feet. She never re­gained them, This was what the on­look­ing huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her, snarling and yelp­ing, and she was buried, scream­ing with agony, be­neath the bristling mass of bod­ies.

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

Be­fore he had re­cov­ered from the shock caused by the tragic pass­ing of Curly, he re­ceived an­other shock. François 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 François on a sled to the for­est that fringed the val­ley, and re­turn­ing with a load of fire­wood. Though his dig­nity was sorely hurt by thus be­ing made a draught an­i­mal, he was too wise to rebel. He buck­led down with a will and did his best, though it was all new and strange. François was stern, de­mand­ing in­stant obe­di­ence, and by virtue of his whip re­ceiv­ing in­stant obe­di­ence; while Dave, who was an ex­pe­ri­enced wheeler, nipped Buck’s hind quar­ters when­ever he was in er­ror. Spitz was the leader, like­wise ex­pe­ri­enced, and while he could not al­ways get at Buck, he growled sharp re­proof now and again, or cun­ningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should go. Buck learned eas­ily, and un­der the com­bined tu­ition of his two mates and François made re­mark­able progress. Ere they re­turned to camp he knew enough to stop at “ho,” to go ahead at “mush,” to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the loaded sled shot down­hill at their heels.

“T’ree vair’ good dogs,” François told Per­rault. “Dat Buck, heem pool lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt’ing.”

By af­ter­noon, Per­rault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his despatches, re­turned with two more dogs. “Billee” and “Joe” he called them, two broth­ers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though they were, they were as dif­fer­ent as day and night. Billee’s one fault was his ex­ces­sive good na­ture, while Joe was the very op­po­site, sour and in­tro­spec­tive, with a per­pet­ual snarl and a ma­lig­nant eye. Buck re­ceived them in com­radely fash­ion, Dave ig­nored them, while Spitz pro­ceeded to thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail ap­peas­ingly, turned to run when he saw that ap­pease­ment was of no avail, and cried (still ap­peas­ingly) when Spitz’s sharp teeth scored his flank. But no mat­ter how Spitz cir­cled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and snarling, jaws clip­ping to­gether as fast as he could snap, and eyes di­a­bol­i­cally gleam­ing—the in­car­na­tion of bel­liger­ent fear. So ter­ri­ble was his ap­pear­ance that Spitz was forced to forego dis­ci­plin­ing him; but to cover his own dis­com­fi­ture he turned upon the in­of­fen­sive and wail­ing Billee and drove him to the con­fines of the camp.

By evening Per­rault se­cured an­other dog, an old husky, long and lean and gaunt, with a bat­tle-scarred face and a sin­gle eye which flashed a warn­ing of prow­ess that com­manded re­spect. He was called “Sol-leks,” which means the An­gry One. Like Dave, he asked noth­ing, gave noth­ing, ex­pected noth­ing; and when he marched slowly and de­lib­er­ately into their midst, even Spitz left him alone. He had one pe­cu­liar­ity which Buck was un­lucky enough to dis­cover. He did not like to be ap­proached on his blind side. Of this of­fence Buck was un­wit­tingly guilty, and the first knowl­edge he had of his in­dis­cre­tion was when Sol-leks whirled upon him and slashed his shoul­der to the bone for three inches up and down. For­ever af­ter Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last of their com­rade­ship had no more trou­ble. His only ap­par­ent am­bi­tion, like Dave’s, was to be left alone; though, as Buck was af­ter­ward to learn, each of them pos­sessed one other and even more vi­tal am­bi­tion.

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

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

Another les­son. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck con­fi­dently se­lected a spot, and with much fuss and waste ef­fort pro­ceeded to dig a hole for him­self. In a trice the heat from his body filled the con­fined space and he was asleep. The day had been long and ar­du­ous, and he slept soundly and com­fort­ably, though he growled and barked and wres­tled with bad dreams.

Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the wak­ing camp. At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed dur­ing the night and he was com­pletely buried. The snow walls pressed him on ev­ery side, and a great surge of fear swept through him—the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was a to­ken that he was hark­ing back through his own life to the lives of his fore­bears; for he was a civ­i­lized dog, an un­duly civ­i­lized dog, and of his own ex­pe­ri­ence knew no trap and so could not of him­self fear it. The mus­cles of his whole body con­tracted spas­mod­i­cally and in­stinc­tively, the hair on his neck and shoul­ders stood on end, and with a fe­ro­cious snarl he bounded straight up into the blind­ing day, the snow fly­ing about him in a flash­ing cloud. Ere he landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out be­fore him and knew where he was and re­mem­bered all that had passed from the time he went for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for him­self the night be­fore.

A shout from François hailed his ap­pear­ance. “Wot I say?” the dog-driver cried to Per­rault. “Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt’ing.”

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

Three more huskies were added to the team in­side an hour, mak­ing a to­tal of nine, and be­fore an­other quar­ter of an hour had passed they were in har­ness and swing­ing up the trail to­ward the Dyea Canon. Buck was glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not par­tic­u­larly de­spise it. He was sur­prised at the ea­ger­ness which an­i­mated the whole team and which was com­mu­ni­cated to him; but still more sur­pris­ing was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They were new dogs, ut­terly trans­formed by the har­ness. All pas­sive­ness and un­con­cern had dropped from them. They were alert and ac­tive, anx­ious that the work should go well, and fiercely ir­ri­ta­ble with what­ever, by de­lay or con­fu­sion, re­tarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed the supreme ex­pres­sion of their be­ing, and all that they lived for and the only thing in which they took de­light.

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

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

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

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

Day af­ter day, for days un­end­ing, Buck toiled in the traces. Al­ways, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hit­ting the trail with fresh miles reeled off be­hind them. And al­ways they pitched camp af­ter dark, eat­ing their bit of fish, and crawl­ing to sleep into the snow. Buck was rav­en­ous. The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ra­tion for each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suf­fered from per­pet­ual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, be­cause they weighed less and were born to the life, re­ceived a pound only of the fish and man­aged to keep in good con­di­tion.

He swiftly lost the fas­tid­i­ous­ness which had char­ac­ter­ized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, fin­ish­ing first, robbed him of his un­fin­ished ra­tion. There was no de­fend­ing it. While he was fight­ing off two or three, it was dis­ap­pear­ing down the throats of the oth­ers. To rem­edy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger com­pel him, he was not above tak­ing what did not be­long to him. He watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever ma­lin­gerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of ba­con when Per­rault’s back was turned, he du­pli­cated the per­for­mance the fol­low­ing day, get­ting away with the whole chunk. A great up­roar was raised, but he was un­sus­pected; while Dub, an awk­ward blun­derer who was al­ways get­ting caught, was pun­ished for Buck’s mis­deed.

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

Not that Buck rea­soned it out. He was fit, that was all, and un­con­sciously he ac­com­mo­dated him­self to the new mode of life. All his days, no mat­ter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fun­da­men­tal and prim­i­tive code. Civ­i­lized, he could have died for a moral con­sid­er­a­tion, say the de­fence of Judge Miller’s rid­ing-whip; but the com­plete­ness of his de­civ­i­liza­tion was now ev­i­denced by his abil­ity to flee from the de­fence of a moral con­sid­er­a­tion and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but be­cause of the clamor of his stom­ach. He did not rob openly, but stole se­cretly and cun­ningly, out of re­spect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done be­cause it was eas­ier to do them than not to do them.

His de­vel­op­ment (or ret­ro­gres­sion) was rapid. His mus­cles be­came hard as iron, and he grew cal­lous to all or­di­nary pain. He achieved an in­ter­nal as well as ex­ter­nal econ­omy. He could eat any­thing, no mat­ter how loath­some or in­di­gestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stom­ach ex­tracted the last least par­ti­cle of nu­tri­ment; and his blood car­ried it to the far­thest reaches of his body, build­ing it into the tough­est and stoutest of tis­sues. Sight and scent be­came re­mark­ably keen, while his hear­ing de­vel­oped such acute­ness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it her­alded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice out with his teeth when it col­lected be­tween his toes; and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the wa­ter hole, he would break it by rear­ing and strik­ing it with stiff forelegs. His most con­spic­u­ous trait was an abil­ity to scent the wind and fore­cast it a night in ad­vance. No mat­ter how breath­less the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew in­evitably found him to lee­ward, shel­tered and snug.

And not only did he learn by ex­pe­ri­ence, but in­stincts long dead be­came alive again. The do­mes­ti­cated gen­er­a­tions fell from him. In vague ways he re­mem­bered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval for­est and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this man­ner had fought for­got­ten an­ces­tors. They quick­ened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the hered­ity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him with­out ef­fort or dis­cov­ery, as though they had been his al­ways. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his an­ces­tors, dead and dust, point­ing nose at star and howl­ing down through the cen­turies and through him. And his ca­dences were their ca­dences, the ca­dences which voiced their woe and what to them was the mean­ing of the stiff­ness, and the cold, and dark.

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

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 new­born cun­ning gave him poise and con­trol. He was too busy ad­just­ing him­self to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided them when­ever pos­si­ble. A cer­tain de­lib­er­ate­ness char­ac­ter­ized his at­ti­tude. He was not prone to rash­ness and pre­cip­i­tate ac­tion; and in the bit­ter ha­tred be­tween him and Spitz he be­trayed no im­pa­tience, shunned all of­fen­sive acts.

On the other hand, pos­si­bly be­cause he di­vined in Buck a dan­ger­ous ri­val, Spitz never lost an op­por­tu­nity of show­ing his teeth. He even went out of his way to bully Buck, striv­ing con­stantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the other. Early in the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an un­wonted ac­ci­dent. At the end of this day they made a bleak and mis­er­able camp on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driv­ing snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and dark­ness had forced them to grope for a camp­ing place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a per­pen­dic­u­lar wall of rock, and Per­rault and François were com­pelled to make their fire and spread their sleep­ing robes on the ice of the lake it­self. The tent they had dis­carded at Dyea in or­der to travel light. A few sticks of drift­wood fur­nished them with a fire that thawed down through the ice and left them to eat sup­per in the dark.

Close in un­der the shel­ter­ing rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm was it, that he was loath to leave it when François dis­trib­uted the fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck fin­ished his ra­tion and re­turned, he found his nest oc­cu­pied. A warn­ing snarl told him that the tres­passer was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trou­ble with his en­emy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a fury which sur­prised them both, and Spitz par­tic­u­larly, for his whole ex­pe­ri­ence with Buck had gone to teach him that his ri­val was an un­usu­ally timid dog, who man­aged to hold his own only be­cause of his great weight and size.

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

Spitz was equally will­ing. He was cry­ing with sheer rage and ea­ger­ness as he cir­cled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less ea­ger, and no less cau­tious, as he like­wise cir­cled back and forth for 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 mile of trail 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 skulk­ing furry forms—starv­ing huskies, four or five score of them, who had scented the camp from some In­dian vil­lage. They had crept in while Buck and Spitz were fight­ing, and when the two men sprang among them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed by the smell of the food. 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 scram­bling for the bread and ba­con. The clubs fell upon them un­heeded. They yelped and howled un­der the rain of blows, but strug­gled none the less madly till the last crumb had been de­voured.

In the mean­time the as­ton­ished team-dogs had burst out of their nests only to be set upon by the fierce in­vaders. Never had Buck seen such dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins. They were mere skele­tons, draped loosely in drag­gled hides, with blaz­ing eyes and slavered fangs. But the hunger-mad­ness made them ter­ri­fy­ing, ir­re­sistible. There was no op­pos­ing them. The team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at the first on­set. Buck was be­set by three huskies, and in a trice his head and shoul­ders were ripped and slashed. The din was fright­ful. Billee was cry­ing as usual. Dave and Sol-leks, drip­ping blood from a score of wounds, were fight­ing bravely side by side. Joe was snap­ping like a de­mon. Once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the ma­lin­gerer, leaped upon the crip­pled an­i­mal, break­ing its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buck got a froth­ing ad­ver­sary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugu­lar. 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.

Per­rault and François, hav­ing cleaned out their part of the camp, hur­ried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of fam­ished beasts rolled back be­fore them, and Buck shook him­self free. But it was only for a mo­ment. The two men were com­pelled to run back to save the grub, upon which the huskies re­turned to the at­tack on the team. Billee, ter­ri­fied into brav­ery, sprang through the sav­age cir­cle and fled away over the ice. Pike and Dub fol­lowed on his heels, with the rest of the team be­hind. As Buck drew him­self to­gether to spring af­ter them, out of the tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the ev­i­dent in­ten­tion of over­throw­ing him. Once off his feet and 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 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 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 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 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 François’s whip. He broke from a mourn­ful con­tem­pla­tion of it to look over his wounded dogs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buck’s feet were not so com­pact and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had soft­ened dur­ing the many gen­er­a­tions since the day his last wild an­ces­tor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hun­gry as he was, he would not move to re­ceive his ra­tion of fish, which François had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck’s feet for half an hour each night af­ter sup­per, and sac­ri­ficed the tops of his own moc­casins to make four moc­casins for Buck. This was a great re­lief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of Per­rault to twist it­self into a grin one morn­ing, when François 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 away.

At the Pelly one morn­ing, as they were har­ness­ing up, Dolly, who had never been con­spic­u­ous for any­thing, went sud­denly mad. She an­nounced her con­di­tion by a long, heart­break­ing wolf howl that 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 froth­ing, one leap be­hind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his ter­ror, nor could he leave her, so great was her mad­ness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the is­land, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back chan­nel filled with rough ice to an­other is­land, gained a third is­land, curved back to the main river, and in des­per­a­tion started to cross it. And all the time, though he did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap be­hind. François called to him a quar­ter of a mile away and he dou­bled back, still one leap ahead, gasp­ing painfully for air and putting all his faith in that François would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly’s head.

Buck stag­gered over against the sled, ex­hausted, sob­bing for breath, help­less. This was Spitz’s op­por­tu­nity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice his teeth sank into his un­re­sist­ing foe and ripped and tore the flesh to the bone. Then François’s lash de­scended, and Buck had the sat­is­fac­tion of watch­ing Spitz re­ceive the worst whip­ping as yet ad­min­is­tered to any of the teams.

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

“Dat Buck two dev­ils,” was François’s re­join­der. “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, as lead-dog and ac­knowl­edged mas­ter of the team, felt his supremacy threat­ened by this strange South­land dog. And strange Buck was to him, for of the many South­land dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and on trail. They were all too soft, dy­ing un­der the toil, the frost, and star­va­tion. Buck was the ex­cep­tion. He alone en­dured and pros­pered, match­ing the husky in strength, sav­agery, and cun­ning. Then he was a mas­ter­ful dog, and what made him dan­ger­ous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rash­ness out of his de­sire for mas­tery. He was pre­em­i­nently cun­ning, and could bide his time with a pa­tience that was noth­ing less than prim­i­tive.

It was in­evitable that the clash for lead­er­ship should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it be­cause it was his na­ture, be­cause he had been gripped tight by that name­less, in­com­pre­hen­si­ble pride of the trail and trace—that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joy­fully in the har­ness, and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the har­ness. This was the pride of Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at break of camp, trans­form­ing them from sour and sullen brutes into strain­ing, ea­ger, am­bi­tious crea­tures; the pride that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, let­ting them fall back into gloomy un­rest and un­con­tent. This was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blun­dered and shirked in the traces or hid away at har­ness-up time in the morn­ing. Like­wise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a pos­si­ble lead-dog. And this was Buck’s pride, too.

He openly threat­ened the other’s lead­er­ship. He came be­tween him and the shirks he should have pun­ished. And he did it de­lib­er­ately. One night there was a heavy snow­fall, and in the morn­ing Pike, the ma­lin­gerer, did not ap­pear. He was se­curely hid­den in his nest un­der a foot of snow. François 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 fright­fully that Pike heard and shiv­ered in his hid­ing-place.

But when he was at last un­earthed, and Spitz flew at him to pun­ish him, Buck flew, with equal rage, in be­tween. So un­ex­pected was it, and so shrewdly man­aged, that Spitz was hurled back­ward and off his feet. Pike, who had been trem­bling ab­jectly, took heart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his over­thrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a for­got­ten code, like­wise sprang upon Spitz. But François, chuck­ling at the in­ci­dent while unswerv­ing in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, brought his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck from his pros­trate ri­val, and the butt of the whip was brought into play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked back­ward and the lash laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly pun­ished the many times of­fend­ing Pike.

In the days that fol­lowed, as Daw­son grew closer and closer, Buck still con­tin­ued to in­ter­fere be­tween Spitz and the cul­prits; but he did it craftily, when François was not around. With the covert mutiny of 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 bick­er­ing and jan­gling. Trou­ble was al­ways afoot, and at the bot­tom of it was Buck. He kept François busy, for the dog-driver was in con­stant ap­pre­hen­sion of the life-and-death strug­gle be­tween the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quar­relling and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleep­ing robe, fear­ful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the op­por­tu­nity did not present it­self, and they pulled into Daw­son one dreary af­ter­noon with 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 jin­gling bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and fire­wood, freighted up to the mines, and did all man­ner of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Val­ley. Here and there Buck met South­land dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, reg­u­larly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a noc­tur­nal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s de­light to join.

With the au­rora bo­re­alis flam­ing coldly over­head, or the stars leap­ing in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen un­der its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the de­fi­ance of life, only it was pitched in mi­nor key, with long-drawn 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 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 fear and mys­tery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mys­tery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the com­plete­ness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw be­gin­nings of life in the howl­ing ages.

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

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and the sec­ond day saw them boom­ing up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But such splen­did run­ning was achieved not with­out great trou­ble and vex­a­tion on the part of François. The in­sid­i­ous re­volt led by Buck had de­stroyed the sol­i­dar­ity of the team. It no longer was as one dog leap­ing in the traces. The en­cour­age­ment Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of petty mis­de­meanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared. The old awe de­parted, and they grew equal to chal­leng­ing his au­thor­ity. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped it down un­der the pro­tec­tion of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought Spitz and made him forego the pun­ish­ment they de­served. And even Billee, the good-na­tured, was less good-na­tured, and whined not half so pla­cat­ingly as in for­mer days. Buck never came near Spitz with­out snarling and bristling men­ac­ingly. In fact, his con­duct ap­proached that of a bully, and he was given to swag­ger­ing up and down be­fore Spitz’s very nose.

The break­ing down of dis­ci­pline like­wise af­fected the dogs in their re­la­tions with one an­other. They quar­relled and bick­ered more than ever among them­selves, till at times the camp was a howl­ing bed­lam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were un­al­tered, though they were made ir­ri­ta­ble by the un­end­ing squab­bling. François swore strange bar­barous oaths, and stamped the snow in fu­tile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was al­ways singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck backed up the re­main­der of the team. François knew he was be­hind all the trou­ble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be caught red-handed. He worked faith­fully in the har­ness, for the toil had be­come a de­light to him; yet it was a greater de­light slyly to pre­cip­i­tate a fight amongst his mates and tan­gle the traces.

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

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

There is an ec­stasy that marks the sum­mit of life, and be­yond which life can­not rise. And such is the para­dox of liv­ing, this ec­stasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a com­plete for­get­ful­ness that one is alive. This ec­stasy, this for­get­ful­ness of liv­ing, comes to the artist, caught up and out of him­self in a sheet of flame; it comes to the sol­dier, war-mad on a stricken field and re­fus­ing quar­ter; and it came to Buck, lead­ing the pack, 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 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 ex­ul­tantly un­der the stars and over the face of dead mat­ter that did not move.

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

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

In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As they cir­cled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watch­ful for the ad­van­tage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of fa­mil­iar­ity. 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 calm. There was not the faintest whis­per of air—noth­ing moved, not a leaf quiv­ered, the vis­i­ble breaths of the dogs ris­ing slowly and lin­ger­ing in the frosty air. They had made short work of the snow­shoe rab­bit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an ex­pec­tant cir­cle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleam­ing and their breaths drift­ing slowly up­ward. To Buck it was noth­ing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had al­ways been, the wonted way of things.

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

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog. Wher­ever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were coun­tered by the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleed­ing, but Buck could not pen­e­trate his en­emy’s guard. Then he warmed up and en­veloped Spitz in a whirl­wind of rushes. Time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bub­bled near to the sur­face, and each time and ev­ery time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to rush­ing, as though for the throat, when, 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 over­throw him. But in­stead, Buck’s shoul­der was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.

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

But Buck pos­sessed a qual­ity that made for great­ness—imag­i­na­tion. He fought by 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 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, lolling tongues, and sil­very breaths drift­ing up­ward, clos­ing in upon him as he had seen sim­i­lar cir­cles close in upon beaten an­tag­o­nists in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was in­ex­orable. Mercy was a thing re­served for gen­tler climes. He ma­noeu­vred for the fi­nal rush. The cir­cle had tight­ened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. He could see them, be­yond Spitz and to ei­ther side, half crouch­ing for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every an­i­mal was mo­tion­less as though turned to stone. Only Spitz quiv­ered and bris­tled as he stag­gered back and forth, snarling with hor­ri­ble men­ace, as though to frighten off 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 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 François’s speech next morn­ing when he dis­cov­ered Spitz miss­ing and Buck cov­ered with wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out.

“Dat Spitz fight lak hell,” said Per­rault, as he sur­veyed the gap­ing rips and cuts.

“An’ dat Buck fight lak two hells,” was François’s an­swer. “An’ now we make good time. No more Spitz, no more trou­ble, sure.”

While Per­rault packed the camp out­fit and loaded the sled, the dog-driver pro­ceeded to har­ness the dogs. Buck trot­ted up to the place Spitz would have oc­cu­pied as leader; but François, not notic­ing him, brought 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?” François cried, slap­ping his thighs glee­fully. “Look at dat Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t’ink to take de job.”

“Go ’way, Chook!” he cried, but Buck re­fused to budge.

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled threat­en­ingly, dragged him to one side and re­placed Sol-leks. The old dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck. François was ob­du­rate, but when he turned his back Buck again dis­placed Sol-leks, who was not at all un­will­ing to go.

François was an­gry. “Now, by Gar, I feex you!” he cried, com­ing back with a heavy club in his hand.

Buck re­mem­bered the man in the red sweater, and re­treated slowly; nor did he at­tempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought for­ward. But he cir­cled just 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 François, for he was be­come wise in the way of clubs.

The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck re­treated two or three steps. François fol­lowed him up, where­upon he again re­treated. After some time of this, François threw down the club, think­ing that Buck feared a thrash­ing. But Buck was in open re­volt. He wanted, not to es­cape a club­bing, but to have the lead­er­ship. It was his by right. He had earned it, and he would not be con­tent with less.

Per­rault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the bet­ter part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him, and his fa­thers and moth­ers be­fore him, and all his seed to come af­ter him down to the re­motest gen­er­a­tion, and ev­ery hair on his body and drop of blood in his veins; and he an­swered curse with snarl and kept out of their reach. He did not try to run away, but re­treated around and around the camp, ad­ver­tis­ing plainly that when his de­sire was met, he would come in and be good.

François sat down and scratched his head. Per­rault looked at his watch and swore. Time was fly­ing, and they should have been on the trail an hour gone. François scratched his head again. He shook it and grinned sheep­ishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoul­ders in sign that they were beaten. Then François went up to where Sol-leks stood and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his dis­tance. François 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 for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more François called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.

“T’row down de club,” Per­rault com­manded.

François com­plied, where­upon Buck trot­ted in, laugh­ing tri­umphantly, and swung around into po­si­tion at the head of the team. His traces were fas­tened, the sled bro­ken out, and with both men run­ning they dashed out on to the river trail.

Highly as the dog-driver had foreval­ued Buck, with his two dev­ils, he found, while the day was yet young, that he had un­der­val­ued. At a bound Buck took up the du­ties of lead­er­ship; and where judg­ment was re­quired, and quick think­ing and quick act­ing, he showed him­self the su­pe­rior even of Spitz, of whom François had never seen an equal.

But it was in giv­ing the law and mak­ing his mates live up to it, that Buck ex­celled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in lead­er­ship. It was none of their busi­ness. Their busi­ness was to toil, and toil might­ily, in the traces. So long as that were not in­ter­fered with, they did not care what hap­pened. Billee, the good-na­tured, could lead for all they cared, so long as he kept or­der. The rest of the team, how­ever, had grown un­ruly dur­ing the last days of Spitz, and their sur­prise was great now that Buck pro­ceeded to lick them into shape.

Pike, who pulled at Buck’s heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was com­pelled to do, was swiftly and re­peat­edly shaken for loaf­ing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than ever be­fore in his life. The first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, was pun­ished roundly—a thing that Spitz had never suc­ceeded in do­ing. Buck sim­ply smoth­ered him by virtue of su­pe­rior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snap­ping and be­gan to whine for mercy.

The gen­eral tone of the team picked up im­me­di­ately. It re­cov­ered its old-time sol­i­dar­ity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the traces. At the Rink Rapids two na­tive huskies, Teek and Koona, were added; and the celer­ity with which Buck broke them in took away François’s breath.

“Ne­vaire such a dog as dat Buck!” he cried. “No, nevaire! Heem worth one t’ou­san’ dol­lair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Per­rault?”

And Per­rault nod­ded. He was ahead of 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 was not too cold. The tem­per­a­ture dropped to fifty be­low zero and re­mained there the whole trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on the jump, with but in­fre­quent stop­pages.

The Thirty Mile River was com­par­a­tively coated with ice, and they cov­ered in one day go­ing out what had taken them ten days com­ing in. In one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge to the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tag­ish, and Ben­nett (sev­enty miles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run towed be­hind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the sec­ond week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope with the lights of Sk­aguay and of the ship­ping at their feet.

It was a record run. Each day for four­teen days they had av­er­aged forty miles. For three days Per­rault and François 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 wor­ship­ful crowd of dog-busters and mush­ers. Then three or four west­ern bad men as­pired to clean out the town, were rid­dled like pep­per-boxes for their pains, and pub­lic in­ter­est turned to other idols. Next came of­fi­cial or­ders. François called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that was the last of François and Per­rault. Like other men, they passed out of Buck’s life for good.

A Scotch half­breed took charge of him and his mates, and in com­pany with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to Daw­son. It was no light run­ning now, nor record time, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load be­hind; for this was the mail train, car­ry­ing word from the world to the men who sought gold un­der the shadow of the Pole.

Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, tak­ing pride in it af­ter the man­ner of Dave and Sol-leks, and see­ing that his mates, whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a mo­not­o­nous life, op­er­at­ing with ma­chine-like reg­u­lar­ity. One day was very like an­other. At a cer­tain time each morn­ing the cooks turned out, fires were built, and break­fast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp, oth­ers har­nessed the dogs, and they were un­der way an hour or so be­fore the dark­ness fell which gave warn­ing of dawn. At night, camp was made. Some pitched the flies, oth­ers cut fire­wood and pine boughs for the beds, and still oth­ers car­ried wa­ter or ice for the cooks. Also, the dogs were fed. To them, this was the one fea­ture of the day, though it was good to loaf around, af­ter the fish was eaten, for an hour or so with the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were fierce fight­ers among them, but three bat­tles with the fiercest brought Buck to mas­tery, so that when he bris­tled and showed his teeth they got out of his way.

Best of all, per­haps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched un­der him, forelegs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blink­ing dream­ily at the flames. Some­times he thought of Judge Miller’s big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Val­ley, and of the ce­ment swim­ming-tank, and Ys­abel, the 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 good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was not home­sick. The Sun­land was very dim and dis­tant, and such mem­o­ries had no power over him. Far more po­tent were the mem­o­ries of his hered­ity that gave things he had never seen be­fore a seem­ing fa­mil­iar­ity; the in­stincts (which were but the mem­o­ries of his an­ces­tors be­come habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quick­ened and be­come alive again.

Some­times as he crouched there, blink­ing dream­ily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of an­other fire, and that as he crouched by this other fire he saw an­other and dif­fer­ent man from the half­breed cook be­fore him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with mus­cles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long and mat­ted, and his head slanted back un­der it from the eyes. He ut­tered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the dark­ness, into which he peered con­tin­u­ally, clutch­ing in his hand, which hung mid­way be­tween knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hang­ing part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoul­ders and down the out­side of the arms and thighs, it was mat­ted into al­most a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk in­clined for­ward from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was a pe­cu­liar springi­ness, or re­siliency, al­most cat­like, and a quick alert­ness as of one who lived in per­pet­ual fear of things seen and un­seen.

At other times this hairy man squat­ted by the fire with head be­tween his legs and slept. On such oc­ca­sions his el­bows were on his knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And be­yond that fire, in the cir­cling dark­ness, Buck could see many gleam­ing coals, two by two, al­ways two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crash­ing of their bod­ies through the un­der­growth, and the noises they made in the night. And dream­ing there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blink­ing at the fire, these sounds and sights of an­other world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoul­ders and up his neck, till he whim­pered low and sup­press­edly, or growled softly, and the half­breed cook shouted at him, “Hey, you Buck, wake up!” Where­upon the other world would van­ish and the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.

It was a hard trip, with the mail be­hind them, and the heavy work wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor con­di­tion when they made Daw­son, and should have had a ten days’ or a week’s rest at least. But in two days’ time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the Bar­racks, loaded with let­ters for the out­side. The dogs were tired, the driv­ers grum­bling, and to make mat­ters worse, it snowed ev­ery day. This meant a soft trail, greater fric­tion on the run­ners, and heav­ier pulling for the dogs; yet the driv­ers were fair through it all, and did their best for the an­i­mals.

Each night the dogs were at­tended to first. They ate be­fore the driv­ers ate, and no man sought his sleep­ing-robe till he had seen to the feet of the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the be­gin­ning of the win­ter they had trav­elled eigh­teen hun­dred miles, drag­ging sleds the whole weary dis­tance; and eigh­teen hun­dred miles will tell upon life of the tough­est. Buck stood it, keep­ing his mates up to their work and main­tain­ing 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.

But it was Dave who suf­fered most of all. Some­thing had gone wrong with him. He be­came more mo­rose and ir­ri­ta­ble, and when camp was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of the har­ness and down, he did not get on his feet again till har­ness-up time in the morn­ing. Some­times, in the traces, when jerked by a sud­den stop­page of the sled, or by strain­ing to start it, he would cry out with pain. The driver ex­am­ined him, but could find noth­ing. All the driv­ers be­came in­ter­ested in his case. They talked it over at meal­time, and over their last pipes be­fore go­ing to bed, and one night they held a con­sul­ta­tion. He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed and prod­ded till he cried out many times. Some­thing was wrong in­side, but they could lo­cate no bro­ken bones, could not make it out.

By the time Cas­siar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was fall­ing re­peat­edly in the traces. The Scotch half­breed called a halt and took him out of the team, mak­ing the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled. His in­ten­tion was to rest Dave, let­ting him run free be­hind the sled. Sick as he was, Dave re­sented be­ing taken out, grunt­ing and growl­ing while the traces were un­fas­tened, and whim­per­ing bro­ken­heart­edly when he saw Sol-leks in the po­si­tion he had held and served so long. For the pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear that an­other dog should do his work.

When the sled started, he floun­dered in the soft snow along­side the beaten trail, at­tack­ing Sol-leks with his teeth, rush­ing against him and try­ing to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striv­ing to leap in­side his traces and get be­tween him and the sled, and all the while whin­ing and yelp­ing and cry­ing with grief and pain. The half­breed tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the sting­ing lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave re­fused to run qui­etly on the trail be­hind the sled, where the go­ing was easy, but con­tin­ued to floun­der along­side in the soft snow, where the go­ing was most dif­fi­cult, till ex­hausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howl­ing lugubri­ously as the long train of sleds churned by.

With the last rem­nant of his strength he man­aged to stag­ger along be­hind till the train made an­other stop, when he floun­dered past the sleds to his own, where he stood along­side Sol-leks. His driver lin­gered a mo­ment to get a light for his pipe from the man be­hind. Then he re­turned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with re­mark­able lack of ex­er­tion, turned their heads un­easily, and stopped in sur­prise. The driver was sur­prised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his com­rades to wit­ness the sight. Dave had bit­ten through both of Sol-leks’s traces, and was stand­ing di­rectly in front of the sled in his proper place.

He pleaded with his eyes to re­main there. The driver was per­plexed. His com­rades talked of how a dog could break its heart through be­ing de­nied the work that killed it, and re­called in­stances they had known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or in­jured, had died be­cause they were cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die any­way, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and con­tent. So he was har­nessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out in­vol­un­tar­ily from the bite of his in­ward hurt. Sev­eral times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran upon him so that he limped there­after in one of his hind legs.

But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place for him by the fire. Morn­ing found him too weak to travel. At har­ness-up time he tried to crawl to his driver. By con­vul­sive ef­forts he got on his feet, stag­gered, and fell. Then he wormed his way for­ward slowly to­ward where the har­nesses were be­ing put on his mates. He would ad­vance his forelegs and drag up his body with a sort of hitch­ing move­ment, when he would ad­vance his forelegs and hitch ahead again for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw of him he lay gasp­ing in the snow and yearn­ing to­ward them. But 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 half­breed slowly re­traced his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talk­ing. A re­volver-shot rang out. The man came back hur­riedly. The whips snapped, the bells tin­kled mer­rily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and ev­ery dog knew, what had taken place be­hind the belt of river trees.

V The Toil of Trace and Trail

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 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 limp­ing, and Dub was suf­fer­ing from a wrenched shoul­der-blade.

They were all ter­ri­bly foot­sore. No spring or re­bound was left in them. Their feet fell heav­ily on the trail, jar­ring their bod­ies and dou­bling the fa­tigue of a day’s travel. There was noth­ing the mat­ter with them ex­cept that they were dead tired. It was not the dead-tired­ness that comes through brief and ex­ces­sive ef­fort, from which re­cov­ery is a mat­ter of hours; but it was the dead-tired­ness that comes through the slow and pro­longed strength drainage of months of toil. There was no power of re­cu­per­a­tion left, no re­serve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every mus­cle, ev­ery fi­bre, ev­ery cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was rea­son for it. In less than five months they had trav­elled twenty-five hun­dred miles, dur­ing the last eigh­teen hun­dred of which they had had but five days’ rest. When they ar­rived at Sk­aguay they were ap­par­ently on their last legs. They could barely keep the traces taut, and on the down grades just man­aged to keep out of the way of the sled.

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

The driv­ers con­fi­dently ex­pected a long stopover. Them­selves, they had cov­ered twelve hun­dred miles with two days’ rest, and in the na­ture of rea­son and com­mon jus­tice they de­served an in­ter­val of loaf­ing. But so many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were the sweet­hearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the con­gested mail was tak­ing on Alpine pro­por­tions; also, there were of­fi­cial or­ders. Fresh batches of Hud­son Bay dogs were to take the places of those worth­less for the trail. The worth­less ones were to be got rid of, and, since dogs count for lit­tle against dol­lars, they were to be sold.

Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how re­ally tired and weak they were. Then, on the morn­ing of the fourth day, two men from the States came along and bought them, har­ness and all, for a song. The men ad­dressed each other as “Hal” and “Charles.” Charles was a mid­dle-aged, light­ish-col­ored man, with weak and wa­tery eyes and a mus­tache that twisted fiercely and vig­or­ously up, giv­ing the lie to the limply droop­ing lip it con­cealed. Hal was a young­ster of nine­teen or twenty, with a big Colt’s re­volver and a hunt­ing-knife strapped about him on a belt that fairly bris­tled with car­tridges. This belt was the most salient thing about him. It ad­ver­tised his cal­low­ness—a cal­low­ness 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 un­der­stand­ing.

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

Buck watched them ap­pre­hen­sively as they pro­ceeded to take down the tent and load the sled. There was a great deal of ef­fort about their man­ner, but no busi­nesslike method. The tent was rolled into an 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 put it on the back, and cov­ered it over with a cou­ple of other bun­dles, she dis­cov­ered over­looked ar­ti­cles which could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they un­loaded again.

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

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

“Un­dreamed of!” cried Mercedes, throw­ing up her hands in dainty dis­may. “How­ever in the world could I man­age with­out a tent?”

“It’s spring­time, and you won’t get any more cold weather,” the man replied.

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

“Think it’ll ride?” one of the men asked.

“Why shouldn’t it?” Charles de­manded rather shortly.

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

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 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!” he shouted. “Mush on there!”

The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few mo­ments, then re­laxed. They were un­able to move the sled.

“The lazy brutes, I’ll show them,” he cried, pre­par­ing to lash out at them with the whip.

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

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

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

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

“Rest be blanked,” said Hal, with his beard­less lips; and Mercedes said, “Oh!” in pain and sor­row at the oath.

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

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

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

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, you can help them a mighty lot by break­ing out that sled. The run­ners are froze fast. Throw your weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out.”

A third time the at­tempt was made, but this time, fol­low­ing the ad­vice, Hal broke out the run­ners which had been frozen to the snow. The over­loaded and un­wieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates strug­gling fran­ti­cally un­der the rain of blows. A hun­dred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the 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 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 re­ceived and the un­just load. Buck was rag­ing. He broke into a run, the team fol­low­ing his lead. Hal cried “Whoa! whoa!” but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his feet. The cap­sized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the street, adding to the gayety of Sk­aguay as they scat­tered the re­main­der of the out­fit along its chief thor­ough­fare.

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

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

This ac­com­plished, the out­fit, though cut in half, was still a for­mi­da­ble bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six Out­side dogs. Th­ese, added to the six of the orig­i­nal team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies ob­tained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip, brought the team up to 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 breed. They did not seem to know any­thing, these new­com­ers. Buck and his com­rades looked upon them with dis­gust, and though he speed­ily taught them their places and what not to do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace and trail. With the ex­cep­tion of the two mon­grels, they were be­wil­dered and spirit-bro­ken by the strange sav­age en­vi­ron­ment in which they found them­selves and by the ill treat­ment they had re­ceived. The two mon­grels were with­out spirit at all; bones were the only things break­able about them.

With the new­com­ers hope­less and for­lorn, and the old team worn out by twenty-five hun­dred miles of con­tin­u­ous trail, the out­look was any­thing but bright. The two men, how­ever, were quite cheer­ful. And they were proud, too. They were do­ing the thing in style, with four­teen dogs. They had seen other sleds de­part over the Pass for Daw­son, or come in from Daw­son, but never had they seen a sled with so many as four­teen dogs. In the na­ture of Arc­tic travel there was a rea­son why four­teen dogs should not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the food for four­teen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had worked the trip out with a pen­cil, so much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoul­ders and nod­ded com­pre­hen­sively, it was all so very sim­ple.

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

Buck felt vaguely that there was no de­pend­ing upon these two men and the woman. They did not know how to do any­thing, and as the days went by it be­came ap­par­ent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, with­out or­der or dis­ci­pline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morn­ing to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fash­ion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were oc­cu­pied in stop­ping and re­ar­rang­ing the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On other days they were un­able to get started at all. And on no day did they suc­ceed in mak­ing more than half the dis­tance used by the men as a ba­sis in their dog-food com­pu­ta­tion.

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. The Out­side dogs, whose di­ges­tions had not been trained by chronic famine to make the most of lit­tle, had vo­ra­cious ap­petites. And when, in ad­di­tion to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal de­cided that the or­tho­dox ra­tion was too small. He dou­bled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a qua­ver in her throat, could not ca­jole him into giv­ing the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were mak­ing poor time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength se­verely.

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

The first to go was Dub. Poor blun­der­ing thief that he was, al­ways get­ting caught and pun­ished, he had none the less been a faith­ful worker. His wrenched 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 husky, so the six Out­side dogs un­der Buck could do no less than die on half the ra­tion of the husky. The New­found­land went first, fol­lowed by the three short-haired point­ers, the two mon­grels hang­ing more grit­tily on to life, but go­ing in the end.

By this time all the ameni­ties and gen­tle­nesses of the South­land had fallen away from the three peo­ple. Shorn of its glam­our and ro­mance, Arc­tic travel be­came to them a re­al­ity too harsh for their man­hood and wom­an­hood. Mercedes ceased weep­ing over the dogs, be­ing too oc­cu­pied with weep­ing over her­self and with quar­relling with her hus­band and brother. To quar­rel was the one thing they were never too weary to do. Their ir­ri­tabil­ity arose out of their mis­ery, in­creased with it, dou­bled upon it, out­dis­tanced it. The won­der­ful pa­tience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suf­fer sore, and re­main sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no 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 were first on their 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 this be­lief at ev­ery op­por­tu­nity. Some­times Mercedes sided with her hus­band, 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 and Hal), presently would be lugged in the rest of the fam­ily, fa­thers, moth­ers, un­cles, cousins, peo­ple thou­sands of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal’s views on art, or the sort of so­ci­ety plays his mother’s brother wrote, should have any­thing to do with the chop­ping of a few sticks of fire­wood, passes 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 sis­ter’s tale­bear­ing tongue should be rel­e­vant to the build­ing of a Yukon fire, was ap­par­ent only to Mercedes, who dis­bur­dened her­self of co­pi­ous opin­ions upon that topic, and in­ci­den­tally upon a few other traits un­pleas­antly pe­cu­liar to her hus­band’s fam­ily. In the mean­time the fire re­mained un­built, the camp half pitched, and the dogs un­fed.

Mercedes nursed a spe­cial griev­ance—the griev­ance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been chival­rously treated all her days. But the present treat­ment by her hus­band and brother was ev­ery­thing save chival­rous. It was her cus­tom to be help­less. They com­plained. Upon which im­peach­ment of what to her was her most es­sen­tial sex-pre­rog­a­tive, she made their lives un­en­durable. She no longer con­sid­ered the dogs, and be­cause she was sore and tired, she per­sisted in rid­ing on the sled. She was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hun­dred and twenty pounds—a lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and starv­ing an­i­mals. She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her, en­treated, the while she wept and im­por­tuned Heaven with a recital of their bru­tal­ity.

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

In the ex­cess of their own mis­ery they were cal­lous to the suf­fer­ing of their an­i­mals. Hal’s the­ory, which he prac­tised on oth­ers, was that one must get hard­ened. He had started out preach­ing it to his sis­ter and brother-in-law. Fail­ing there, he ham­mered it into the dogs with a club. At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a tooth­less old squaw of­fered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse­hide for the Colt’s re­volver that kept the big hunt­ing-knife com­pany at Hal’s hip. A poor sub­sti­tute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cat­tle­men six months back. In its frozen state it was more like strips of gal­va­nized iron, and when a dog wres­tled it into his stom­ach it thawed into thin and in­nu­tri­tious leath­ery strings and into a mass of short hair, ir­ri­tat­ing and in­di­gestible.

And through it all Buck stag­gered along at the head of the team as in a night­mare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he fell down and re­mained down till blows from whip or club drove him to his feet again. All the stiff­ness and gloss had gone out of his beau­ti­ful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and drag­gled, or mat­ted with dried blood where Hal’s club had bruised him. His mus­cles had wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had dis­ap­peared, so that each rib and ev­ery bone in his frame were out­lined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrin­kled in folds of empti­ness. It was heart­break­ing, only Buck’s heart was un­break­able. The man in the red sweater had proved that.

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

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

It was beau­ti­ful spring weather, but nei­ther dogs nor hu­mans were aware of it. Each day the sun rose ear­lier and set later. It was dawn by three in the morn­ing, and twi­light lin­gered till nine at night. The whole long day was a blaze of sun­shine. The ghostly win­ter si­lence had given way to the great spring mur­mur of awak­en­ing life. This mur­mur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of liv­ing. It came from the things that lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved dur­ing the long months of frost. The sap was ris­ing in the pines. The wil­lows and as­pens were burst­ing out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were 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 wood­peck­ers were boom­ing and knock­ing in the for­est. Squir­rels were chat­ter­ing, birds singing, and over­head honked the wild­fowl driv­ing up from the south in cun­ning wedges that split the air.

From ev­ery hill slope came the trickle of run­ning wa­ter, the mu­sic of un­seen foun­tains. All things were thaw­ing, bend­ing, snap­ping. The Yukon was strain­ing to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away from be­neath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fis­sures sprang and spread apart, while thin sec­tions of ice fell through bod­ily into the river. And amid all this burst­ing, rend­ing, throb­bing of awak­en­ing life, un­der the blaz­ing sun and through the soft-sigh­ing breezes, like way­far­ers to death, stag­gered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.

With the dogs fall­ing, Mercedes weep­ing and rid­ing, Hal swear­ing in­nocu­ously, and Charles’s eyes wist­fully wa­ter­ing, they 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 struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at John Thorn­ton. Charles sat down on a log to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstak­ingly what of his great stiff­ness. Hal did the talk­ing. John Thorn­ton was whit­tling the last touches on an axe-han­dle he had made from a stick of birch. He whit­tled and 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 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 in it.

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

“That’s be­cause you’re not a fool, I 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, 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 re­quired to rouse it. The whip flashed out, here and there, on its mer­ci­less er­rands. John Thorn­ton com­pressed his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek fol­lowed. Joe came next, yelp­ing with pain. Pike made painful ef­forts. Twice he fell over, when half up, and on the third at­tempt man­aged to rise. Buck made no ef­fort. He lay qui­etly where he had fallen. The lash bit into him again and again, but he nei­ther whined nor strug­gled. Sev­eral times Thorn­ton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A mois­ture came into his eyes, and, as the whip­ping con­tin­ued, he arose and walked ir­res­o­lutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in it­self a suf­fi­cient rea­son to drive Hal into a rage. He ex­changed the whip for the cus­tom­ary club. Buck re­fused to move un­der the rain of heav­ier blows which now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, un­like them, he had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feel­ing of im­pend­ing doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not de­parted from him. What of the thin and rot­ten ice he had felt un­der his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed dis­as­ter close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where his mas­ter was try­ing to drive him. He re­fused to stir. So greatly had he suf­fered, and so far gone was he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they con­tin­ued to fall upon him, the spark of life within flick­ered and went down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great dis­tance, he was aware that he was be­ing beaten. The last sen­sa­tions of pain left him. He no longer felt any­thing, though very faintly he could hear the im­pact of the 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 wielded the club. Hal was hurled back­ward, as though struck by a fall­ing tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on wist­fully, wiped his wa­tery eyes, but did not get up be­cause of his stiff­ness.

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

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

“It’s my dog,” Hal replied, wip­ing the blood from his mouth as he came back. “Get out of my way, or I’ll fix you. I’m go­ing to Daw­son.”

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

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

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

John Thorn­ton and Buck looked at each other.

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

VI For the Love of a Man

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 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.

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

To Buck’s sur­prise these dogs man­i­fested no jeal­ousy to­ward him. They seemed to share the kind­li­ness and large­ness of John Thorn­ton. As Buck grew stronger they en­ticed him into all sorts of ridicu­lous games, in which Thorn­ton him­self 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 for the first time. This he had never ex­pe­ri­enced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Val­ley. With the Judge’s sons, hunt­ing and tramp­ing, it had been a work­ing part­ner­ship; with the Judge’s grand­sons, a sort of pompous guardian­ship; and with the Judge him­self, a stately and 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; but, fur­ther, he was the ideal mas­ter. Other men saw to the wel­fare of their dogs from a sense of duty and busi­ness ex­pe­di­ency; he saw to the wel­fare of his as if they were his own chil­dren, be­cause he could not help it. And he saw fur­ther. He never for­got a kindly greet­ing or a cheer­ing word, and to sit down for a long talk with them (“gas” he called it) was as much his de­light as theirs. He had a way of tak­ing Buck’s head roughly be­tween his hands, and rest­ing his own head upon Buck’s, of shak­ing him back and forth, the while call­ing him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough em­brace and the sound of mur­mured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body so great was its ec­stasy. And when, re­leased, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laugh­ing, his eyes elo­quent, his throat vi­brant with un­ut­tered sound, and in that fash­ion re­mained with­out move­ment, John Thorn­ton would rev­er­ently ex­claim, “God! you can all but speak!”

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

For the most part, how­ever, Buck’s love was ex­pressed in ado­ra­tion. While he went wild with hap­pi­ness when Thorn­ton touched him or spoke to him, he did not seek these to­kens. Un­like Skeet, who was wont to shove her nose un­der Thorn­ton’s hand and nudge and nudge till pet­ted, or Nig, who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thorn­ton’s knee, Buck was con­tent to adore at a dis­tance. He would lie by the hour, ea­ger, alert, at Thorn­ton’s feet, look­ing up into his face, dwelling upon it, study­ing it, fol­low­ing with keen­est in­ter­est each fleet­ing ex­pres­sion, ev­ery move­ment or change of fea­ture. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie far­ther away, to the side or rear, watch­ing the out­lines of the man and the oc­ca­sional move­ments of his body. And of­ten, such was the com­mu­nion in which they lived, the strength of Buck’s gaze would draw John Thorn­ton’s head around, and he would re­turn the gaze, with­out speech, his heart shin­ing out of his eyes as Buck’s heart shone out.

For a long time af­ter his res­cue, Buck did not like Thorn­ton to get out of his sight. From the mo­ment he left the tent to when he en­tered it again, Buck would fol­low at his heels. His tran­sient mas­ters since he had come into the North­land had bred in him a fear that no mas­ter could be per­ma­nent. He was afraid that Thorn­ton would pass out of his life as Per­rault and François and the Scotch half­breed had passed out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent, where he would stand and lis­ten to the sound of his mas­ter’s breath­ing.

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

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

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eter­nity be­hind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and sea­sons swayed. He sat by John Thorn­ton’s fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but be­hind him were the shades of all man­ner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, ur­gent and prompt­ing, tast­ing the sa­vor of the meat he ate, thirst­ing for the wa­ter he drank, scent­ing the wind with him, lis­ten­ing with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the for­est, dic­tat­ing his moods, di­rect­ing his ac­tions, ly­ing down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dream­ing with him and 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 was sound­ing, and as of­ten as he heard this call, mys­te­ri­ously 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 where or why, the call sound­ing im­pe­ri­ously, deep in the for­est. But as of­ten as he gained the soft un­bro­ken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thorn­ton drew him back to the fire again.

Thorn­ton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as noth­ing. Chance trav­ellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold un­der it all, and from a too demon­stra­tive man he would get up and walk away. When Thorn­ton’s part­ners, Hans and Pete, ar­rived on the long-ex­pected raft, Buck re­fused to no­tice them till he learned they were close to Thorn­ton; af­ter that he tol­er­ated them in a pas­sive sort of way, ac­cept­ing fa­vors from them as though he 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 raft into the big eddy by the sawmill at Daw­son, they un­der­stood Buck and his ways, and did not in­sist upon an in­ti­macy such as ob­tained with Skeet and Nig.

For Thorn­ton, how­ever, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck’s back in the sum­mer trav­el­ling. Noth­ing was too great for Buck to do, when Thorn­ton com­manded. One day (they had grub-staked them­selves from the pro­ceeds of the raft and left Daw­son for the head­wa­ters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sit­ting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bedrock 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 ex­per­i­ment he had in mind. “Jump, Buck!” he com­manded, sweep­ing his arm out and over the chasm. The next in­stant he was grap­pling with Buck on the ex­treme edge, while Hans and Pete were drag­ging them back into safety.

“It’s un­canny,” Pete said, af­ter it was over and they had caught their speech.

Thorn­ton shook his head. “No, it is splen­did, and it is ter­ri­ble, too. Do you know, it some­times makes me afraid.”

“I’m not han­ker­ing to be the man that lays hands on you while he’s around,” Pete an­nounced con­clu­sively, nod­ding his head to­ward Buck.

“Py Jingo!” was Hans’s con­tri­bu­tion. “Not mi­ne­self ei­ther.”

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

Those who were look­ing on heard what was nei­ther bark nor yelp, but a some­thing which is best de­scribed as a roar, and they saw Buck’s body rise up in the air as he left the floor for Bur­ton’s throat. The man saved his life by in­stinc­tively throw­ing out his arm, but was hurled back­ward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time the man suc­ceeded only in partly block­ing, and his throat was torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a sur­geon checked the bleed­ing, he prowled up and down, growl­ing fu­ri­ously, at­tempt­ing to rush in, and be­ing forced back by an ar­ray of hos­tile clubs. A “min­ers’ meet­ing,” called on the spot, de­cided that the dog had suf­fi­cient 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 three part­ners were lin­ing a long and nar­row pol­ing-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snub­bing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thorn­ton re­mained in the boat, help­ing its de­scent by means of a pole, and shout­ing di­rec­tions to the shore. Buck, on the bank, wor­ried and anx­ious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his mas­ter.

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

Buck had sprung in on the in­stant; and at the end of three hun­dred yards, amid a mad swirl of wa­ter, he over­hauled Thorn­ton. When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swim­ming with all his splen­did strength. But the progress shore­ward was slow; the progress down­stream amaz­ingly rapid. From be­low came the fa­tal roar­ing where the wild cur­rent went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enor­mous comb. The suck of the wa­ter as it took the be­gin­ning of the last steep pitch was fright­ful, and Thorn­ton knew that the shore was im­pos­si­ble. He scraped fu­ri­ously over a rock, bruised across a sec­ond, and struck a third with crush­ing force. He clutched its slip­pery top with both hands, re­leas­ing Buck, and above the roar of the churn­ing wa­ter shouted: “Go, Buck! Go!”

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down­stream, strug­gling des­per­ately, but un­able to win 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 obe­di­ently to­ward the bank. He swam pow­er­fully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swim­ming ceased to be pos­si­ble and de­struc­tion be­gan.

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

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The rope thus tight­en­ing on him in the sweep of the cur­rent, he was jerked un­der the sur­face, and un­der the sur­face he re­mained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete threw them­selves upon him, pound­ing the breath into him and the wa­ter out of him. He stag­gered to his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thorn­ton’s voice came to them, and though they could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his ex­trem­ity. His 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, and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream. He had mis­cal­cu­lated once, but he would not be guilty of it a sec­ond time. Hans paid out the rope, per­mit­ting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thorn­ton; then he turned, and with the speed of an ex­press train headed down upon him. Thorn­ton saw him com­ing, and, as Buck struck him like a bat­ter­ing ram, with the whole force of the cur­rent be­hind him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and Buck and Thorn­ton were jerked un­der the wa­ter. Stran­gling, suf­fo­cat­ing, some­times one up­per­most and some­times the other, drag­ging over the jagged bot­tom, smash­ing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank.

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

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

That win­ter, at Daw­son, Buck per­formed an­other ex­ploit, not so heroic, per­haps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This ex­ploit was par­tic­u­larly grat­i­fy­ing to the three men; for they stood in need of the out­fit which it fur­nished, and were en­abled to make a long-de­sired trip into the vir­gin East, where min­ers had not yet ap­peared. It was brought about by a con­ver­sa­tion in the El­do­rado Saloon, in which men waxed boast­ful of their fa­vorite dogs. Buck, be­cause of his record, was the tar­get for these men, and Thorn­ton was driven stoutly to de­fend him. At the end of half an hour one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hun­dred pounds and walk off with it; a sec­ond bragged six hun­dred for his dog; and a third, seven hun­dred.

“Pooh! pooh!” said John Thorn­ton; “Buck can start a thou­sand pounds.”

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

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

“Well,” Matthew­son said, slowly and 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 sausage down upon the bar.

No­body spoke. Thorn­ton’s bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He could feel a flush of warm blood creep­ing up his face. His tongue had tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thou­sand pounds. Half a ton! The enor­mous­ness of it ap­palled him. He had great faith in Buck’s strength and had of­ten thought him ca­pa­ble of start­ing such a load; but never, as now, had he faced the pos­si­bil­ity of it, the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and wait­ing. Fur­ther, he had no thou­sand dol­lars; nor had Hans or Pete.

“I’ve got a sled stand­ing out­side now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it,” Matthew­son went on with bru­tal di­rect­ness; “so don’t let that hin­der you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” stut­tered a mem­ber of the lat­est dy­nasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. “I of­fer you eight hun­dred for him, sir, be­fore the test, sir; eight hun­dred just as he stands.”

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

“You must stand off from him,” Matthew­son protested. “Free play and plenty of room.”

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

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

The crowd was watch­ing cu­ri­ously. The af­fair was grow­ing mys­te­ri­ous. It seemed like a con­ju­ra­tion. As Thorn­ton got to his feet, Buck seized his mit­tened hand be­tween his jaws, press­ing in with his teeth and re­leas­ing slowly, half-re­luc­tantly. It was the an­swer, in terms, not of speech, but of love. Thorn­ton stepped well back.

“Now, Buck,” he said.

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

“Gee!” Thorn­ton’s voice rang out, sharp in the tense si­lence.

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

“Haw!” Thorn­ton com­manded.

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

“Now, mush!”

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 ef­fort, the mus­cles writhing and knot­ting like live things un­der the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head for­ward and down, while his feet were fly­ing like mad, the claws scar­ring the hard-packed snow in par­al­lel grooves. The sled swayed and trem­bled, half-started for­ward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead in what ap­peared a rapid suc­ces­sion of jerks, though it never re­ally came to a dead stop again … half an inch … an inch … two inches … The jerks per­cep­ti­bly di­min­ished; as the sled gained mo­men­tum, he caught them up, till it was mov­ing steadily along.

Men gasped and be­gan to breathe again, un­aware that for a mo­ment they had ceased to breathe. Thorn­ton was run­ning be­hind, en­cour­ag­ing Buck with short, cheery words. The dis­tance had been mea­sured off, and as he neared the pile of fire­wood which marked the end of the hun­dred yards, a cheer be­gan to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the fire­wood and halted at com­mand. Every man was tear­ing him­self loose, even Matthew­son. Hats and mit­tens were fly­ing in the air. Men were shak­ing hands, it did not mat­ter with whom, and bub­bling over in a gen­eral in­co­her­ent ba­bel.

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

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

Thorn­ton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were stream­ing frankly down his cheeks. “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. Thorn­ton shook him back and forth. As though an­i­mated by a com­mon im­pulse, the on­look­ers drew back to a re­spect­ful dis­tance; nor were they again in­dis­creet enough to in­ter­rupt.

VII The Sounding of the Call

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

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

John Thorn­ton asked lit­tle of man or na­ture. He was un­afraid of the wild. With a hand­ful of salt and a ri­fle he could plunge into the wilder­ness and fare wher­ever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Be­ing in no haste, In­dian fash­ion, he hunted his din­ner in the course of the day’s travel; and if he failed to find it, like the In­dian, he kept on trav­el­ling, se­cure in the 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 prin­ci­pally made up the load on the sled, and the time­card was drawn upon the lim­it­less fu­ture.

To Buck it was bound­less de­light, this hunt­ing, fish­ing, and in­def­i­nite wan­der­ing through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day af­ter day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loaf­ing and the men burn­ing holes 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, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue moun­tain lakes, and de­scended or as­cended un­known rivers in slen­der boats whip­sawed from the stand­ing for­est.

The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the un­charted vast­ness, where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin were true. They went across di­vides in sum­mer bliz­zards, shiv­ered un­der the mid­night sun on naked moun­tains be­tween the tim­ber line and the eter­nal snows, dropped into sum­mer val­leys amid swarm­ing gnats and flies, and in the shad­ows of glaciers picked straw­ber­ries and flow­ers as ripe and fair as any the South­land could boast. In the fall of the year they pen­e­trated a weird lake coun­try, sad and silent, where wild­fowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life—only the blow­ing of chill winds, the form­ing of ice in shel­tered places, and the melan­choly rip­pling of waves on lonely beaches.

And through an­other win­ter they wan­dered on the oblit­er­ated trails of men who had gone be­fore. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the for­est, an an­cient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path be­gan nowhere and ended nowhere, and it re­mained mys­tery, as the man who made it and the rea­son he made it re­mained mys­tery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreck­age of a hunt­ing lodge, and amid the shreds of rot­ted blan­kets John Thorn­ton found a long-bar­relled flint­lock. He knew it for a Hud­son Bay Com­pany gun of the young days in the North­west, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat. And that was all—no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blan­kets.

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

There was noth­ing for the dogs to do, save the haul­ing in of meat now and again that Thorn­ton killed, and Buck spent long hours mus­ing by the fire. The vi­sion of the short-legged hairy man came to him more fre­quently, now that there was lit­tle work to be done; and of­ten, blink­ing by the fire, Buck wan­dered with him in that other world which he re­mem­bered.

The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the hairy man 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 fear­fully into the dark­ness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gath­ered shell­fish and ate them as he gath­ered, it was with eyes that roved ev­ery­where for hid­den dan­ger and with legs pre­pared to run like the wind at its first ap­pear­ance. Through the for­est they crept noise­lessly, Buck at the hairy man’s heels; and they were alert and vig­i­lant, the pair of them, ears twitch­ing and mov­ing and nos­trils quiv­er­ing, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swing­ing by the arms from limb to limb, some­times a dozen feet apart, let­ting go and catch­ing, never fall­ing, never miss­ing his grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground; and Buck had mem­o­ries of nights of vigil spent be­neath trees wherein the hairy man roosted, hold­ing on tightly as he slept.

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

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

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

He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howl­ing and tried to sense his pres­ence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouch­ing, body gath­ered com­pactly to­gether, tail straight and stiff, feet fall­ing with un­wonted care. Every move­ment ad­ver­tised com­min­gled 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. 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 and rapid suc­ces­sion of snaps.

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

But in the end Buck’s per­ti­nac­ity was re­warded; for the wolf, find­ing that no harm was in­tended, fi­nally sniffed noses with him. Then they be­came friendly, and played about in the ner­vous, half-coy way with which fierce beasts be­lie their fierce­ness. After some time of this the wolf started off at an easy lope in a man­ner that plainly showed he was go­ing some­where. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they ran side by side through the som­bre twi­light, straight up the creek bed, into the gorge from which it is­sued, and across the bleak di­vide where it took its rise.

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

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

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

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

He be­gan to sleep out at night, stay­ing away from camp for days at a time; and once he crossed the di­vide at the head of the creek and went down into the land of tim­ber and streams. There he wan­dered for a week, seek­ing vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he trav­elled and trav­el­ling with the long, easy lope that seems never to tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emp­tied some­where into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by the mos­qui­toes while like­wise fish­ing, and rag­ing through the for­est help­less and ter­ri­ble. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last la­tent rem­nants of Buck’s fe­roc­ity. And two days later, when he 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 would quar­rel no more.

The blood-long­ing be­came stronger than ever be­fore. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, liv­ing on the things that lived, un­aided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prow­ess, sur­viv­ing tri­umphantly in a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment where only the strong sur­vived. Be­cause of all this he be­came pos­sessed of a great pride in him­self, which com­mu­ni­cated it­self like a con­ta­gion to his phys­i­cal be­ing. It ad­ver­tised it­self in all his move­ments, was ap­par­ent in the play of ev­ery mus­cle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he car­ried him­self, and made his glo­ri­ous furry coat if any­thing more glo­ri­ous. But for the stray brown on his muz­zle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran mid­most down his chest, he might well have been mis­taken for a gi­gan­tic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard fa­ther he had in­her­ited size and weight, but it was his shep­herd mother who had given shape to that size and weight. His muz­zle was the long wolf muz­zle, save that it was larger than the muz­zle of any wolf; and his head, some­what broader, was the wolf head on a mas­sive scale.

His cun­ning was wolf cun­ning, and wild cun­ning; his in­tel­li­gence, shep­herd in­tel­li­gence and St. Bernard in­tel­li­gence; and all this, plus an ex­pe­ri­ence gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as for­mi­da­ble a crea­ture as any that roamed the wild. A car­niv­o­rous an­i­mal liv­ing on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, over­spilling with vigor and viril­ity. When Thorn­ton passed a ca­ress­ing hand along his back, a snap­ping and crack­ling fol­lowed the hand, each hair dis­charg­ing its pent mag­netism at the con­tact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tis­sue and fi­bre, was keyed to the most ex­quis­ite pitch; and be­tween all the parts there was a per­fect 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 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 in­stant. In point of fact the three ac­tions of per­ceiv­ing, de­ter­min­ing, and re­spond­ing were se­quen­tial; but so in­fin­i­tes­i­mal were the in­ter­vals of time be­tween them that they ap­peared si­mul­ta­ne­ous. His mus­cles were sur­charged with vi­tal­ity, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splen­did flood, glad and ram­pant, un­til it seemed that it would burst him asun­der in sheer ec­stasy and pour forth gen­er­ously over the world.

“Never was there such a dog,” said John Thorn­ton one day, as the part­ners watched Buck march­ing out of camp.

“When he was made, the mould was broke,” said Pete.

“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 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 ev­ery cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmi­gan from its nest, kill a rab­bit as it slept, and snap in mid air the lit­tle chip­munks flee­ing a sec­ond too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick for him; nor were beaver, mend­ing their dams, too wary. He killed to eat, not from wan­ton­ness; but he pre­ferred to eat what he killed him­self. So a lurk­ing hu­mor ran through his deeds, and it was his de­light to steal upon the squir­rels, and, when he all but had them, to let them go, chat­ter­ing in mor­tal fear to the tree­tops.

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

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

There is a pa­tience of the wild—dogged, tire­less, per­sis­tent as life it­self—that holds mo­tion­less for end­less hours the spi­der in its web, the snake in its coils, the pan­ther in its am­bus­cade; this pa­tience be­longs pe­cu­liarly to life when it hunts its liv­ing food; and it be­longed to Buck as he clung to the flank of 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, en­velop­ing the herd in a whirl­wind of men­ace, cut­ting out his vic­tim as fast as it could re­join its mates, wear­ing out the pa­tience of crea­tures preyed upon, which is a lesser pa­tience than that of crea­tures prey­ing.

As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the north­west (the dark­ness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long), the young bulls re­traced their steps more and more re­luc­tantly to the aid of their be­set leader. The down-com­ing win­ter was har­ry­ing them on to the lower lev­els, and it seemed they could never shake off this tire­less crea­ture that held them back. Be­sides, it was not the life of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threat­ened. The life of only one mem­ber was de­manded, which was a re­moter in­ter­est than their lives, and in 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 fad­ing light. He could not fol­low, for be­fore his nose leaped the mer­ci­less fanged ter­ror that would not let him go. Three hun­dred­weight more than half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight and strug­gle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a crea­ture whose head did not reach be­yond his great knuck­led knees.

From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a mo­ment’s rest, never per­mit­ted it to browse the leaves of trees or the shoots of young birch and wil­low. Nor did he give the wounded bull op­por­tu­nity to slake his burn­ing thirst in the slen­der trick­ling streams they crossed. Often, in des­per­a­tion, he burst into long stretches of flight. At such times Buck did not at­tempt to stay him, but loped eas­ily at his heels, sat­is­fied with the way the game was played, ly­ing down when the moose stood still, at­tack­ing him fiercely when he strove to eat or drink.

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

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

As he held on he be­came more and more con­scious of the new stir in the land. There was life abroad in it dif­fer­ent from the life which had been there through­out the sum­mer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him in some sub­tle, mys­te­ri­ous way. The birds talked of it, the squir­rels chat­tered about it, the very breeze whis­pered of it. Sev­eral times he stopped and drew in the fresh morn­ing air in great sniffs, read­ing a mes­sage which made him leap on with greater speed. He was op­pressed with a sense of calamity hap­pen­ing, if it were not calamity al­ready hap­pened; and as he crossed the last wa­ter­shed and dropped down into the val­ley to­ward camp, he pro­ceeded with greater cau­tion.

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, swiftly and stealth­ily, ev­ery nerve strain­ing and tense, alert to the mul­ti­tudi­nous de­tails which told a story—all but the end. His nose gave him a vary­ing de­scrip­tion of the pas­sage of the life on the heels of which he was trav­el­ling. He re­marked the preg­nant si­lence of the for­est. The bird life had flit­ted. The squir­rels were in hid­ing. One only he saw—a sleek gray fel­low, flat­tened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody 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 though a pos­i­tive force had gripped and pulled it. He fol­lowed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig. He was ly­ing on his side, dead where he had dragged him­self, an ar­row pro­trud­ing, head and feath­ers, from ei­ther side of his body.

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

The Yee­hats were danc­ing about the 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 Buck, a live hur­ri­cane of fury, hurl­ing him­self upon them in a frenzy to de­stroy. He sprang at the fore­most man (it was the chief of the Yee­hats), rip­ping the throat wide open till the rent jugu­lar spouted a foun­tain of blood. He did not pause to worry the vic­tim, but ripped in pass­ing, with the next bound tear­ing wide the throat of a sec­ond man. There was no with­stand­ing him. He plunged about in their very midst, tear­ing, rend­ing, de­stroy­ing, in con­stant and ter­rific mo­tion which de­fied the ar­rows they dis­charged at him. In fact, so in­con­ceiv­ably rapid were his move­ments, and so closely were the In­di­ans tan­gled to­gether, that they shot one an­other with the ar­rows; and one young hunter, hurl­ing a spear at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest of an­other hunter with such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood out be­yond. Then a panic seized the Yee­hats, and they fled in ter­ror to the woods, pro­claim­ing as they fled the ad­vent of the Evil Spirit.

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

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

Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky, light­ing the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the com­ing of the night, brood­ing and mourn­ing by the pool, Buck be­came alive to a stir­ring of the new life in the for­est other than that which the Yee­hats had made. He stood up, lis­ten­ing and scent­ing. From far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, fol­lowed by a cho­rus of sim­i­lar sharp yelps. As the mo­ments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world which per­sisted in his mem­ory. He walked to the cen­tre of the open space and lis­tened. It was the call, the many-noted call, sound­ing more lur­ingly and com­pellingly than ever be­fore. And as never be­fore, he was ready to obey. John Thorn­ton was dead. The last tie was bro­ken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.

Hunt­ing their liv­ing meat, as the Yee­hats were hunt­ing it, on the flanks of the mi­grat­ing moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land of streams and tim­ber and 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 stood, and a mo­ment’s pause fell, till the bold­est one leaped straight for him. Like a flash Buck struck, break­ing the neck. Then he stood, with­out move­ment, as be­fore, the stricken wolf rolling in agony be­hind him. Three oth­ers tried it in sharp suc­ces­sion; and one af­ter the other they drew back, stream­ing blood from slashed throats or shoul­ders.

This was suf­fi­cient to fling the whole pack for­ward, pell-mell, crowded to­gether, blocked and con­fused by its ea­ger­ness to pull down the prey. Buck’s mar­vel­lous quick­ness and agility stood him in good stead. Piv­ot­ing on his hind legs, and snap­ping and gash­ing, he was ev­ery­where at once, pre­sent­ing a front which was ap­par­ently un­bro­ken so swiftly did he whirl and guard from side to side. But to pre­vent them from get­ting be­hind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a right an­gle in the bank which the men had made in the course of min­ing, and in this an­gle he came to bay, pro­tected on three sides and with noth­ing to do but face the front.

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

Then an old wolf, gaunt and bat­tle-scarred, came for­ward. Buck writhed his lips into the pre­lim­i­nary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him. Where­upon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke out the long wolf howl. The oth­ers sat down and howled. And now the call came to Buck in un­mis­tak­able 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 swung in be­hind, yelp­ing in cho­rus. And Buck ran with them, side by side with the wild brother, yelp­ing as he ran.

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

Nay, the tale grows worse. Hun­ters there are who fail to re­turn to the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribes­men found with throats slashed cru­elly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yee­hats fol­low the move­ment of the moose, there is a cer­tain val­ley which they never en­ter. And women there are who be­come sad when the word goes over the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to se­lect that val­ley for an abid­ing-place.

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

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