LONDON'S 
 GALL OF 
 
 THE mid 
 
 IJalifornia 
 
 ^gional 
 
 cility
 
 THE CALL OF THE WILD
 
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 with a ferocious snarl, he bounded straight up 
 into the blinding day." — P. 22.
 
 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 BY 
 
 JACK LONDON 
 
 EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY 
 
 THEODOEF. .G. .MJTCHILL 
 
 PBINCIPA<L OF CA^ifilCA ^GH sOHOOL 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1917 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1917, 
 
 bt the macmillan company. 
 
 Set 
 
 up and eltctro^^^? I^^istfd I^cwember, 1917. 
 
 : e c « « «s K » «y « _ • 
 
 «, c ®e c 6 • «■'« 
 
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 ' < c t < • 
 
 Nor&jooli ^rfBS 
 
 J. S, Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 The Geographical Setting of " The Call of the 
 
 Wild" vii 
 
 The Klondike ix 
 
 Placer-Mining x 
 
 The Dog in Literature xi 
 
 The Dog in the Northland of America . . xiii 
 
 The Central Idea of the Book .... xvi 
 
 Life of Jack London xViii 
 
 Jack London's Writings xxv 
 
 Jack London's Place as a Writer . . . xxviii 
 Reference Material xxx 
 
 The Call of the Wild 
 
 I. Into the Primitive . 
 
 II. The Law of Club and Fang . 
 
 III. The Dominant Primordial Beast 
 
 IV. Who has Won to Mastership 
 V. The Toil of Trace and Trail 
 
 VI. For the Love of a Man 
 
 VII. The Sounding of the Call . 
 
 Notes 
 
 ^1 
 16 
 29 
 49 
 62 
 83 
 102 
 
 125 
 
 2033400
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Geographical Setting of "The CaU of the Wild." 
 
 — To get a broad view of the scene of this story turn 
 to the map of Alaska. Cutting that territory about in 
 two is the mighty river Yukon. In imagination pass 
 up this river from its mouth. Just after you cross 
 the Canadian boundary line you will reach Dawson, 
 the geographical centre of " The Call of the Wild." The 
 region lying about Dawson and mostly east of the 
 Yukon is the famous gold region known as the Klondike. 
 Letting your eye wander slowly down the map from 
 Dawson toward the southwest you will catch the names 
 of the Stewart, Lewes, and Pelly rivers. Lake Lebarge, 
 White Horse, and Skagway. 
 
 Now let us look over the route of the story a bit more 
 closely, remembering that ours is the Klondike of a 
 score of years ago, not the railroad and steamboat 
 Klondike of to-day. Most of the scene of this story is 
 laid between Skagway, the ocean end of the Klondike 
 trail, and Dawson, the commercial centre of the Yukon 
 gold-fields of northwest Canada. Skagway lies well 
 up on an inlet of the Pacific called Lyn Canal. Across 
 the Canal, a short distance to the northwest, is Dyea 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 Beach. From Skagway the trail ^ mounted northwest 
 over the great coastal mountains, by way of Chilkoot 
 Pass or the more famous White Pass. Once across the 
 mountains travellers moved north, in winter taking ad- 
 vantage of the more level surface afforded by the many 
 frozen lakes and rivers. Thus on the customary route 
 they traversed Lakes Tagish, Marsh, and Lebarge. 
 Thence they passed down the Lewes River, over or 
 around the Rink Rapids, to the Yukon River at the 
 point of its formation by the junction of the Lewes 
 and Pelly rivers. Continuing north down the Yukon, 
 past the mouth of White River and of Sixty Mile Creek, 
 they arrived at Dawson, situated in latitude 60° 
 north and about fifty miles east of the international 
 boundary line between Alaska and the Dominion of 
 Canada. The journey back to Skagway lay over sub- 
 stantially the same ground, with variations according 
 to the condition of weather and ground. 
 
 TA\4ce Buck, the dog hero of this tale, made the trip 
 from Skagway to Dawson and back. On the third, 
 trip north he came under the protection of John Thorn- 
 ton, and from then on he moved with Thornton here 
 and there on prospecting tours with Dawson as a base. 
 Buck's wanderings carried him up Forty Mile Creek, 
 forty miles down the Yukon from Dawson; to Circle 
 
 ^ In the maps of the Century Atlas and in those of several en- 
 cyclopaedias the Yukon trail is plainly indicated.
 
 INTB OB UCTION IX 
 
 City, Alaska; and in among the Tanana hills, which 
 lie in Alaska about three hundred miles west of Dawson. 
 On the trip that led to the finding of the Lost Mine and 
 to Buck's return to *'The Wild," the prospecting party 
 left Dawson and sledded south seventy miles up the 
 Yukon to the mouth of the Stewart River, up which 
 they moved past the tributaries Mayo and McQuestion 
 to the head waters. Of the rest of their journey we 
 know only that their route, running in a general way 
 to the northeast, carried them over the Arctic Circle. 
 In their wanderings they seem to have crossed the 
 Mackenzie River and to have reached the shores of 
 Great Bear Lake (see page 104). 
 
 The Klondike. — The existence of gold in Alaska 
 was known in the nineteenth century. It was not, 
 however, before the late nineties of the last century 
 that the finding of rich deposits warranted permanent 
 settlements such as those at Forty Mile Creek and 
 Circle City. Discoveries of still greater value were those 
 made in the Klondike. The Klondike derives its name 
 from the Klondike River, a tributary of the Yukon. It 
 was on Bonanza Creek, a small feeder of the Klondike, 
 that indications of rich deposits of gold were dis- 
 covered on August 16, 1896. There followed a stam- 
 pede of gold-seekers to the region, with the resulting 
 development of the territory. It was this discovery 
 that brought into existence the important town of
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 Dawson and that led to the stealing of Buck for service 
 as a sled-dog. 
 
 Placer-Mining. — Broadly speaking gold is taken 
 from the earth by quartz-mining or by placer-mining. 
 In the former process the metal is separated by mechani- 
 cal and chemical processes from the rock in which it 
 occurs. Placer-mining seeks to recover from the 
 pebbles or sand in which it is found the *'free" gold. 
 This occurs in sizes from nuggets to minute pellets 
 or granular dust. Wet placers are the beds of existing 
 streams ; dry placers are ancient river beds from which 
 the water has disappeared. The gold-seeker, the pro- 
 spector, tests earth for free gold by 'Spanning." A cer- 
 tain amount of dirt is placed in a pan, which is then 
 filled with water. When the larger Ijimps have been 
 dissolved, the pan is so twirled as to spill the water 
 over the edge. After the removal of the larger stones, 
 the pan is shaken in order to spread out the remaining 
 contents on the bottom. Then the heavy gold, which, 
 if present, has sunk as a result of the twirling, will be 
 found shining on the bottom of the pan. 
 
 When working a dry placer that warrants the expen- 
 diture of time and effort, the gold-miner's first step from 
 the crude and laborious method of panning is the con- 
 struction of a sluice-box. This consists of a wooden 
 trough (or a series of such troughs) on the bottom of 
 which are fastened cleats known as ** riffles." Through 
 
 I
 
 INTR OD UCTION XI 
 
 the sluice is run a stream of water. The gold-bearing 
 earth is fed in at the upper end ; the lighter materials 
 are washed out at the lower end of the sluice, while 
 most of the heavy gold is caught by the riffles. Though 
 there are further refinements of this process where 
 necessary means are at hand, the sluicing done by John 
 Thornton and his companions at the Lost Mine was of 
 the simpler kind. 
 
 The Dog in Literature. — The powerful appeal made 
 by "The Call of the Wild" is but another illustration of 
 the prominent place of the dog in the legend, folk-lore, 
 and romance of many nations. In prehistoric times, 
 with the horse, the sheep, and the cat, the dog became 
 domesticated. His faithfulness, patience, courage, and 
 ready adaptation to man's needs have in the course 
 of the centuries brought him to first place among man's 
 four-footed friends. To the readiness with which he 
 has responded to training in one kind of duty or an- 
 other is due in no small measure the preservation and 
 improvement of breeds so many and so different. It 
 is, therefore, but natural that side by side with records 
 of defamation of the dog — the dog of Scripture, for 
 example — there should have accumulated a mighty 
 testimony to " man's best friend." 
 
 His form was sculptured on the stones of Nineveh. 
 Regarded as sacred throughout Egypt, he was at his 
 death embalmed and buried in a special canine ceme-
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 tery. After a faithful slumbering watch over his 
 masters for untold years, Kitmer was at last rewarded 
 by being permitted to enter with them the Mohamme- 
 dan paradise. Old blind Argus alone recognized Odys- 
 seus on his return to Ithaca in his beggar garb. In 
 somewhat like manner it was Theron that knew his 
 master Roderick. 
 
 At King Arthur's Court, Cavall the " hound of deep- 
 est mouth " performed such wondrous deeds in pulling 
 down red deer, boar, and wolf that at his latter end the 
 great king himself placed him in a grave of honor. 
 Gorban, the white hound of Umhad the Welsh bard, 
 was honored by his master with a lay expressing the 
 expectation that they would again meet in heaven. 
 Indeed, from this same general belief of Celt and Nor- 
 man arose the custom of interring with the dead chief- 
 tain his favorite hound. So, too, later centuries show 
 us sculptured in marble the faithful friend of hunt and 
 household lying at the feet of the recumbent figure of 
 his master. 
 
 Legend tells us of the mighty Samr who avenged his 
 master's death ; of Vigr, who once steered a ship home 
 safely and who at Olaf's death remained on the grave 
 until he perished of starvation ; of Sauer, gifted with 
 human speech ; of Houdain, who shared with Tristrem 
 and Ysonde the " drink of might." 
 
 The pages of the past reveal other instances of dog
 
 INTRODUCTION xin 
 
 heroes. Three saints have the dog under their protec- 
 tion : St. Eustace, St. Roche, and St. Hubert. In 
 Luxemburg on the festival of St. Hubert pilgrims throng 
 his shrine for a blessing on themselves and their dogs. 
 He appears nameless or named as companion of the 
 great and noble of the earth. Velazquez and Land- 
 seer have rendered him homage on some of their 
 noblest canvasses. He has been the theme of our 
 English writers from Chaucer's day to our own. Great- 
 est of all friends of the dog is Scott. '' Every shade of 
 canine feeling, every development of canine nature 
 may be studied in the pages of Sir Walter." Rab, Bob 
 Son of Battle, and Greyfriars Bobby are more recent 
 testimonials. Divers regions of divers ages have 
 brought into being, each its great dog. In " The Call 
 of the Wild," Jack London has given us in Buck a 
 Northland dog worthy to take place side by side with 
 the famous dogs of the past. 
 
 The Dog in the Northland of America. — The ability 
 to travel steadily on small amounts of food and water 
 has made the camel indispensable to the desert tribes 
 of Asia and Africa. Because of peculiar fitness for 
 arduous work in extremes of temperature, the dog 
 occupies a similar position in the sparsely civilized 
 regions of upper North America. He is able to with- 
 stand extremes of cold and heat. He requires little, 
 if any, artificial shelter against the elements. In
 
 XIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 proportion to his size he displays great strength and 
 performs heavy labor with speed for long sustained 
 periods. His daily food is about a pound of dried 
 fish, which bulking small and weighing comparatively 
 little, can be taken long distances in quantity. Thus, 
 capable of transporting much more than his own food, 
 the dog has enabled explorers and prospectors to pene- 
 trate to regions otherwise inaccessible. It was a team 
 of Arctic dogs that drew Peary to the North Pole. 
 
 The dogs used in Upper Canada and in xA.laska were 
 in the earlier days of settlement principally "huskies," 
 with their cross-breeds, and Malmutes. The *' huskies," 
 Mackenzie River dogs, resemble the Arctic fox. The 
 Malmutes are Alaska Indian dogs crossed with the 
 wolf and resembling wolves in appearance. Such dogs 
 weigh between forty and eighty pounds. With the 
 rush of adventurers to the gold-fields came a demand 
 that could not be supplied from local sources. This 
 led to the shipping from Lower Canada and the United 
 States of larger breeds of dogs, such as the mastiff, the 
 Saint Bernard, and cross-bred dogs of good size and 
 heavy coat. Buck of "The Call of the Wild" was a 
 cross between a Saint Bernard and a Scotch shepherd 
 dog. 
 
 Prospector, gold-field adventurer, business man, 
 government official — every one in the Klondike days 
 who needed to travel far and swiftly — had to use the
 
 INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 dog for passage inland from the coast. Around the 
 settlements he was the beast of all work. On the winter 
 snows transportation was (and for the most part still is) 
 by means of sleds. These sleds, long and narrow, were 
 built of strong, tough wood. The various parts of the 
 sled were fastened together, to an extent at least, 
 with rawhide thongs, not only because of the flexibility 
 thereby imparted to the sled, but also because of the 
 ease afforded in making repairs without tools. The 
 dogs of the Klondike Trail were harnessed tandem 
 fashion in teams of six or more. Next to the sled was 
 the wheel-dog, or wheeler; at the head of the line 
 was the lead-dog. The harness was simple, consisting 
 merely of long traces fastening into a collar-held breast- 
 band and further supported by loops in a band passing 
 over the back. The lack of pole or shafts made it 
 impossible for the dog team to have any part either in 
 backing the sled or retarding its forward movement. 
 The rear of the sled ended in two uprights slanting 
 backwards, between which ran horizontally the gee- 
 pole. By means of this gee-pole a man could steady the 
 course of the sled, push it where the going was heavy, or 
 hold it back when the need arose. Moreover, by means 
 of the gee-pole he was able to " break out " the sled 
 when the runners were frozen to the ground after the 
 sled had stood for a time. The load was fastened to 
 the sled by lashings that ran under the upper crosspiece
 
 XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 of sleds of open construction or through holes pierced in 
 the upper part of those with solid runners. On such a 
 sled a strong team of eight well-fed dogs with Buck in 
 the lead drew a lightly laden sled an average of forty 
 miles a day, up hill and down, for forty days, in a tem- 
 perature well below zero. This, however, was over a 
 hard-packed trail. No such time was made with larger 
 loads or on unbroken trails after a heavy fall of snow 
 or at the beginning of the spring thaw. 
 
 In late spring and in summer the sled could no longer 
 be used. Then dogs acted as pack animals, each bear- 
 ing his burden snugly fastened on his back and held in 
 place by means of a belly-band. 
 
 The Central Idea of the Book. — Every animal is the 
 descendant of wild ancestors. Through domestication 
 — association with man — has come a certain dulling 
 of the senses and new habits of mind and of action. 
 Yet in every domestic animal there still remain in- 
 stincts — inheritances from the wild state, the primi- 
 tive or primordial state — which cause an animal to act 
 automatically under given conditions. For example, 
 the dog turns around before lying down and on moon- 
 light nights bays at the moon. 
 
 Buck is represented as the perfect product of genera- 
 tions of careful breeding. He comes from a home where 
 he has thoroughly acquired man's ways. His sense of 
 sight, of smell, of hearing have become comparatively
 
 INTRODUCTION XVll 
 
 dulled because not acutely needed for his existence. 
 Man has sheltered him and provided his food. Once 
 thrown on his own resources Buck's dulled senses and 
 slumbering instincts are aroused. One by one return 
 memories of life in the days when his ancestors hunted 
 with the pack ; of the first contact of the dog tribe with 
 early man, from whom we ourselves are descended. 
 The memory-seeds of the wild or half-tamed dog, 
 hidden away in the brain of Buck, begin to germinate. 
 Heredity is asserting itself. Some might consider 
 Buck's falling away from man-made habits as retro- 
 gression — a step backward in dog development. 
 Jack London seems to think otherwise. This big- 
 boned, big-muscled, heavy-coated brute he conceives 
 as framed by nature to withstand cold, to run down 
 large game, to be, like the best in the earlier days, the 
 leader, the *' dominant primordial brute." With in- 
 creasing fitness to live supremely well the life for which 
 he is fitted. Buck hears in more and more luring tones 
 the call of the ''Wild." After he has gloried in his big 
 kill, nothing could have held him but his love for John 
 Thornton. With Thornton dead he hearkens tp the 
 '* Call " and returns to his kind. 
 
 Back in London's mind there seems to have been 
 some such thought as this : " Relieved of man's inter- 
 ■erence. Nature knows best what to do with man's best 
 Droduct." Buck through selective breeding was mas-
 
 X VIU INTR OD UCTION 
 
 sive and powerful. Through age-long association with 
 man his race had immensely added to the mental hori- 
 zon of the wild dog : Buck had imagination. Man had 
 made him the best of his kind. Then Nature gathered 
 him to herself to improve her own children — the wolves. 
 Life of Jack London. — Jack London was born in 
 San Francisco on January 12, 1876. From his father, 
 a nomadic trapper, scout, and frontiersman, he seems 
 to have inherited his own massive frame and, to an 
 extent at least, his love of adventure. While he was 
 still a little boy, his parents settled on a ranch in the 
 Livermore Valley, where between the ages of eight and 
 ten Jack did hard, manual labor. During this time 
 he was a shy, diffident lad, whose little schooling in- 
 cluded a few volumes that were devoured again and 
 again. This early love of books he was soon able to 
 gratify for, when in his tenth year the London family 
 moved to Oakland, Jack devoted so much time to the 
 treasures of the pubhc library that he was threatened 
 with St. Vitus' Dance. His reading, which embraced 
 books of all sorts, was especially rich in works of travel, 
 exploration, and adventure. This pleasant occupation 
 soon came to an end, since it became necessary for him 
 to help add to the scanty income of the family. He ran 
 about the city as a newsboy, and worked as helper on 
 an ice-wagon, as pin-boy in a bowling alley, and as 
 sweeper of Sunday picnic grounds. To him so lately
 
 INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 shut up on a ranch these occupations savored of adven- 
 ture. All of the Hfe he now Hved was Hnked up in his 
 mind with the heroes of his books. Meanwhile, he 
 had learned to sail a small boat on San Francisco Bay 
 and had developed into an able and daring swimmer. 
 
 Upon his graduation from Oakland Grammar School 
 at the age of fourteen, he took a position in a cannery, 
 where he slaved like a dog for ten cents an hour. To 
 escape what he describes as his *' bestial life at the 
 machine," he left home and joined a band of oyster 
 pirates. With them he stayed for several months, 
 subsequently working as a salmon fisher, serving as 
 petty officer of the Fish Patrol, and knocking about as 
 a general bayfaring adventurer. 
 
 Such a course of life spelled ruin for the average boy. 
 But to Jack London came a gradual realization of the 
 worthlessness of his career. Therefore, in 1893, when 
 but sixteen, to escape from his dangerous associates, he 
 shipped before the mast as able seaman and spent 
 several months on a sealing vessel in the Russian part 
 of Bering Sea. Returning home he picked up a few 
 dollars by shovelling coal and by laboring as a long- 
 shoreman. During this time he made his first essay at 
 "writing. A local newspaper started a short-story con- 
 test. Urged by his mother, London wrote an account of 
 a typhoon in the Sea of Japan and won first prize. 
 It was this success that aroused in him a desire to become
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 a writer. At the Oakland public library he resumed his 
 omnivorous reading. Moreover, in his leisure hours, 
 he constantly practised story writing while engaged 
 in hard daily labor for long hours at the local jute mills. 
 This latter place he left when refused a slight increase 
 in his daily wage. 
 
 He now sought to advance himself by working as coal- 
 passer at an electric light plant. Here he encountered 
 the acme of grinding toil. To continue thus meant 
 death of body and of soul. London, however, was not 
 of the kind to suffer in patience. Hence, in utter dis- 
 gust with labor conditions he threw down the shovel 
 and took up the life of a tramp. From Pacific to 
 Atlantic he wandered in the United States and Canada, 
 now afoot, now on a river raft, now riding the brake- 
 rods of fast freight trains. He visited the slums of the 
 East and spent more than one term in jail for vagrancy. 
 What he saw in the underworld made of him a Socialist. 
 To one with London's zest of life all these adventures 
 were in a way enjoyable. But the tragic end of many 
 of his rude associates had taught him the inevitable out- 
 come of a career such as his. " I was," says he, ** scared 
 into thinking by what I saw in the cellar of society." 
 
 Having acquired this new view of life he returned 
 home and entered the Oakland High School. Here he 
 studied hard, read prodigiously, *'went with nice girls," 
 got a glimpse of refinement at the club meetings held
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 in the homes of well-to-do pupils, and wrote for the 
 high school magazine stories of his adventures at sea 
 and on the road. Meanwhile he supported himself by 
 acting as a janitor and by accepting any odd job that 
 came his way, such as mowing lawns, and taking up, 
 beating, and laying carpets. Realizing that he could 
 not continue for long the strain of hard study and hard 
 manual labor, London quitted high school and after a 
 few weeks' stay in a "cramming" school started alone 
 upon a course of intensive study. So strong were his 
 natural powers of mind and so thorough was his applica- 
 tion to the task in hand that in three months, solely 
 through self -effort, he covered the last two years of the 
 high school course and was admitted to the University 
 of California. To support himself while carrying on 
 his studies he took a position in a steam-laundry. 
 However, as the money thereby earned was insufficient 
 for his needs he was compelled to leave the University 
 during his Freshman year. Continuing his work in the 
 laundry he tried again to win success with his pen. For 
 a few weeks he wrote copiously, but the failure of his 
 efforts to win attention convinced him of his educational 
 shortcomings. 
 
 At this time came news of the great discoveries of 
 gold in the Klondike. London, now in his twenty- 
 second year, joined the throngs that hastened to the 
 Northland. After a year of unsuccessful fortune-
 
 XXll INTRODUCTION 
 
 hunting, he was stricken with the scurvy. Together 
 with a few companions he descended the Yukon in an 
 open boat, a trip of nineteen hundred miles in nineteen 
 days. During this journey he made the notes of his 
 Northland experiences upon which later were based a 
 number of his best stories, among others " The Call of 
 the Wild." Though he had failed in his quest for gold 
 he had acquired what was of far greater value. " It 
 was in the Yukon I found myself. There nobody talks. 
 Everybody thinks. You get your true perspective. 
 I got mine." 
 
 Working as coal-passer on a steamer, he reached 
 British Columbia and thence made his way home. 
 As his father had meanwhile died, the support of the 
 family now fell upon London. Unequipped with any 
 trade he was once more compelled to undertake any 
 kind of manual labor that gave promise of a slight 
 reward. During this period he passed first in the Civil 
 Service examination for mail-carrier. The brusque- 
 ness of his reception by a post-office official was all that 
 prevented his entering the Government service. 
 
 Meanwhile he had returned to his writing, this time 
 determined to win public recognition. Of his bitter 
 struggles he gives graphic descriptions in several of his 
 books. Finally, in 1899, when in his twenty-fourth 
 year, he received from the Overland Magazine five 
 dollars for one of his stories. There soon followed
 
 INTBODUCTION XXlll 
 
 acceptances from other periodicals, bringing better 
 and still better compensation. London had ''arrived." 
 Never again did he feel the pinch of poverty. With the 
 publication of " The Call of the Wild " in 1903 he 
 sprang into prominence as a writer. Regularly turning 
 out his thousand words a day he produced within less 
 than twenty years an astonishing amount of work. 
 
 London's literary career involved him in many activi- 
 ties. He wrote not only for the magazines but also 
 for the daily press. He delivered lectures, principally 
 on socialistic topics. In 1902 he visited the slums in the 
 East End of London and told of w^hat he saw there in 
 " The People of the Abj^ss," the book that he himself 
 regarded as his best. As correspondent for a newspaper 
 he sent from the East some good stories about the war 
 between Russia and Japan. While gathering literary 
 material he never ceased to satisfy his boyish love of 
 adventure. With his second wife, born Charmian 
 .Kittredge, he rounded the Horn in a sailing vessel, he 
 serving as a mate, she as stewardess. Later they made 
 an extended voyage in a small schooner from San 
 Francisco to numerous islands of the Pacific, finally 
 landing in Australia. Their homeward jom'ney carried 
 them through western South America. 
 
 A few^ minor events in London's life will help to fill 
 out the foregoing sketch. He was charged with being 
 a plagiarist and a ''natm'e fakir." At one time he con-
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 templated acting for the moving pictures. S«"iie of his 
 stories were dramatized both for the stage and for the 
 films. On the charge of violating Mexican neutrality 
 he was arrested by the United States Government. 
 He was nominated for the office of Mayor of Oakland 
 on the Sociahst ticket. His attack on the evils of 
 drink brought him high office in the ranks of temper- 
 ance advocates, by whom he was seriously considered 
 as candidate for the Presidency of the United States on 
 the Prohibition Ticket. In 1914 he became head of a 
 grape-juice corporation. 
 
 His pleasantest hours were spent on his magnificent 
 ranch near the village of Glen Ellen, California, and 
 overlooking the beautiful Sonoma Valley. Here after 
 completing his daily task of a thousand words he spent 
 his time breeding horses, reclaiming worn-out soil by 
 scientific rotation of crops, aiid " scrawling [himself] 
 on the pages of time with a hundred thousand eucalyp- 
 tus trees." Here, too, he exercised his magnificent 
 horsemanship. From this home he departed on a 
 trip of several months, during which he drove four 
 spirited horses to a light wagon over some of the wildest 
 mountain country of California and Oregon. 
 
 It was at this ranch that he died in his forty-first 
 year, on November 22, 1916, writing almost to his last 
 hour. He had expressed a wish that he should he 
 cremated and that his a-shes should be scattered on
 
 INTRODUCTION XXV 
 
 the seaV^ More appropriately, however, they were 
 placed in an urn set in a hillside that looked down upon 
 the peaceful valley that had in a sense called him from 
 the '' Wild." 
 
 Jack London's Writings. — Drawing upon his bitter 
 struggles for support ; upon his adventures on the road 
 and at sea, in the Yukon and on the islands of the 
 southern Pacific ; upon his observation of the elements 
 of injustice done by man to man ; upon his dreams of 
 the prehistoric past and his forecast of social upheavals, 
 Jack London, in less than a score of years, brought into 
 being a truly remarkable array of books. Good as is 
 some of his other work, his stories make strongest appeal. 
 Best of all are his Yukon tales, — the vividness and 
 vigor of which caused him to be styled by certain critics 
 *'The Kipling of the North." By general consensus his 
 best piece of writing was " The Call of the Wild." In 
 other tales, most of which now appear collected in 
 volumes, the curious reader can get further glimpses 
 of life in the Northland both before and during 
 Klondike days. The aspirations and the struggles, 
 the scheming and the jealousy, the humor and the 
 tragedy, the sordid and the noble passions of white 
 man and of native — all are portrayed forcefully. 
 Among such tales are " A Daughter of the Snows," 
 giving vivid details of the Klondike rush ; " The Faith 
 of Men," two of the stories of which present scenes at
 
 XX vi INTR OB UCTION 
 
 Bonanza, and one of which gives a picture of a dog 
 whose hatred for his master contrasts strongly with the 
 love of Buck for John Thornton ; " The Children of 
 the Frost," with a good portrayal of a gold-prospecting 
 site ; " The Love of Life," considered by some Lon- 
 don's best collection of short stories, among which is 
 ** Brown Wolf," a dog whose excellences remind one of 
 Buck. " White Fang " offers an interesting contrast 
 to " The Call of the Wild " in that it tells of a dog, 
 half wolf, that is civilized by affection for a man. Other 
 stories laid wholly or partly in the Northland are 
 " Burning Daylight," *' Lost Face," and " Smoke 
 Bellew," the latter giving a vivid account of a stampede 
 to new gold-fields. 
 
 By their strong characterization, thrilling episodes, 
 and masterful grasp of detail, '' The Cruise of the 
 Dazzler," " The Sea Wolf," " Tales of the Fish Patrol," 
 and " The Mutiny of the Elsinore," show us how 
 thoroughly Jack London knew and loved the sea. It 
 must have been a return to his fondness for the small 
 boat of his bayfaring days that led to his long cruise 
 in the Pacific — ? cruise that furnished material for 
 many stories. " The Cruise of the Snark " offers 
 striking scenes of curious lands : the gentle lepers of 
 Molokai ; the courteous folk of Tahiti ; the savage and 
 repulsive natives of the Solomon Islands, with the 
 Beche-de-Mer English jargon employed as the vehicle
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 of communication between white and native. " Jerry 
 of the Islands," one of the latest products of London's 
 pen, gives yet another noble dog in tropic scenes of 
 murder and cannibalism. Further pictures of life 
 in the Pacific Islands appear in " Adventure," " Son 
 of the Sun," and " The House of Pride." 
 
 Of somewhat different character are the books in 
 which Jack London reveals his own career either di- 
 rectly or through the chief character. With these may 
 appropriately be classed others setting forth his views on 
 society and the future of civilization. Such are " The 
 People of the Abyss," a painful story of personal experi- 
 ences among the poor of London — his best work in his 
 own estimation ; " When God Laughs," a classic on 
 the horrors of child labor ; '' The War of the Classes " 
 and the '" Iron Heel," black pictures of the outcome of 
 the mutual hatred of rich and poor ; " The Road," an 
 account of London's adventures as a tramp ; " Martin 
 Eden," giving in the life of the principal character a 
 picture of London's own struggle for recognition as a 
 writer, and hinting at the bitterness he felt when success 
 was at last his. " John Barleycorn," a remarkable 
 self-revelation on the evils of drink, enables us to learn 
 many of the details of London's career. 
 
 Among the quasi-scientific flights of London's imagi- 
 nation are " Before Adam," a picture of primitive 
 !2ian ; " The Star Rover," a novel treatment of self-
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 hypnosis and reincarnation ; the " Scarlet Plague/' a 
 story of the depopulation and the subsequent repopula- 
 tion of the earth in recurring periods. In similar vein 
 are such stories as those appearing in *' The Strength of 
 the Strong." 
 
 Books of a rather less strenuous type than usually 
 came from his pen are the " Kempton-Wace Letters," a 
 few plays, at least one of which was presented on the 
 stage, and some poems of a romantic type. 
 
 Jack London's Place as a Writer. — It is as yet too 
 early to reach a settled conclusion about Jack London's 
 place in American literature. The permanency of his 
 work will depend in a measure on the reactions of the 
 great world war. At present, he cannot be lightly 
 set aside. Abroad, he is the best-known American 
 writer of this generation. His life history of successful 
 struggle against obstacles, his emphasis on the conquest 
 of physical nature by brain and brawn, and the sketchy 
 rush of his tales stamp him as typically American. 
 Because of his vigorous pictures of social conditions, he 
 is regarded as a " mighty prophet " by Russians of his 
 school of philosophy. 
 
 In America, opinion is divided. Due recognition is 
 given to the strong qualities of his books — to his 
 "barbarian" curiosity, alertness, concreteness, and zest 
 of struggle and conquest ; to his unquestioned love of 
 nature and his power to portray her bigness and her
 
 INTRODUCTION XXlX 
 
 might; to the clearness and vigor, the sincerity or 
 plausibility of action, scene, and character; to his 
 broad sympathy for the victims of man's thoughtless- 
 ness and brutality ; to the frankness of his self -revela- 
 tions. At the same time the more thoughtful critics 
 feel that despite high ability. Jack London fell short of 
 greatness. The lineal descendant of Bret Harte and 
 Kipling, he never attained to the simplicity of the one 
 or the literary restraint of the other. He wrote too 
 much for his own good. He expanded, but he did not 
 grow. The reader is gradually impressed by a certain 
 narrowness of view ; by his continued failure properly 
 to evaluate the orderly phases of society to whose 
 endeavors he, himself, owed his own education and the 
 comforts of nearly twenty years of his life. One is struck 
 by a peculiar sameness in the men he holds up for 
 admiration : again and again he seems to rewrite himself 
 in his heroes. This inability to objectify — to dis- 
 associate himself from the phenomena of observation 
 — accounts for his poor depiction of women — and 
 that, too, notwithstanding his appreciation of their 
 great influence for good in the scheme of human exist- 
 ence. Where analysis and study might have yielded 
 characters, he gives us mere types. Adequate por- 
 trayal is sacrificed to action. He wrote for a public 
 whose support has given to the film drama of to-day 
 its present paramount importance. Even his essays
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 on the social order leave the impression of emotion- 
 alism. He seems more concerned with what has 
 happened or is happening than with cures for the ills 
 he depicts. 
 
 But for all his shortcomings, a book by Jack London 
 enlists our attention and holds us to the end. This of 
 itself is no small merit. His spirit and method are 
 preeminently those of the age of air-ships, motor-cars, 
 and movies ; a time when we are constantly admonished 
 to *' step lively. " To have been the literary representa- 
 tive of his age — an age at least alive, even if a bit too 
 bustling — is surely no mean distinction. 
 
 Reference Material. — At present those interested in 
 Jack London have no sources of information available 
 other than stray articles catalogued in libraries and the 
 clipping bureaus maintained by the daily papers. In 
 the '* Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," volumes 
 one, two, and three, and the later current numbers, 
 may be found a large amount of Jack London material : 
 his writings as they appeared currently, criticisms, 
 biographical sketches, and photographs. 
 
 The young reader of the '' Call of the Wild " will be 
 interested in the edition illustrated by Paul Bransom 
 (Macmillan, 1916). There may be found pictures of 
 all the prominent characters of the story, human and 
 canine, as well as pictures of sleds, totems, incidents, 
 and scenery.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 For help received in the preparation of this book 
 the thanks of the Editor are due to the management 
 of the New York World, to Mr. Edwin Fairley and 
 Miss Adelaide Brown of Jamaica High School, and to 
 Miss Wilhelmina Hayes. 
 
 T. C. M.
 
 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 
 
 ** Old longings nomadic leap, 
 Chafing at custom's chain, 
 Again from its brumal sleep 
 Wakens the ferine strain." 
 
 Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have 
 known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, 
 but for every tide-water dog,° strong of muscle and 
 with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. 
 Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had 5 
 found a yellow metal, and because steamship and trans- 
 portation companies were booming the find,° thousands 
 of men were rushing into the Northland. These men 
 wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy 
 dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry lo 
 coats to protect them from the frost. 
 
 Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa 
 Clara Valley. Judge Miller's place, it was called. 
 It stood back from the road, half hidden among the 
 trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the 15 
 
 B 1
 
 2 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. 
 The house was approached by gravelled driveways 
 which wound about through wide-spreading lawns 
 and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At 
 5 the rear things were on even a more spacious scale 
 than at the front. There were great stables, where 
 a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad 
 servants' cottages, an endless and orderly array of 
 outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, or- 
 
 10 chards, and berry patches. Then there was the pump- 
 ing plant for the artesian well, and the big cement 
 tank where Judge Miller's boys took their morning 
 plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon. 
 
 And over this great demesne° Buck ruled. Here 
 
 15 he was born, and here he had lived the four years 
 of his life. It was true, there were other dogs. 
 There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, 
 but they did not count. They came and went, re- 
 sided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in 
 
 20 the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, 
 the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, — 
 strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors 
 or set foot to ground. On the other hand, there were 
 the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped 
 
 25 fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the 
 windows at them and protected by a legion of house- 
 maids armed with brooms and mops. 
 
 But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. 
 The whole realm was his. He plunged into the 
 
 30 swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 3 
 
 sons ; he escorted Mollie and x\lice, the Judge's 
 daughters, on long twihght or early morning rambles ; 
 on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet before 
 the roaring library fire ; he carried the Judge's grand- 
 sons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and 5 
 guarded their footsteps through wild adventures 
 down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even 
 beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry 
 patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, 
 and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was 10 
 king, — king over all creeping, crawling, flying things 
 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 15 
 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 20 
 himself in right royal fashion. During the four years 
 since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated 
 aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was ever a 
 trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes be- 
 come because of their insular situation. But he had 25 
 saved himself by not becoming a mere pampered house- 
 dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept 
 down the fat and hardened his muscles ; and to him, 
 as to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been 
 a tonic and a health preserver. 30
 
 4 THE CAth OF THE WILD 
 
 And 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 
 
 5 Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an unde- 
 sirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. 
 He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gam- 
 bling, he had one besetting weakness — faith in a 
 system°; and this made his damnation certain. For 
 
 10 to play a system requires money, while the wages 
 of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a 
 wife and numerous progeny. 
 
 The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' 
 Association, and the boys were busy organizing an 
 
 15 athletic club, on the memorable night of Manuel's 
 treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through 
 the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a 
 stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no 
 one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as 
 
 20 College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and 
 money chinked between them. 
 
 "You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 
 'm," the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a 
 piece of stout rope around Buck's neck under the collar. 
 
 25 "Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel, 
 and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. 
 
 Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. 
 To be sure, it was an unwonted performance : but 
 he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give 
 
 30 them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own.
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 6 
 
 But when the ends of the rope were placed in the 
 stranger's hands, he growled menacingly. He had 
 merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride be- 
 lieving that to intimate was to command. But to 
 his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, 5 
 shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at 
 the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close 
 by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over 
 on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessh^ 
 while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out lo 
 of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. 
 Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and 
 never in all his life had he been so angry. But his 
 strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew^ nothing 
 when the train was flagged and the tvv^o men threw 15 
 him into the baggage car. 
 
 The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his 
 tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted 
 along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse 
 shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him 20 
 where he was. He had travelled too often with the 
 Judge not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage 
 car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the un- 
 bridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang 
 for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His 25 
 jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his 
 senses were choked out of him once more. 
 
 "Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled 
 hand from the baggageman, who had been attracted 
 -by the sounds of struggle. " I'm takin' 'm up for the 30
 
 6 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that 
 he can cure 'm." 
 
 Concerning that night's ride the man spoke most 
 eloquentl}' for himself, in a Httle shed, back of a saloon 
 5 on the San Francisco water front. 
 
 ''All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled, "an' 
 I wouldn't do it over for a thousand, cold cash." 
 
 His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, 
 and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee to 
 10 ankle. 
 
 "How much did the other mug get?" the saloon- 
 keeper demanded. 
 
 "A hundred," was the reply. "Wouldn't take a 
 sou less, so help me." 
 15 "That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon- 
 keeper calculated ; " and he's worth it, or I'm a square- 
 head." ° 
 
 The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and 
 looked at his lacerated hand. "If I don't get the 
 20 hydrophoby — " 
 
 "It'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 
 25 tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck 
 attempted to face his tormentors. But he was thrown 
 down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in 
 filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then 
 the rope was removed, and he was flung into a cagelike 
 30 crate.
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 7 
 
 There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, 
 nursing his wrath and wounded pride. He could not 
 understand what it all meant. What did they want 
 with him, these strange men? Why were they keep- 
 ing him pent up in this narrow crate ? He did not 5 
 know why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of 
 impending calamity. Several times during the night 
 he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, 
 expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least. But 
 each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper 10 
 that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow 
 candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled 
 in Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl. 
 
 But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the 
 morning four men entered and picked up the crate. 15 
 More tormentors. Buck decided, for they were evil- 
 looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he 
 stormed and raged at them tlu-ough the bars. They 
 only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he 
 promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that 20 
 that was what they wanted. Whereupon he lay down 
 sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a 
 wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was im- 
 prisoned, began a passage through many hands. 
 Clerks in the express office took charge of him; he 25 
 was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried 
 him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon 
 a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into 
 a great railway depot, and finally he was deposited 
 in an express car. 30
 
 8 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 For two days and nights this express car was dragged 
 along at the tail of shrieking locomotives ; and for 
 two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank. In 
 his anger he had met the first advances of the express 
 5 messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by 
 teasing him. When he flung himself against the bars, 
 quivering and frothing, they laughed at him and 
 taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable 
 dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It 
 
 10 was all very silly, he knew; but therefore the more 
 outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed. 
 He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of 
 water caused him severe suffering and fanned his' 
 wrath to fever pitch. For that matter, high-strung 
 
 15 and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him 
 into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his 
 parched and swollen throat and tongue. 
 
 He was glad for one thing : the rope was off his neck. 
 That had given them an unfair advantage; but now 
 
 20 that it was off, he would show them. They would 
 never get another rope around his neck. Upon that 
 he was resolved. For two days and nights he neither 
 ate nor drank, and during those two davs and nights 
 of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded 
 
 25 ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned 
 blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed" into a raging 
 fiend. So changed was he that the Judge himself 
 would not have recognized him ; and the express 
 messengers breathed with relief when they bundled 
 
 30 him off the train at Seattle.
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 9 
 
 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 5 
 he hurled himself savagely against the bars. The man 
 smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club. 
 
 "You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver 
 asked. 
 
 "Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into 10 
 the crate for a pry. There was an instantaneous 
 scattering of the four men who had carried it in, and 
 from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to 
 watch the performance. 
 
 Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his 15 
 teeth into it, surging and wrestling with it. Wherever 
 the hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the 
 inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to 
 get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly 
 intent on getting him out. 20 
 
 "Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had 
 made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's 
 body. At the same time he dropped the hatchet 
 and shifted the club to his right hand. 
 
 And Buck was truly a red-e^'ed devil, as he drew 25 
 himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth 
 foaming, a mad glitter in his bloodshot eyes. Straight 
 at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds 
 of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days 
 and nights. In mid air, just as his jaws were about to 30
 
 10 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 close on the man, he received a shock that checked 
 his body and brought his teeth together with an 
 agonizing chp. He whirled over, fetching the ground 
 on his back and side. He had never been struck by a 
 5 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 
 
 10 club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen 
 times he charged, and as often the club broke the charge 
 and smashed him down. 
 
 After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his 
 feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, 
 
 15 the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears, his 
 beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. 
 Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a 
 frightful blow on the nose. All the pain he had endured 
 was as nothing compared with the exquisite agony of 
 
 20 this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its feroc- 
 ity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the 
 man, shifting the club from right to left, coolly caught 
 him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching 
 downward and backward. Buck described a complete 
 
 25 circle in the air, and half of another, then crashed to 
 the ground on his head and chest. 
 
 For the last time he rushed. The man struck the 
 shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, 
 and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly 
 
 30 senseless.
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 11 
 
 "He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's. wot I say," 
 one of the men on the wall cried enthusiasticalh'. 
 
 "Driither break cayuses° any day, and twice on 
 Sundays," was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on 
 the wagon and started the horses. 5 
 
 Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. 
 He lay where he had fallen, and from there he watched 
 the man in the red sweater. 
 
 "'xA.nswers to th^ name of Buck,'" the man solil- 
 oquized,° quoting from the saloon-keeper's letter which 10 
 had announced the consignment of the crate and con- 
 tents. "Well, Buck, my boy," he went on in a genial 
 voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing 
 we can do is to let it go at that. You've learned your 
 place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all'll 15 
 go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and 
 I'll whale the stufHn' outa you. Understand?" 
 
 As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so 
 mercilessly pounded, and though Buck's hair in- 
 voluntarily bristled at touch of the hand, he endured 20 
 it without protest. When the man brought him water, 
 he drank eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of 
 raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man's hand. 
 
 He was beaten (he knew that) ; but he was not 
 broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance 25 
 against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, 
 and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club 
 was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign 
 of primitive law,° and he met the introduction halfway. 
 The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect ; and while he 30
 
 12 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the 
 latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days 
 went by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of 
 ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as 
 5 he had come ; and, one and all, he watched them pass 
 under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. 
 Again and again, as he looked at each brutal per- 
 formance, the lesson was driven home to Buck : a 
 man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, 
 
 10 though not necessarily conciliated. ° Of this last 
 Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs 
 that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, 
 and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would 
 neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle 
 
 15 for mastery. 
 
 Now and again men came, strangers, who talked 
 excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions 
 to the man in the red sweater. And at such times 
 that money passed between them the strangers took 
 
 20 one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck 
 wondered where they went, for they never came back ; 
 but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and 
 he was glad each time when he was not selected. 
 
 Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a 
 
 25 little weazened man who spat broken English and 
 many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck 
 could not understand. 
 
 "Sacredam !" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. 
 " Dat one dam bully dog ! Eh ? How moch ? " 
 
 30 "Three hundred, and a present at that," was the
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 13 
 
 prompt reply of the man in the red sweater. "And 
 seein' it's government money, you ain't got no kick 
 coming, eh, Perrault?" 
 
 Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of 
 dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted 5 
 demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine an animaL 
 The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would 
 its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, 
 and when he looked at Buck he knew that he was one 
 in a thousand — " One in ten t'ousand," he com- lo 
 mented mentally. 
 
 Buck saw money pass between them, and was not 
 surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfound- 
 land, and he were led away by the little weazened 
 man. That was the last he saw of the man in the 15 
 red sweater, and as Curly and he looked at receding 
 Seattle from the deck of the Nanchal, it was the 
 last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he 
 were taken below b}- Perrault and turned over to a 
 black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a 20 
 French-Canadian, and swarthy°; but Francois was a 
 French-Canadian half-breed,° and twice as swarthy. 
 They were a new kind of men to Buck (of which 
 he was destined to see many more), and while he 
 developed no affection for them, he none the less 25 
 grew honestly to respect them. He speedily learned 
 that Perrault and Fran9ois were fair men, calm and 
 impartial in administering justice, and too wise in 
 the way of dogs to be fooled by dogs. 
 
 In the 'tween-decks° of the Narwhal, Buck and 30
 
 14 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 Curly joined two other dogs. One of them was a 
 big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen° who had 
 been brought away by a w^haling captain, and who had 
 later accompanied a Geological Survey into the Barrens. 
 
 5 He was friendly, in a treacherous sort of way, 
 smiling into one's face the while he meditated some 
 underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from 
 Buck's food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to 
 punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through 
 
 10 the air, reaching the culprit first ; and nothing re- 
 mained to Buck but to recover the bone. That was 
 fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began 
 his rise in Buck's estimation. 
 
 The other dog made no advances, nor received 
 
 15 any ; also, he did not attempt to steal from the new- 
 comers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and he 
 showed Curly plainl}^ that all he desired was to be 
 left alone, and further, that there would be trouble if 
 he were not left alone. "Dave" he was called, and 
 
 20 he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took 
 interest in nothing, not even when the Nanvhal crossed 
 Queen Charlotte Sound and rolled and pitched and 
 bucked° like a thing possessed. ° When Buck and 
 Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his 
 
 25 head as though annoyed, favored them with an in- 
 curious glance, yaw^ned, and went to sleep again. 
 
 Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless 
 pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very 
 like another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather 
 
 30 was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning.
 
 INTO THE PRIMITIVE 15 
 
 the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded 
 with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did 
 the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand. 
 Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. 
 At the first step upon the cold surface. Buck's feet 5 
 sank into a white mushy something very like mud. 
 He sprang back with a snort. More of this white 
 stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, 
 but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, 
 then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and 10 
 the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He 
 tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers 
 laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew 
 not why, for it was his first snow.
 
 II 
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 
 
 Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a night- 
 mare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. 
 He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civili- 
 zation and flung into the heart of things primordial. 
 
 5 No lazy, sunkissed life was this, with nothing to do 
 but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor 
 rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and 
 action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. 
 There was imperative need to be constantly alert; 
 
 10 for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. 
 They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but 
 the law of club and fang. 
 
 He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish crea- 
 tures fought, and his first experience taught him an 
 
 15 unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious 
 experience, ° else he would not have lived to profit 
 by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped 
 near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, 
 made advances to a husky dog the size of a fullgrown 
 
 20 wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no 
 warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of 
 
 16
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 17 
 
 teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly 's face was 
 ripped open from eye to jaw. 
 
 It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and 
 leap away ; but there was more to it than this. Thirty 
 or forty huskies° ran to the spot and surrounded the 5 
 combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did 
 not comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager 
 way with which they were licking their chops. Curly 
 rushed her antagonist, who struck again and leaped 
 aside. He met her next rush w^ith his chest, in a lO 
 peculiar fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She 
 never regained them. This was what the onlooking 
 huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her, 
 snarling and yelping, and she w^as buried, screaming 
 with agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies. 15 
 
 So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck 
 was taken aback. He saw Spitz run out his scarlet 
 tongue in a w^ay he had of laughing; and he saw 
 Francois, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of 
 dogs. Three men with clubs were helping him to scat- 20 
 ter them. It did not take long. Two minutes from 
 the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants 
 were clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless 
 in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to 
 pieces, the swart° half-breed standing over her and 25 
 cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck 
 to trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No 
 f airplay. Once down, that was the end of you. Well, 
 he would see to it that he never went down. Spitz 
 ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that 30
 
 18 TEE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 moment Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless 
 hatred. 
 
 Before he had recovered from the shock caused by 
 the tragic passing of Curly, he received another shock. 
 5Fran9ois fastened upon him an arrangement of straps 
 and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had seen 
 the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he 
 had seen horses work, so he was set to work, hauling 
 Fran9ois on a sled to the forest that fringed the valley, 
 
 10 and returning with a load of firewood. Though his 
 dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draugiit 
 animal, he was too wise to rebel. He buckled down 
 with a will and did his best, tliough it was all new and 
 strange. Franyois was stern, demanding instant obedi- 
 
 15 ence, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedi- 
 ence; while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler,° 
 nipped Buck's hind quarters whenever he was in error. 
 Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced, and while 
 he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp 
 
 20 reproof now and again, or cunningly threw his weight 
 in the traces to jerk Buck into the way he should 
 go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined 
 tuition of his two mates and Fran9ois made remarkable 
 progress. Ere they returned to camp he knew enough 
 
 25 to stop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush," to swing 
 wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler 
 when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels. 
 
 "T'ree vair' good dogs," Francois told Perrault. 
 "Dat Buck, heem pool lak hell. I tich heem queek 
 
 30 as anything."
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 19 
 
 By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be 
 on the trail with his despatches, returned with two 
 more dogs. "Billce" and "Joe" he called them, 
 tv/o brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one 
 mother though they were, they were as different as 5 
 day and night. Billee's one fault was his excessive good 
 nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and 
 introspective,° with a perpetual snarl and a malignant° 
 eye. Buck received them in comradely fashion, Dave 
 ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to thrash first lO 
 one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail ap- 
 peasingly,° turned to run when he saw that appeasement 
 was of no avail, and cried (still appeasingly) when Spitz's 
 sharp teeth scored his flank. But no matter how 
 Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face 15 
 him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and 
 snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as he could 
 snap, and eyes diabolically gleaming — the incarnation 
 of belligerent fear.° So terrible was his appearance 
 that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him ; but 20 
 to cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inof- 
 fensive and wailing Billee and drove him to the confines 
 of the camp. 
 
 By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old 
 husky, long and lean and gaunt, with a battle-scarred 25 
 face and a single eye which flashed a warning of prow- 
 ess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks, 
 which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked 
 nothing, gave nothing, expected nothing; and when 
 he marched slowly and deliberately into their midst, 30
 
 20 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity 
 which Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did 
 not like to be approached on his blind side. Of this 
 offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first 
 5 knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks 
 whirled upon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone 
 for three inches up and down. Forever after Buck 
 avoided his blind side, and to the last of their comrade- 
 ship had no more trouble. His only apparent ambition, 
 
 10 like Dave's, was to be left alone; though, as Buck 
 was afterward to learn, each of them possessed one 
 other and even more vital ambition. 
 
 That night Buck faced the great problem of sleep- 
 ing. The tent, illumined by a candle, glowed warmly 
 
 15 in the midst of the white plain ; and when he, as a 
 matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and Francois 
 bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till 
 he recovered from his consternation and fled ignomini- 
 ously° into .the outer cold. A chill wind was blowing 
 
 20 that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom 
 into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow 
 and attempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove him 
 shivering to his feet. Miserable and disconsolate,^ 
 he wandered about among the many tents, only to 
 
 25 find that one place was as cold as another. Here and 
 there savage dogs rushed upon him, but he bristled 
 his neck-hair and snarled (for he was learning fast), 
 and they let him go his way unmolested. 
 
 Finally an idea came to him. He would return 
 
 30 and see how his own team-mates were making out.
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 21 
 
 To his astonishment, they had disappeared. Again 
 he wandered about through the great camp, looking 
 for them, and again he returned. Were they in the 
 tent? No, that could not be, else he would not have 
 been driven out. Then where could they possibly be ? 5 
 With drooping tail and shivering body, very forlorn 
 indeed, he aimlessly circled the tent. Suddenly the 
 snow gave way beneath his fore legs and he sank down. 
 Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back, 
 bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and un- 10 
 known. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and 
 he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air 
 ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under 
 the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined pla- 
 catingly,° squirmed and wriggled to show his good 15 
 will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for 
 peace, to lick Buck's face with his warm wet tongue. 
 
 Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, 
 eh? Buck confidently selected a spot, and w^ith much 
 fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a hole for himself. 20 
 In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined 
 space and he w^as asleep. The day had been long and 
 arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though 
 he growled and barked and wrestled w^ith bad dreams. 
 
 Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of 25 
 the waking camp. At first he did not know where he 
 was. It had snowed during the night and he was com- 
 pletely buried. The snow walls pressed him on 
 every side, and a great surge of fear swept through 
 him — the fear of the wild thing for the trap. It was 30
 
 22 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 a token that he was harking back through his own 
 life to the lives of his forbears° ; for he was a civilized 
 dog, an unduly civilized" dog, and of his own experi- 
 ence knew no trap and so could not of himself fear it. 
 
 5 The muscles of his whole body contracted spasmodi- 
 cally and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoul- 
 ders 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 
 
 10 on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before 
 him and knew where he was and remembered all that 
 had passed from the time he went for a stroll with 
 Manuel to the hole he liad dug for himself the night 
 before. 
 
 15 A shout from Francois 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, 
 
 20 he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he was 
 particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck. 
 
 Three more huskies were added to the team inside 
 an hour, making a total of nine, and before another 
 quarter of an hour had passed they were in harness 
 
 25 and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Canon. 
 Buck was glad to be gone, and though the work was 
 hard he found he did not particularly despise it. He 
 was surprised at the eagerness which animated the 
 whole team, and which was communicated to him; 
 
 30 but still more surprising was the change wrought in
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 23 
 
 Dave and Sol-leks. They were new dogs, utterly 
 transformed by the harness. All passiveness and un- 
 concern had dropped from them. They were alert 
 and active, anxious that the work should go well, and 
 fiercely irritable with whatever, by delay or confusion, 5 
 retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed the 
 supreme expression of their being, and all that they 
 lived for and the only thing in which they took delight. 
 
 Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of 
 him was Buck, then came Sol-leks ; the rest of the lO 
 team was strung out ahead', single file, to the leader, 
 which position was filled by Spitz. 
 
 Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and 
 Sol-leks so that he might receive instruction. Apt 
 scholar that he was, they were equally apt teachers, 15 
 never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing 
 their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair 
 and very wise. He never nipped Buck without cause, 
 and he never failed to nip him when he stood in need of 
 it. As Francois's whip backed him up. Buck found it 20 
 to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. 
 Once, during a brief halt, w^hen he got tangled in the 
 "traces and delayed the start, both Dave and Sol-leks 
 flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The 
 resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good 25 
 care to keep the traces clear thereafter; and ere the 
 day was done, so well had he -mastered his work, his 
 mates about ceased nagging him. Francois's whip 
 snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck 
 by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them. 30
 
 24 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through 
 Sheep Camp, past the Scales and the timber Hne, across 
 glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and 
 over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between 
 5 the salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the 
 sad and lonely North. They made good time down 
 the chain of lakes which fills the craters of extinct 
 volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge 
 camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands 
 
 10 of gold-seekers were building boats against the breakup 
 of the ice in the spring. Buck made his hole in the 
 snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all 
 too early was routed out in the cold darkness and 
 harnessed with his mates to the sled. 
 
 15 That day they made forty miles, the trail being 
 packed; but the next day, and for many days to fol- 
 low, they broke their own trail, worked harder, and 
 made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead 
 of the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to 
 
 20 make it easier for them. Fran9ois, guiding the sled 
 at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places with him, 
 but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided 
 himself on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was " 
 indispensable, for the fall ice was very thin, and where 
 
 25 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 
 
 30 always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 25 
 
 of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck 
 was ravenous. The pound and a half of sun-dried 
 salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to 
 go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from 
 perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because 5 
 they weighed less and were born to the life, received a 
 pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good 
 condition. 
 
 He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had char- 
 acterized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that lo 
 his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished 
 ration. There was no defending it. While he was 
 fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the 
 throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast 
 as they ; and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he 15 
 was not above taking what did not belong to him. He 
 watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the 
 new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a 
 slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he 
 duplicated the performance the following day, getting 20 
 away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was 
 raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awk- 
 ward blunderer who was always getting caught, was 
 punished for Buck's misdeed. 
 
 This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the 25 
 hostile Northland environment. It marked his adapt- 
 ability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing 
 conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift 
 and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or 
 going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a 30
 
 26 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It 
 was all v.ell enough in the Southland, under the law 
 of love and fellowship, to respect private property and 
 personal feelings ; but in the Northland, under the law 
 5 of club and fang, whoso took such things mto account 
 was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would 
 fail to prosper. 
 
 Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was 
 all, and unconsciously he accommodated himseK to 
 
 10 the new mode of life. All liis days, no matter what 
 the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club 
 of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a 
 more fundamental and primitive code.° Civilized, he 
 could have died for a moral consideration, say the 
 
 15 defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but the com- 
 pleteness of his decivilization° was now evidenced by 
 his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consider- 
 ation° and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy 
 of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did 
 
 20 not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out 
 of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he 
 did were done because it was easier to do them than 
 not to do them. 
 
 His development (or retrogression^) was rapid. His 
 
 25 muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to 
 all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as 
 external economy. ° He could eat anything, no matter 
 how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the 
 juices of his stomach extracted the last particle of 
 
 30 nutriment; and liis blood carried it to the farthest
 
 THE LAW OF CLUB AND FANG 27 
 
 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 5 
 out with his teeth when it collected between his toes ; 
 and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of 
 ice over the water hole, he would break it by rearing 
 and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most con- 
 spicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and 10 
 forecast it a night in advance. No matter how breath- 
 less the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the 
 wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward,^ 
 sheltered and snug. 
 
 And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts 15 
 long dead became alive again. The domesticated 
 generations fell from him. In vague ways he remem- 
 bered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the 
 wdld dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest 
 and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no 20 
 task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the 
 quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten 
 ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, 
 xind the old tricks which they had stamped into the 
 heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to 25 
 him without effort or discovery, as though they had 
 been his alwa\^s. And when, on the still cold nights, 
 he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf- 
 like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose 
 at star and howling down through the centuries and 30
 
 28 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 through him. And his cadences° were their cadences, 
 the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them 
 was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and 
 dark. 
 5 Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life° is, the 
 ancient song surged through him and he came into his 
 own again ; and he came because men had found a 
 yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a 
 gardener's helper whose wages did not lap over the 
 I0needs° of his wife and divers small copies of himself.
 
 I 
 
 III 
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 
 
 The dominant primordial beast° was strong in Buck, 
 and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and 
 grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His new-born 
 cunning gave him poise and control. He was too 
 busy adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, 5 
 and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided 
 them whenever possible. A certain deliberateness 
 characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rash- 
 ness and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred 
 between him and Spitz he betrayed no impatience, lO 
 shunned all offensive acts. 
 
 On the other hand, possibly because he divined in 
 Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of showing his teeth. He even went out of 
 his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start 15 
 the fight which could end only in the death of one or 
 the other. 
 
 Early in the trip this might have taken place had 
 it not been for an unwonted accident. At the end 
 of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp on 20 
 the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind 
 that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness, had 
 
 29
 
 30 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 forced them to grope for a camping place. They 
 could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose 
 a perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Fran9ois 
 were compelled to make their fire and spread their 
 5 sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. The tent 
 they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light. 
 A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire 
 that thawed down through the ice and left them to 
 eat supper in the dark. 
 
 10 Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made 
 his nest. So snug and warm was it, that he was 
 loath to leave it when Francois distributed the fish 
 which he had first thawed over the fire. But when 
 Buck finished his ration and returned, he found his 
 
 15 nest occupied. A warning snarl told him that the 
 trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided 
 trouble with his enemy, but this was too much. The 
 beast in him roared. He sprang upon Spitz with a 
 fury which surprised them both, and Spitz particularly, 
 
 20 for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach 
 him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who 
 managed to Jiold his own only because of his great 
 weight and size. 
 
 Fran9ois was surprised, too, when they shot out 
 
 25 in a tangle from the disrupted nest and he divined 
 the cause of the trouble. "A-a-ah!" he cried to 
 Buck. " Gif it to heem, by Gar ! Gif it to heem, 
 the dirty t'eef !" 
 
 Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer 
 
 30 rage and eagerness as he circled back and forth for a
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 31 
 
 chance to 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 5 
 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 skulk- lo 
 ing furry forms — starving huskies, four or five score 
 of them, who had scented the camp from some Indian 
 village. They had crept in while Buck and Spitz 
 were fighting, and when the two men sprang among 
 them with stout clubs they showed their teeth and 15 
 fought back. They were crazed by the smell of the 
 food. Perrault found one with head buried in the 
 grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, 
 and the grub-box was capsized on the ground. On 
 the instant a score of the famished brutes were scram- 20 
 bling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon 
 them unheeded. They yelped and howled under the 
 rain of blows, but struggled none the less madly till 
 the last crumb had been devoured. 
 
 In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had 25 
 burst out of their nests only to ])e set upon by the 
 fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such dogs. 
 It seemed as though their bones would burst through 
 their skins. They wtre mere skeletons, draped loosel}^ 
 in draggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. ° 30
 
 32 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 But the hunger-madness made them terrifying, irre- 
 sistible. There was no opposing them. The team- 
 dogs were swept back against the cHff at the first onset. 
 Buck was beset b\' three huskies, and in a trice his 
 5 head and shoulders w^ere 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 
 
 10 of a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. 
 Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon the crippled ani- 
 mal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth 
 and a jerk. Buck got a frothing adversary by the 
 throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth 
 
 15 sank through the jugular. The warm taste of it in 
 his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He 
 flung himself upon another, and at the same time 
 felt teeth sink into his own throat. It was Spitz, 
 treacherously attacking from the side. 
 
 20 Perrault and Fran9ois, having cleaned out their 
 part of the camp, hurried to save their sled-dogs. 
 The wild wave of famished beasts rolled back before 
 them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only 
 for a moment. The two men were compelled to run 
 
 25 back to save the grub ; upon which the huskies returned 
 to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified into bra- 
 very, sprang through the savage circle and fled away 
 over the ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, 
 with the rest of the team behind. As Buck drew 
 
 3) himself together to spring after them, out of the tail
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL ^EAST 33 
 
 of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evi- 
 dent intention of overthrowing him. Once off his 
 feet and under that mass of huskies, there was no 
 hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock 
 of Spitz's charge, then joined the flight out on the 5 
 lake. 
 
 Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and 
 sought shelter in the forest. Though unpursued, 
 they were in a sorry plight. There was not one who 
 was not wounded in four or five places, while some lo 
 were wounded grievously. Dub was badly injured 
 in a hind leg ; Dolly, the last husky added to the team 
 at Dyea, had a badly torn throat ; Joe had lost an 
 eye ; while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed 
 and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout 15 
 the night. At daybreak they limped warily back to 
 camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in 
 bad tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. 
 The huskies had chewed through the sled lashings 
 and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter 20 
 how remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had 
 eaten a pair of Perrault's moose-hide moccasins, 
 chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet 
 of lash from the end of Francois's whip. He broke 
 from a mournful contemplation of it to look over 25 
 his wounded dogs. 
 
 **Ah, my frien's," he said softly, ^'mebbe it mek 
 you mad dog, dose many bites. Mebbe all mad 
 dog, sacredami Wot you t'ink, eh, Perrault?" 
 
 The courier shook his head dubiously. With 30
 
 34 JHE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 four hundred miles of trail still between him and Daw- 
 son, 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 
 5 team was under way, struggling painfully over the 
 hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered, 
 and for that matter, the hardest between them and 
 Dawson. 
 
 The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild 
 
 10 water defied the frost, and it was in the eddies only 
 and in the quiet places that the ice held at all. Six 
 days of exhausting toil were required to cover those 
 thirty terrible miles. And terrible they were, for 
 every foot of them was accomplished at the risk of 
 
 15 life to dog and man. A dozen times, Perrault, nosing 
 the way, broke through the ice bridges, being saved 
 by the long pole he carried, which he so held that it 
 fell each time across the hole made by his body. But 
 a cold snap was on, the thermometer registering 
 
 20 fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he 
 was compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his 
 garments. 
 
 Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing 
 daunted him that he had been chosen for government 
 
 25 courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely 
 thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and 
 struggling on from dim dawn to dark. He skirted 
 the frowning shores on rim ice that bent and crackled 
 under foot and upon which they dared not halt. Once, 
 
 30 the sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 35 
 
 were half-frozen and all but drowned by the time they 
 were dragged out. The usual fire was necessary to 
 save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the 
 two men kept them on the run around the fire, sweat- 
 ing and thawing, so close that they were singed by the 5 
 flames. 
 
 At another time Spitz w^ent through, dragging the 
 whole team after him up to Buck, who strained back- 
 ward with all his strength, his fore paws on the slip- 
 pery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all 10 
 around. But behind him was Dave, likewise strain- 
 ing backward, and behind the sled was Francois, 
 pulling till his tendons cracked. 
 
 Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, 
 and there was no escape except up the cliff. Per- 15 
 rault scaled it by a miracle, while Fran9ois prayed 
 for just that miracle; and with every thong and 
 sled lashing and the last bit of harness rove into a 
 long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to the 
 cliff crest. Fran9ois came up at last, after the sled 20 
 and load. Then came the search for a place to descend, 
 which descent was ultimately made by the aid of the 
 rope, and night found them back on the river with 
 a quarter of a mile to the day's credit. 
 
 By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good 25 
 ice. Buck was played out. The rest of the dogs were 
 in like condition ; but Perrault, to make up lost time, 
 pushed them late and early. The first day they 
 covered thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon ; the next 
 day thirty-five more to the Little Salmon; the third 30
 
 36 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 day forty miles, which brought them well up toward 
 the Five Fingers. 
 
 Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the 
 feet of the huskies. His had softened during the 
 5 many generations since the day his last wild ancestor 
 was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man.° All 
 day long he limped in agony, and camp once made, 
 lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as he was, he 
 would not move to receive his ration of fish, which 
 
 ioFran9ois had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver 
 rubbed Buck's feet for half an hour each night after 
 supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins 
 to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great 
 relief, and Buck caused even the weazened face of 
 
 loPerrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, when 
 Fran9ois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his 
 back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and 
 refused to budge without them. Later his feet grew 
 hard to the trail, and the worn-out footgear was thrown 
 
 20 away. 
 
 At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing 
 up, Dolly, who had never been conspicuous for any- 
 thing, went suddenly mad. She announced her 
 condition by a long, heart-breaking wolf howl that 
 
 25 sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straight 
 for Buck. He had never seen a dog go mad, nor did 
 he have any reason to fear madness ; yet he knew that 
 here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. 
 Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and 
 
 30 frothing, one leap behind ; nor could she gain on him,
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 37 
 
 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, 5 
 and in desperation started to cross it. And all the 
 time, though he did not look, he could hear her snarling 
 just one leap behind. Fran9ois called to him a quarter 
 of a mile away and he doubled back, still one leap 
 ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his 10 
 faith in that Fran9ois w^ould save him. The dog- 
 driver held the axe poised in his hand, and as Buck 
 shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's 
 head. 
 
 Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, 15 
 sobbing for breath, helpless. This was Spitz's oppor- 
 tunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice his teeth 
 sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the - 
 flesh to the bone. Then Fran9ois's lash descended, 
 and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spitz receive 20 
 the worst whipping as yet administered to any of the 
 team. 
 
 "One devil, dat Spitz," remarked Perrault. "Some 
 dam day heem keel dat Buck." 
 
 "Dat Buck two devils," was Francois's rejoinder. 25 
 " All de tam I watch dat Buck I know for sure. Lissen : 
 some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell an' den heem 
 chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow. 
 Sure. I know." 
 
 From then on it was war between them. Spitz, .30
 
 38 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 as lead-dog and acknowledged master of the team, 
 felt his supremacy threatened by this strange South- 
 land dog.. And strange Buck was to him, for of the 
 many Southland dogs he had known, not one had 
 5 shown up worthily in camp and on trail. They were 
 all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and star- 
 vation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured 
 and prospered, matching the husky in strength, sav- 
 agery, and cunning. Then he was a masterful dog, 
 
 10 and what made him dangerous was the fact that the 
 club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all 
 blind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery. 
 He was preeminently cunning, and could bide his time 
 with a patience that was nothing less than primitive. 
 
 15 It was inevitable that the clash for leadership 
 should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it be- 
 cause it was his nature, because he had been gripped 
 tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of 
 the trail and trace — that pride which holds dogs in 
 
 20 the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joy- 
 fully in the harness, and breaks their hearts if they 
 are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of 
 Dave as wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with 
 all his strength; the pride that laid hold of them at 
 
 25 break of camp, transforming them from sour and 
 sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious crea- 
 tures; the pride that spurred them on all da}' and 
 dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them 
 fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This 
 
 30 was the pride that bore up Spitz and made him thi'ash
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMOBDIAL BEAST 39 
 
 the sled-dogs who bhmdered and shirked in the traces 
 or bid away at harness-up time in the morning. Like- 
 wise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a 
 possible lead-dog. And this w^as Buck's pride, too. 
 
 He openly threatened the other's leadership. He 5 
 came between hira and the shirks he should have 
 punished. And he did it deliberately. One night 
 there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, 
 the malingerer," did not appear. He was securely 
 hidden in his nest under a foot of snow. rran(;'ois lO 
 called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild 
 with wrath. He raged through the camp, smelling 
 and digging in every likely place, snarling so fright- 
 fully that Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-place. 
 
 But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew 15 
 at him to punish him. Buck flew, with equal rage, in 
 between. So unexpected was it, and so shrewdly 
 managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his 
 feet. Pike, who had been trembling abjectly, took 
 heart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his over- 20 
 thrown leader. Buck, to whom fairplay was a for- 
 gotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Fran- 
 cois, chuckling at the incident while unswerving in 
 the administration of justice, brought his lash down 
 upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive 25 
 Buck from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the 
 whip was brought into play. Half-stunned by the 
 blow. Buck was knocked backward and the lash laid 
 upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly pun- 
 ished the many times offending Pike. 30'
 
 40 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer 
 and closer. Buck still continued to interfere between 
 Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily, when 
 Fran9ois was not around. With the covert° mutiny 
 oof Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and 
 increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but 
 the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things 
 no longer went right. There was continual bicker- 
 ing and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and 
 
 10 at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Fran9ois 
 busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehen- 
 sion of the life-and-death struggle between the two 
 which he knew must take place sooner or later; and 
 on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling" 
 
 15 and strife among the other dogs turned him out of 
 his sleeping robe, fearful that Buck and Spitz were 
 at it. 
 
 But the opportunity did not i^resent itself, and 
 they pulled into Dawson one dreary afternoon with 
 
 20 the great fight still to come. Here were many men, 
 and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. 
 It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs 
 should work. All day they swung up and down the 
 main street in long teams, and in the night their jing- 
 
 25 ling bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and 
 firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did all manner 
 of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here 
 and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main 
 they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, 
 
 30 regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 41 
 
 nocturnal song, a weird and eerie° chant, in which it 
 was Buck's deHght to join. 
 
 With the aurora boreaHs° flaming coldly overhead, 
 or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land 
 numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of 5 
 the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only 
 it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings 
 and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the 
 articulate travail of existence.° It was an old song, 
 old as the breed itself — one of the first songs of the lO 
 younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was 
 invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this 
 plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When 
 he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living 
 that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the 15 
 fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to 
 them fear and mystery. And that he should be 
 stirred by it marked the completeness with which he 
 harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the 
 raw beginnings of life in the howling ages. 20 
 
 Seven days from the time they pulled into Daw- 
 son, they dropped down the steep bank by the Bar- 
 racks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and 
 Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if 
 anything more urgent than those he had brought in ; 25 
 also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed 
 tx) make the record trip of the year. Several things 
 favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated 
 the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The trail 
 they had broken into the country was packed hard by 30
 
 42 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 later journey ers. And further, the poKce had ar- 
 ranged in two or three places deposits of grub for dog 
 and man, and he was travelling light. 
 
 They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on 
 5 the first day; and the second day saw them booming 
 up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But such 
 splendid running was achieved not without great 
 trouble and vexation on the part of Fran9ois. The 
 insidious^ revolt led by Buck had destroyed the soli- 
 
 10 darity° of the team. It no longer was as one dog leap- 
 ing in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the 
 rebels led them into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. 
 No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared. The 
 old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging 
 
 15 his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one 
 night, and gulped it down under the protection of 
 Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought Spitz 
 and made him forego the punishment they deserved. 
 And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-na- 
 
 20 tured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former 
 days. Buck never came near Spitz without snarling 
 and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct ap- 
 proached that of a bully, and he was given to swag- 
 gering up and down before Spitz's very nose. 
 
 25 The breaking dowm of discipline likewise affected 
 the dogs in their relations with one another. They 
 ciuarrelled and bickered" more than ever amon^ 
 themselves, till at times the camp was a howling 
 bedlam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered, 
 
 30 though they were made irritable by the unending
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 43 
 
 squabbling. Fran9ois swore strange barbarous oaths, 
 and stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair.. 
 His lash was always singing among the dogs, but 
 it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned 
 they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his 5 
 whip, while Buck backed up the remainder of the 
 team. Fran9ois knew he was behind all the trouble^ 
 and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever 
 ever again to be caught red-handed. He worked 
 faithfully in the harness, for the toil had become a 10 
 delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to 
 precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the 
 traces. 
 
 At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after 
 supper. Dub turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered 15 
 it, and missed. In a second the whole team was in 
 full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the 
 Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who 
 joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, 
 tm-ned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of 20 
 which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface 
 of the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by main 
 strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around 
 bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down 
 low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body 25 
 flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moon- 
 light. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith,° 
 the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead. 
 
 All that stirring of old ins-tincts which at stated 
 periods drives men out from the sounding cities to 30
 
 44 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled 
 leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill — all 
 this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. 
 He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the 
 5 wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own 
 teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood. 
 There is an ecstasy" that marks the summit of life, 
 and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the 
 paradox" of living, this ecstasy comes when one is 
 
 10 most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness 
 that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of 
 living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of him- 
 self in a sheet of flame° ; it comes to the soldier, war- 
 mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it 
 
 15 came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf- 
 cry, straining after the food that was alive and that 
 fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was 
 sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of 
 his nature that were deeper than he, going back into 
 
 20 the womb of Time.° He was mastered by the sheer 
 surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy 
 of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it 
 was everything that was not death, that it was aglow 
 and rampant," expressing itself in movement, flying 
 
 25 exultantly" under the stars and over the face of dead 
 matter that did not move. 
 
 But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme 
 moods," left the pack and cut across a narrow neck 
 of land where the creek made a long bend around. 
 
 30 Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 45 
 
 bend, the frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before 
 him, he saw another and larger frost wraith leap from 
 the overhanging bank into the immediate path of the 
 rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, 
 and as the white teeth broke its back in mid air its 
 shrieked as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. At 
 sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's 
 apex in the grip of Death, the full pack at Buck's heels 
 raised a hell's chorus of delight. 
 
 Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, 10 
 but drove in upon Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard 
 that he missed the throat. They rolled over and over 
 in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost 
 as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck 
 down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth 15 
 clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he 
 backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting 
 lips that writhed and snarled. 
 
 In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. 
 It was to the death. As they circled about, snarl- 20 
 ing, 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 25 
 calm. There was not the faintest whisper of air — 
 nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths 
 of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in the frosty 
 air. They had made short work of the snowshoe 
 rabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and 30
 
 46 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 they were now drawn up in an expectant circle. They, 
 too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their 
 breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was noth- 
 ing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as 
 6 though it had always been, the wonted° w^ay of things. 
 Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen 
 through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Bar- 
 rens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs 
 and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was 
 
 10 his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and 
 destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like 
 passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till 
 he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked 
 till he had first defended that attack. 
 
 15 In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck 
 of the big white dog. Wherever his fangs struck 
 for the softer flesh, they were countered b}' the fangs 
 of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and 
 bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's 
 
 20 guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Spitz 
 in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he 
 tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled 
 near to the surface, and each time and every time 
 Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to 
 
 25 rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly 
 drawing back his head and curving in from the side, 
 he would drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, 
 as a ram by which to overthro-sy him. But instead, 
 Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz 
 
 30 leaped lightly away.
 
 THE DOMINANT PRIMORDIAL BEAST 4T 
 
 Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming 
 with blood and panting hard. The fight was grow- 
 ing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish 
 circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. 
 As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he 5 
 kept him staggering for footing Once Buck went 
 over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started up ; 
 but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the 
 circle sank down again and waited. 
 
 But Buck possessed a quality that made for lO 
 greatness — imagination. He fought by instinct," 
 but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as 
 though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the 
 last instant swept low to the snow and in. His teeth 
 closed on Spitz's left fore leg. There was a crunch of 15 
 breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three 
 legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated 
 the trick and broke the right fore leg. Despite the 
 pain and helplessness. Spitz struggled madly to keep 
 up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, loll- 20 
 ing tongues, and silver}^ breaths drifting upward, clos- 
 ing in upon him as he had seen similar circles close in 
 upon beaten antagonists in the past. Only this time 
 he was the one who was beaten. 
 
 There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. ° 25 
 Mercy was a thing reserved for gentler climes. He 
 manoeuvred for the final rush. The circle had tight- 
 ened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on 
 his flanks. He could see them, beyond Spitz and to 
 either side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes 30
 
 48 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 fixed upon him. A pause seemed to fall. Every ani- 
 mal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only 
 Spitz quivered and bristled as he staggered back and 
 forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to 
 5 frighten off impending death. Then Buck sprang 
 in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at^ 
 last squarely met shoulder. The dark circle became 
 a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared 
 from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful 
 10 champion, the dominant primordial beast who had 
 made his kill and found it good.
 
 IV 
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 
 
 " Eh ? Wot I say ? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck 
 two devils." 
 
 This was Francois's speech next morning when he 
 discovered Spitz missing and Buck covered with 
 wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its Hght5 
 pointed them out. 
 
 "Dat Spitz fight lak hell," said Perrault, as he 
 surveyed the gaping rips and cuts. 
 
 "An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was Francois's 
 answer. " An' now we make good time. No more 10 
 Spitz, no more trouble, sure." 
 
 While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded 
 the sled, the dog-driver proceeded to harness the dogs. 
 Buck trotted up to the place Spitz w^ould have occupied 
 as leader ; but Francois, not noticing him, brought 15 
 Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol- 
 leks was the best lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon 
 Sol-leks in a fury, driving him back and standing in 
 his place. 
 
 "Eh? eh?" Francois cried, slapping his thighs 20 
 gleefully. "Look at dat Buck. Heem keel dat 
 Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job." 
 E 49
 
 50 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 "Go 'way, Chook!" he cried, but Buck refused to 
 budge. 
 
 He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though 
 the dog growled threateningly, dragged him to one 
 
 5 side and replaced Sol-leks. The old dog did not like 
 it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck. 
 Fran9ois was obdurate, but when he turned his back, 
 Buck again displaced Sol-leks, who was not at all un- 
 willing to go. 
 
 10 Francois was angry. " Now, by Gar, I feex you ! " 
 he cried, coming back with a heavy club in his hand. 
 
 Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and 
 retreated slowly ; nor did he attempt to charge in when 
 Sol-leks was once more brought forward. But he 
 
 15 circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling 
 with bitterness and rage; and while he circled he 
 watched the club so as to dodge it if thrown by Fran- 
 cois, for he was become wise in the way of clubs. 
 The driver went about his work, and he called 
 
 20 to Buck when he was ready to put him in his old 
 place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two or three 
 steps. Francois followed him up, whereupon he again 
 retreated. After some time of this, Francois threw 
 down the club, thinking that Buck feared a thrashing. 
 
 25 But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to 
 escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It 
 was his by right. He had earned it, and he would not 
 be content wdth less. 
 
 Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran 
 
 30 him about for the better part of an hour. They
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 51 
 
 threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him, 
 and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his 
 seed to come after him down to the remotest genera- 
 tion, and every hair on his body and drop of blood in 
 his veins ; and he answered curse with snarl and 5 
 kept out of their reach. He did not try to run away, 
 but retreated around and around the camp, advertising 
 plainly that when his desire was met, he would come 
 in and be good. 
 
 Francois sat down and scratched his head. Per- lo 
 rault looked at his watch and swore. Time was 
 flying, and they should have been on the trail an 
 hour gone. Francois scratched his head again. He 
 shook it and grinned sheepishly" at the courier, who 
 shrugged his shoulders in sign that they were beaten. 15 
 Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks stood and 
 called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet 
 kept his distance. Francois unfastened Sol-leks's 
 traces and put him back in his old place. The team 
 stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready 20 
 for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at 
 the front. Once more Fran9ois called, and once more 
 Buck laughed and kept away. 
 
 "T'row down de club," Perrault commanded. 
 
 Fran9ois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, 25 
 laughing triumphantly, and swung around into po- 
 sition at the head of the team. His traces were 
 fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men 
 running they dashed out on to the river trail. 
 
 Higlily as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, 30
 
 52 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 with his two devils, he found, while the day was yet 
 young, that he had undervalued. At a bound Buck 
 took up the duties of leadership ; and where judgment 
 was required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he 
 
 5 showed himself the superior even of Spitz, of whom 
 Francois had never seen an equal. 
 
 But it was in giving the law and making his mates 
 live up to it, that Buck excelled. Dave and Sol- 
 leks did not mind the change in leadership. It was 
 
 10 none of their business. Their business was to toil, 
 and toil mightily, in the traces. So long as that 
 were not interfered with, they did not care what hap- 
 pened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all 
 they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of 
 
 15 the team, however, had grown unruly during the 
 last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great now 
 that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape. 
 
 Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never 
 put an ounce more of his weight against the breast- 
 
 20 band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and 
 repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day 
 was done he was pulling more than ever before in 
 his life. The first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, 
 was punished roundly — a thing that Spitz had 
 
 25 never succeeded in doing. Buck sim.ply smothered 
 him by virtue of superior weight, and cut him up till 
 he ceased snapping and began to whine for mercy. 
 
 The general tone of the team picked up immedi- 
 ately. It recovered its old-time solidarity, and once 
 
 30 more the dogs leaped as one dog in the traces. At the
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 53 
 
 Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, 
 were added ; and the celerity with which Buck broke 
 them in took aw^ay Francois's breath. 
 
 " Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck ! " he cried. 
 " No, nevaire ! Heem worth one t'ousan' dollair, by 5 
 Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?" 
 
 And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record 
 then, and gaining day by day. The trail was in 
 excellent condition, well packed and hard, and there 
 was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It 10 
 was not too cold. The temperature dropped to fifty 
 below zero and remained there the whole trip. The 
 men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on 
 the jump, with but infrequent stoppages. 
 
 The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated 15 
 with ice, and they covered in one day going out what 
 had taken them ten days coming in. In one run thej^ 
 made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge 
 to the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, 
 and Bennett (seventy miles of lakes), they flew so 20 
 fast that the man whose turn it was to run towed 
 behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last 
 night of the second week they topped White Pass and 
 dropped down the sea slope with the lights of Skaguay 
 and of the shipping at their feet. 25 
 
 It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days 
 they had averaged forty miles. For three days Per- 
 rault and Francois threw chests° up and down the main 
 street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to 
 drink, while the team was the constant centre of a 30
 
 "54 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 worshipful crowd of dog-busters and mushers.° Then 
 three or foui* western bad men aspired to clean out the 
 town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, 
 and public interest turned to other idols. Next came 
 5 official orders. Fran9ois called Buck to him, threw his 
 arms around him, wept over him. And that was the 
 last of Francois and Perrault. Like other men, they 
 passed out of Buck's life for good. 
 
 A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his 
 
 10 mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams 
 he started back o^er the weary trail to Dawson. It 
 was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy 
 toil each day, with a heavy load behind ; for this was 
 the mail train, carrying word from the world to the 
 
 15 men who sought gold under the shadow of the Pole. 
 
 Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the 
 
 work, taking pride in it after the manner of Dave 
 
 and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates, whether 
 
 they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It 
 
 20 was a monotonous life, operating with machine-like 
 regularity. One day was very like another. At 
 a certain time each morning the cooks turned out, 
 fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, 
 while some broke camp, others harnessed the dogs, 
 
 25 and they were under way an hour or so before the 
 darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, 
 camp was made. Some pitched the flies, others cut 
 firewood and pine boughs for the beds, and still others 
 carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the dogs were 
 
 30 fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day,
 
 WHO HAS }VON TO MASTERSHIP 55 
 
 though 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 5 
 his teeth, they got out of his way. 
 
 Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, 
 hind legs crouched under him, fore legs stretched 
 out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking dreamily 
 at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge 10 
 Miller's big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara 
 Valley, and of the cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, 
 the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the Japanese pug; 
 but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, 
 the death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the 15 
 good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was 
 not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and dis- 
 tant, and such memories had no power over him. 
 Far more potent were the memories of his heredity 
 that gave things he had never seen before a seeming 20 
 familiarity; the instincts (which were but the mem- 
 ories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed° 
 in later days, and, still later, in him, quickened and 
 became alive again. 
 
 Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily 25 
 at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of an- 
 other fire, and that as he* crouched by this other fire 
 he saw another and different man from the half-breed 
 cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg 
 and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and 30
 
 56 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 knotty rather than rounded and swelhng. The hair of 
 this man was long and matted, and his head slanted 
 back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange 
 sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, 
 5 into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, 
 which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick 
 with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was 
 all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging 
 part way down his back, but on his body there was 
 
 10 much hair. In some places, across the chest and 
 shoulders and down the outside of the arms and 
 thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur. He 
 did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward 
 from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About 
 
 15 his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, 
 almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who 
 lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen. 
 
 At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire 
 with head between his legs and slept. On such oc- 
 
 20 casions his elbows were on his knees, his hands clasped 
 above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy 
 arms. And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness. 
 Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, 
 always two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of 
 
 25 great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing 
 of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the 
 noises they made in the night. And dreaming there 
 by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, 
 these sounds and sights of another world would make 
 
 30 the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 57 
 
 his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low 
 and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the half- 
 breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake 
 up!" Whereupon the other world would vanish and 
 the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up 5 
 and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep. 
 
 It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and 
 the heavy work wore them down. They were short of 
 weight and in poor condition when they made Dawson, 
 and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at lo 
 least. But in two days' time they dropped down the 
 Yukon bank from the Barracks, loaded with letters 
 for the outside. The dogs were tired, the drivers 
 grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed 
 every day. This meant a soft trail, greater friction 15 
 on the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs ; yet 
 the drivers were fair through it all, and did their best 
 for the animals. 
 
 Each night the dogs were attended to first. They 
 ate before the drivers ate, and no man sought his sleep- 20 
 ing-robe till he had seen to the feet of the dogs he drove. 
 Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning 
 of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred 
 miles, dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and 
 eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the tough- 25 
 est. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their 
 work and maintaining discipline, though he too was 
 very tired. Billee cried and whimpered regularly in 
 his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever, and 
 Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other side. 30
 
 58 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Some- 
 thing had gone wrong with him. He became more 
 morose and irritable, and when camp was pitched, 
 at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. 
 5 Once out of the harness and down, he did not get 
 on his feet again till harness-up time in the morning. 
 Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden 
 stoppage of the sled, or by straining to start it, he 
 would cry out with pain. The driver examined 
 
 10 him, but could find nothing. All the drivers became 
 interested in his case. They talked it over at meal- 
 time, and over their last pipes before going to bed, and 
 one night they held a consultation. He was brought 
 from his nest to the fire and was pressed and prodded 
 
 15 till he cried out many times. Something was wrong 
 inside, but they could locate no broken bones, could 
 not make it out. 
 
 By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so 
 weak that he was falling repeatedly in the traces. 
 
 20 The Scotch half-breed called a halt and took him out of 
 the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the 
 sled. His intention was to rest Dave, letting him 
 run free behind the sled. Sick as he was, Dave 
 resented being taken out, grunting and growling while 
 
 25 the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken- 
 heartedly when he saw Sol-leks in the position he had 
 held and served so long. For the pride of trace and 
 trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not bear 
 that another dog should do his work. 
 
 30 When the sled started, he floundered in the soft
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 59 
 
 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 5 
 and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed tried 
 to drive him away with the whip ; but he paid no heed 
 to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart 
 to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the 
 trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but 10 
 continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where 
 the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he 
 fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the 
 long train of sleds churned by. 
 
 With the last remnant of his strength he managed 15 
 to stagger along behind till the train made another 
 stop, when he floundered past the sleds to his own, 
 where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered 
 a moment to get a light for his pipe from the man 
 behind. Then he returned and started his dogs. 20 
 They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack of 
 exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped 
 in surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled 
 had not moved. He called his comrades to witness 
 the sight. Dave had bitten through both of Sol-leks's 25 
 traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled 
 in his proper place. 
 
 He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The 
 driver was perplexed. His comrades talked of how 
 a dog could break its heart through being denied the 30
 
 60 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 work that killed it, and recalled instances the}' had 
 known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, 
 had died because they were cut out of the traces. 
 Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die 
 5 anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart- 
 easy and content. So he was harnessed in again, 
 and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than 
 once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of 
 his inward hurt. Several times he fell down and 
 
 10 was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran 
 upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his 
 hind legs. 
 
 But he held out till camp was reached, when his 
 driver made a place for him by the fire. Morning 
 
 15 found him too weak to travel. At harness-up time 
 he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts 
 he got on his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he 
 wormed his way forward slowly toward where the 
 harnesses were being put on his mates. He would 
 
 20 advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a 
 sort of hitching movement, when he would advance 
 his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few miore 
 inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates 
 saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning° 
 
 25 toward them. But they could hear him mournfully 
 howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of 
 river timber. 
 
 Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed 
 slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left. 
 
 30 The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out.
 
 I 
 
 WHO HAS WON TO MASTERSHIP 61 
 
 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.
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 
 
 Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt 
 Water Mail, with Buck and his mates at the fore, 
 arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched state, 
 worn out and worn down. Buck's one hundred and 
 
 5 forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. 
 The rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively 
 lost more weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who, 
 in his lifetime of deceit, had often successfully feigned 
 a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was 
 
 10 limping, and Dub was suffering from a v/renched 
 shoulder-blade. 
 
 They were all terribly footsore. No spring or re- 
 bound was left in them. Their feet fell heavily on 
 the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling the fatigue 
 
 15 of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter with 
 them except that they were dead tired. It was not 
 the dead tiredness that comes through brief and exces- 
 sive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours ; 
 but it was the dead tiredness that comes through the 
 
 20 slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of 
 toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no 
 
 62
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 63 
 
 reserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the 
 last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every 
 cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for 
 it. In less than five months they had travelled twenty- 
 five hundred miles, during the last eighteen hundreds 
 of which they had had but five days' rest. When they 
 arrived at Skaguay, they were apparently on their last 
 legs. They could barely keep the traces taut, and on 
 the down grades just managed to keep out of the way 
 of the sled. lo 
 
 "Mush on, poor sore feets," the driver encouraged 
 them as they tottered down the main street of Skag- 
 uay. "Dis is de las'. Den we get one long res'. 
 Eh? For sure. One bully long res'." 
 
 The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. 15 
 Themselves, they had covered twelve hundred miles 
 with two days' rest, and in the nature of reason and 
 common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. 
 But so many were the men who had rushed into 
 the Klondike, and so many were the sweethearts, 20 
 wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the con- 
 gested mail was taking on Alpine proportions ; also, 
 there were official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson 
 Bay dogs were to take the places of those worthless for 
 the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and, 25 
 since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to 
 be sold. 
 
 Three days passed, by which time Buck and his 
 mates found how really tired and weak they were. 
 Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two men 30
 
 64 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 from the States came along and bought them, har- 
 ness and all, for a song. The men addressed each 
 other as "Hal" and "Charles." Charles was a 
 middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and 
 
 5 watery eyes and a mustache that twisted fiercely 
 and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply droop- 
 ing lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen 
 or twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting- 
 knife strapped about him on a belt that fairly bristled 
 
 10 with cartridges. This belt was the most salient thing 
 about him. It advertised his callowness° — a callow- 
 ness sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly 
 out of place, and why such as they should adventure the 
 North is part of the mystery of things that passes 
 
 15 understanding. 
 
 Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass 
 between the man and the Government agent, and 
 knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train 
 drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of 
 
 20Perrault and Francois and the others who had gone 
 before. When driven with his mates to the new 
 owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly 
 affair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed, every- 
 thing in disorder; also, he saw a woman. "Mer-i 
 
 25 cedes" the men called her. She was Charles's wife 
 and Hal's sister — a nice family party. 
 
 Buck watched them apprehensively as they pro- 
 ceeded to take down the tent and load the sled. 
 There was a great deal of effort about their manner, 
 
 30 but no businesslike method. The tent- was rolled
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 65 
 
 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- 5 
 sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should 
 go on the back ; and when they had it put on the back, 
 and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, 
 she discovered overlooked articles which could abide 
 nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded 10 
 again. 
 
 Three men from a neighboring tent came out and 
 '.ooked on, grinning and winking at one another. 
 
 "You've got a right smart load as it is," said one 
 >f them ; " and it's not me should tell you your business, 15 
 )ut I wouldn't tote that tent along if I was you.'* 
 
 Undreamed of!" cried Mercedes, throwing up 
 ler hands in dainty dismay. "However in the world 
 jould I manage without a tent?" 
 
 It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold 20 
 veather," the man replied. 
 
 She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and 
 3al put the last odds and ends on top the mountainous 
 oad. 
 "Think it'll ride?" one of the men asked. 25 
 
 "Why shouldn't it?" Charles demanded rather 
 hortly. 
 
 jpil "Oh, that's all right, that's all right," the man 
 astened meekly to say. " I was just a-wonderin', that 
 y 5 all. It seemed a mite top-heavy." 30 
 
 I ^
 
 6Q THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 Charles turned his back and drew . the lashings 
 down as well as he could, which was not in the least 
 well. 
 
 "An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with 
 5 that contraption behind them," affirmed a second of 
 the men. » 
 
 "Certainly/' said Hal, with freezing politeness, 
 taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging 
 his whip from the other. "Mush I" he shouted. 
 10 "Mush on there!" 
 
 The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained 
 hard for a few moments, then relaxed. They were 
 unable to move the sled. 
 
 "The lazy brutes, I'll show them," he cried, pre- 
 15 paring to lash out at them with the whip. 
 
 But Mercedes interfered, crying, "Oh, Hal, you 
 
 mustn't," as she caught hold of the whip and wrenched 
 
 it from him, "The poor dears! Now you must 
 
 promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of 
 
 20 the trip, or I won't go a step." 
 
 "Precious lot you know about dogs," her brother 
 
 sneered ; " and I wish you'd leave me alone. They're 
 
 lazy, I tell you, and you've got to whip them to get 
 
 anything out of them. That's their way. You ask 
 
 25 any one. Ask one of those men." 
 
 Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold re- 
 pugnance at sight of pain written in her pretty face. 
 
 " They're weak as water, if you want to know," came 
 the reply from one of the men. "Plum tuckered out, 
 30 that's what's the matter. They need a rest."
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 67 
 
 "Rest be blanked," said Hal, with his beardless 
 lips; and Mercedes said, "Oh!" in pain and sorrow 
 at the oath. 
 
 But she was a clannish° creature, and rushed at 
 once to the defence of her brother. " Never mind 5 
 that man," she said pointedly. "You're driving our 
 dogs, and you do what you think best with them." 
 
 Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw 
 themselves against the breast-bands, dug their feet 
 into the packed snow, got down low to it, and put 10 
 forth all their strength. The sled held as though it 
 were an anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, 
 panting. The whip was whistling savagely, when once 
 more Mercedes interfered. She dropped on her knees 
 before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms 15 
 around his neck. 
 
 "You poor, poor dears," she cried sympathetically, 
 " why don't you pull hard ? — then you wouldn't be 
 whipped." Buck did not like her, but he was feeling 
 too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the 20 
 day's miserable work. 
 
 One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his 
 teeth to suppress hot speech, now spoke up : — 
 
 "It's not that I care a whoop what becomes of 
 you, but for the dogs' sakes I just want to tell you, 25 
 you can help them a mighty lot by breaking out that 
 sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your 
 weight against the gee-pole, right and left, and break 
 it out." 
 
 A third time the attempt was made, but this time, 30
 
 68 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 following the ad\'ice, Hal broke out the runners which 
 had been frozen to the snow. The overloaded and 
 unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates 
 struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A 
 5 hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped 
 steeply into the main street. It would have required 
 an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, 
 and Hal was not such a man. As they swung on the 
 turn the sled went over, spilling half its load through 
 
 10 the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The 
 lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They 
 were angry because of the ill treatment they had 
 received and the unjust load. Buck was raging. He 
 broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal 
 
 15 cried "Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He 
 tripped and was pulled off his feet. The capsized sled 
 ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the street, 
 adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the 
 remainder of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare. 
 
 20 Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered 
 up the scattered belongings. Also, they gaA^e advice. 
 Half the load and twice the dogs, if they ever expected 
 to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his 
 sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched 
 
 25 tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were 
 turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods 
 on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. " Blankets 
 for a hotel," quoth one of the men who laughed and 
 helped. " Half as many is too much ; get rid of them. 
 
 "30 Throw away that tent, and all those dishes, — who's
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 69 
 
 going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you 
 think you're traveUing on a Pullman?" ' 
 
 And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the 
 superfluous. ° Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags 
 were dumped on the ground and article after articles 
 was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried 
 in particular over each discarded thing. She clasped 
 hands about knees, rocking back and forth broken- 
 heartedly. She averred she would not go an inch, not 
 for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody lo 
 and to everytliing, finally wiping her eyes and pro- 
 ceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were 
 imperative necessaries. And in her zeal, when she had 
 finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of 
 her men and went through them like a tornado. 15 
 
 This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, 
 was still a formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went 
 out in the evening and bought six Outside dogs. 
 These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek 
 and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids 20 
 on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen. 
 But the Outside dogs, though practically broken in 
 since their landing, did not amount to much. Three 
 were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, 
 and the other two were mongrels of indeterminate 25 
 breed. They did not seem to know anything, these 
 newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon 
 them with disgust, and though he speedily taught them 
 their places and what not to do, he could not teach 
 them what to do. They did not take kindly to trace 30
 
 70 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, 
 they were bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange 
 savage environment in which they found themselves 
 and by the ill treatment they had received. The two 
 6 mongrels were without spirit at all ; bones were the 
 only things breakable about them. 
 
 With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and 
 the old team worn out by twenty-five hundred miles 
 of continuous trail, the outlook was anything but 
 
 10 bright. The two men, however, were quite cheer- 
 ful. And they were proud, too. They were doing 
 the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. They had seen 
 other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come 
 in from Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with 
 
 15 so many as fourteen dogs. In the nature of Arctic 
 travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs should not 
 drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not 
 carry the food for fourteen dogs. But Charles and 
 Hal did not know this. They had worked the trip 
 
 20 out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs, so 
 many days, Q. E. D.° Mercedes looked over their 
 shoulders and nodded comprehensively, ° it was all so 
 very simple. 
 
 Late next morning Buck led the long team up the 
 
 25 street. There was nothing lively about it, no snap 
 or go in him and his fellows. They were starting dead 
 weary. Four times he had covered the distance 
 between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge 
 that, jaded and tired, he was facing the same trail 
 
 30 once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 71 
 
 the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Out sides 
 were timid and frightened, the Insides without confi- 
 dence in their masters. 
 
 Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon 
 these two men and the woman. They did not knows 
 how to do anything, and as the days went by it became 
 apparent that they could not learn. They were slack 
 in all things, without order or discipline. It took them 
 half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the 
 morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded 10 
 in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day 
 they were occupied in stopping and rearranging the 
 load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On 
 other days they were unable to get started at all. 
 And on no day did they succeed in making more than 15 
 half the distance used by the men as a basis in their 
 dog-food computation. 
 
 It was inevitable that they should go short on dog- 
 food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing 
 the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. 20 
 The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained 
 by chronic famine to make the most of little, had vora- 
 cious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the 
 worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the 
 orthodox° ration was too small. He doubled it. And 25 
 to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty 
 eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him 
 into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish- 
 sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that 
 Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though 30
 
 72 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 they were making poor time, the heavy load they 
 dragged sapped their strength severely. 
 
 Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day 
 to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the 
 5 distance only quarter covered; further, that for love 
 or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. 
 So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to 
 increase the day's travel. His sister and brother-in- 
 law seconded him ; but they were frustrated by their 
 
 10 heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a 
 simple matter to give the dogs less food ; but it was 
 impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their 
 own inability to get under way earlier in the morning 
 prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not 
 
 15 only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did 
 not know how to work themselves. 
 
 The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief 
 that he was, always getting caught and punished, he 
 had none the less been a faitliful worker. His \^Tenched 
 
 20 shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from bad 
 to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's 
 revolver. It is a saying of the country that an Outside 
 dog starves to death on the ration of the husk}^ so the 
 six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less than die 
 
 25 on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland 
 went first, followed by the three short-haired pointers, 
 the two mongrels hanging more grittily on to life, but 
 going in the end. 
 
 By this time all the amenities° and gentlenesses of 
 
 30 the Southland had fallen away from the three people.
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 73 
 
 Shorn of its glamour° and romance, Arctic travel became 
 to them a reaUty too harsh for their manhood and 
 womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, 
 being too occupied with weeping over herself and with 
 : quarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel 5 
 I was the one thing they were never too weary to do. 
 Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased 
 with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The 
 wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men 
 who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of 10 
 speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and 
 the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience. 
 They were stiff and in pain ; their muscles ached, their 
 bones ached, their very hearts ached ; and because of 
 this they became sharp of speech, and hard words 15 
 were first on then* lips in the morning and last at night. 
 Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes 
 gave them a chance. It was the cherished belief 
 of each that he did more than his share of the work, 
 and neither forbore to speak his belief at every op- 20 
 portunity. Sometimes Mercedes sided with her hus- 
 band, sometimes with her brother. The result was 
 a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting 
 from a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks 
 for the fire (a dispute which concerned only Charles 25 
 and Hal), presently would be lugged in the rest of the 
 I family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thou- 
 sands of miles awa^^, and some of them dead. That 
 Hal's views on art, or the sort of society plays his 
 mother's brother wrote, should have anything to do 30
 
 74 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood passes 
 comprehension ; nevertheless the quarrel was as 
 likely to tend in that direction as in the direction of 
 Charles's political prejudices. And that Charles's 
 5 sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to° the 
 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 un- 
 pleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the 
 
 10 meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half 
 pitched, the dogs unfed. 
 
 Mercedes nursed a special grievance — the griev- 
 ance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been 
 chivalrousl3^° treated all her days. But the present 
 
 15 treatment by her husband and brother was every- 
 thing save chivalrous. It was her custom to be help- 
 less. They complained. Upon which impeachment 
 of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative, 
 she made their lives unendurable. She no longer con- 
 
 20sidered the dogs, and because she was sore and tired, 
 she persisted in riding on the sled. She was pretty 
 and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty 
 pounds — a lusty last straw to the load dragged by the 
 weak and starving animals. She rode for days, till 
 
 25 they fell in the traces and the sled stood still. Charles 
 and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with 
 her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned° 
 Heaven with a recital of their brutality. 
 
 On one occasion they took her off the sled by main 
 
 30 strength. They never did it again. She let her legs
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL .0 
 
 go limp like a spoiled child, and sat down on the trail. 
 They went on their way, but she did not move. After 
 they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, 
 came back for her, and b}' main strength put her on 
 the sled again. 5 
 
 In the excess of their own misery they were callous 
 to the suffering of their animals. Hal's theory, which 
 he practised on others, was that one must get hardened. 
 He had started out preaching it to his sister and brother- 
 in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs lo 
 with a club. At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave 
 out, and a toothless old squaw offered to trade them a 
 few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's revolver 
 that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. 
 A poor substitute for food was this hide, just as it had 15 
 been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen 
 six months back. In its frozen state it was more like 
 strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it 
 into his stomach, it thawed into thin and innutritions 
 leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating 20 
 and indigestible. 
 
 And through it all Buck staggered along at the head 
 of the team as in a nightmare. He pulled when he 
 could ; when he could no longer pull, he fell down and 
 remained down till blows from whip or club drove him 25 
 to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone 
 out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, 
 limp and draggled, or matted with dried blood where 
 Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had wasted 
 away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had dis-30
 
 76 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 appeared, so that each rib and every bone in his frame 
 were outUned cleanly through the loose hide that was 
 wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was heart-breaking, 
 only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the 
 5 red sweater had proved that. 
 
 As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. 
 They were perambulating skeletons. There were seven 
 all together, including him. In their very great misery 
 they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or 
 
 10 the bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was 
 dull and distant, just as the things their eyes saw and 
 their ears heard seemed dull and distant. They were 
 not half living, or quarter living. They were simply 
 so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered 
 
 15 faintly. When a halt was made, they dropped down in 
 the traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and 
 paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or 
 whip fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and 
 they tottered to their feet and staggered on. 
 
 20 There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, 
 fell and could not rise. Hal had traded off his revolver, 
 so he took the axe and knocked Billee on the head as 
 he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the 
 harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and 
 
 25 his mates saw, and they knew that this thing was 
 very close to them. On the next day Koona went, 
 and but five of them remained ! Joe, too far gone to be 
 malignant ; Pike, crippled and limping, only half con- 
 scious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; 
 
 30 Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 77 
 
 and trail, and mournful in that he had so Httle strength 
 with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so 
 far that winter and who was now beaten more than 
 the others because he was fresher; and Buck, still at 
 the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline 5 
 or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the 
 time and keeping the trail by the loom° of it and by 
 the dim feel of his feet. 
 
 It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs 
 nor humans were aware of it. Each day the sun rose 10 
 earlier and set later. It was dawn by three in the 
 morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. 
 The whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. The 
 ghostly winter silence had given way to the great 
 spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur 15 
 arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. 
 It came from the things that lived and moved again, 
 things which had been as dead and which had not 
 moved during the long months of frost. The sap 
 was rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were 20 
 bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were 
 putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in 
 the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, 
 crawling things rustled forth into the sun. Partridges 
 and w^oodpeckers were booming and knocking in the 25 
 forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and 
 overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the 
 south in cunning wedges that split the air. 
 
 From every hill slope came the trickle of running 
 water, the music of unseen fountains. All things 30
 
 78 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 ■ were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon was 
 straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. 
 It ate away from beneath; the sun ate from above. 
 Air-holes formed, fissures sprang and spread apart, 
 
 5 while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into the 
 river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing 
 of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through 
 the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, 
 staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies. 
 
 10 With the dogs falling, ]\Iercedes weeping and riding, 
 Hal swearing innocuously," and Charles's eyes wistfully 
 watering, they staggered into John Thornton's camp 
 at the mouth of White River. When they halted, 
 the dogs dropped down as though they had all been 
 
 15 struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes and looked at 
 John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log to rest. 
 He sat down very slowly and painstakingly, what of 
 his great stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thorn- 
 ton was whittling the last touches on an axe-handle he 
 
 20 had made from a stick of birch. He whittled and 
 
 listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was 
 
 asked, terse advice. He knew the breed, and he gave 
 
 his advice in the certainty that it would not be followed. 
 
 " They told us up above that the bottom was dropping 
 
 25 out of the trail and that the best thing for us to do 
 was to lay over," Hal said in response to Thornton's 
 warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. 
 "They told us we couldn't make White River, and 
 here we are." This last with a sneering ring of triumph 
 
 30 in it.
 
 THE TOIL OF TBACE AND TRAIL 79 
 
 "And they told you true," John Thornton answered. 
 " The bottom's Hkely to drop out at any moment. Only 
 fools, with the blind luck of fools, could have made it. 
 I tell you straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass on that 
 ice for all the gold in Alaska." 5 
 
 "That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said 
 Hal. "All the same, we'll go on to Dawson." He 
 uncoiled his whip. " Get up there. Buck ! Hi ! Get 
 up there! Mush on!" 
 
 Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, 10 
 to get between a fool and his folly, while two or 
 three fools more or less would not alter the scheme of 
 things. 
 
 But the team did not get up at the command. It 
 had long since passed into the stage where blows were 15 
 required to rouse it. The whip flashed out, here and 
 there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton com- 
 pressed his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his 
 feet. Teek followed. Joe came next, yelping with 
 pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he fell over, 20 
 when half up, and on the third attempt managed to 
 rise. Buck made no effort. He lay quietly where he 
 had fallen. The lash bit into him again and again, 
 but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times 
 Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed 25 
 his mind. A moisture came into his eyes, and, as the 
 whipping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely 
 up and down. 
 
 This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a 
 sufficient reason to drive Hal into a rage. He ex- 30
 
 80 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 changed the whip for the customary club. Buck re- 
 fused to move under the rain of heavier blows which 
 now fell upon him. Like his mates, he was barely 
 able to get up, but, unlike them, he had made up 
 5 his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of 
 impending doom.° This had been strong upon him 
 when he pulled in to the bank, and it had not de- 
 parted from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he 
 had felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed 
 
 10 disaster close at hand, out there ahead on the ice where 
 his master was trying to drive him. He refused to 
 stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was 
 he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they 
 continued to fall upon him the spark of life within 
 
 15 flickered and went down. It was nearly out. He 
 felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, 
 he was aware that he was being beaten. The last 
 sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, 
 though very faintly he could hear the impact of the 
 
 20 club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it 
 seemed so far away. 
 
 And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a 
 cry that was inarticulate° and more like the cry of an 
 animal, John Thornton sprang upon the man who 
 
 25 wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as though 
 struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles 
 looked on wistfully," wiped his watery eyes, but did 
 not get up because of his stiffness. 
 
 John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control 
 
 30 himself, too convulsed with rage to speak.
 
 THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 81 
 
 "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." 5 
 
 Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced 
 no intention of getting out of the way. Hal drew 
 his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed, cried, 
 laughed and manifested the chaotic abandonment of 
 hysteria. ° Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the lO 
 axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He 
 rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up. 
 Then he stopped, picked it up himself, and with two 
 strokes cut Buck's traces. 
 
 Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands 15 
 were full with his sister, or his arms, rather; while 
 Buck was too near dead to be of further use in hauling 
 the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out from 
 the bank and down the river. Buck heard them' go 
 and raised his head to see. Pike was leading, Sol-leks 20 
 was at the wheel, and between were Joe and Teek. 
 They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was 
 riding the loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, 
 and Charles stumbled along in the rear. 
 
 As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him 25 
 and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones. 
 By the time his search had disclosed nothing more than 
 many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the 
 sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man 
 watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly 30
 
 82 THE CALL OF TEE WILD 
 
 they saw 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 
 5 a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans 
 disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be 
 seen. The bottom had dropped out of the trail. 
 
 John Thornton and Buck looked at each other. 
 
 "You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck 
 10 licked his hand. 
 
 I
 
 VI 
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 
 
 When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous 
 December, his partners had made him comfortable 
 and left him to get well, going on themselves up the 
 river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was 
 still limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but 5 
 with the continued warm weather even the slight limp 
 left him. And here, lying by the river bank through 
 the long spring days, watching the running water, 
 listening lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of 
 nature, Buck slowly won back his strength. 10 
 
 A rest comes very good after one has travelled 
 three thousand miles, and it must be confessed that 
 Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his muscles 
 swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. 
 For that matter, they were all loafing, — Buck, John 15 
 Thornton, and Skeet and Nig, — waiting for the raft 
 to come that was to carry them down to Dawson. 
 Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends 
 with Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to 
 resent her first advances. She had the doctor trait 20 
 which some dogs possess ; and as a mother cat washes 
 her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's wounds. 
 
 83
 
 84 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 Regularly, each morning after he had finished his break- 
 fast, she performed her self-appointed task, till he came 
 to look for her ministrations as much as he did for 
 Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly, though less demon- 
 5strative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and 
 half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a bound- 
 less good nature. To Buck's surprise these dogs 
 manifested no jealousy toward him. They seemed 
 to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thorn- 
 
 10 ton. As Buck grew stronger they enticed him into 
 all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thornton. him- 
 self could not forbear to join ; and in this fashion Buck 
 romped through his convalescence and into a new 
 existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his 
 
 15 for the first time. This he had never experienced 
 at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara 
 Valley. With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramp- 
 ing, it had been a working partnership ; with the 
 Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship ; 
 
 20 and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified 
 friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, 
 that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken 
 John Thornton to arouse. 
 
 This man had saved his life, which was something; 
 
 25 but, further, he was the ideal master. Other men 
 saw to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty 
 and business expediency ; he saw to the welfare of his 
 as if they were his own children, because he could not 
 help it. And he saw further. He never forgot a kindly 
 
 30 greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a long
 
 FOB THE LOVE OF A MAN 85 
 
 talk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his 
 delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's 
 head roughly between his hands, and resting his own 
 head upon Buck's, of shaking him back and forth 
 the while calling him ill names that to Buck were 5 
 love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that 
 rough embrace and the sound of murmured oaths, 
 and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his 
 heart would be shaken out of his body, so great was 
 its ecstasy. And when, released, he sprang to his 10 
 feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat 
 vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion 
 remained without movement, John Thornton would 
 reverently exclaim, " God ! you can all but speak ! " 
 
 Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin 15 
 to hurt. He would often seize Thornton's hand in 
 his mouth and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the 
 impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And 
 as Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the 
 man understood tliis feigned bite for a caress. 20 
 
 For the most part, however, Buck's love was ex- 
 pressed in adoration. While he went wild with happi- 
 ness when Thornton touched him or spoke to him, he 
 did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was 
 wont to shove her nose under Thornton's hand and 25 
 nudge and nudge till petted — or Nig, who would stalk 
 up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck 
 was content to adore at a distance. He would lie 
 by the hour, eager, alert, at Thornton's feet, looking 
 up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, follow- 30
 
 86 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 ing with keenest interest each fleeting expression, 
 every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance 
 might have it, he would lie farther away, to the side 
 or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the 
 5 occasional movements of his body. And often, such 
 was the communion in which they lived, the strength 
 of Buck's gaze would draw John Thornton's head 
 around, and he would return the gaze, without speech, 
 his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone 
 
 10 out. 
 
 For a long time after his rescue. Buck did not like 
 Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment 
 he left the tent to when he entered it again. Buck would 
 follow at his heels. His transient^ masters since he 
 
 15 had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear 
 that no master could be permanent. He was. afraid 
 that Thornton would pass out of his life as Perrault 
 and Fran9ois and the Scotch half-breed had passed 
 out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted 
 
 20 by this fear. At such times he would shake off sleep 
 and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent, 
 where he would stand and listen to the sound of his 
 master's breathing. 
 
 But in spite of this great love he bore John Thorn- 
 
 25 ton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influ- 
 ence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland 
 had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faith- 
 fulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, 
 were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. 
 
 30 He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 87 
 
 sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog of the 
 soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations 
 of civiHzation. Because of his very great love, he 
 could not steal from this man, but from any other man, 
 in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; 5 
 while the cunning with which he stole enabled him 
 to escape detection. 
 
 His face and body were scored by the teeth of 
 many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever and more 
 shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for 10 
 quarrelling, — besides, they belonged to John Thorn- 
 ton; but the strange dog, no matter what the breed 
 or valor, swiftly acknowledged Buck's supremacy or 
 found himself struggling for life with a terrible antag- 
 onist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned 15 
 well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent 
 an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started 
 on the way to Death. He had lessoned° from Spitz, 
 and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, 
 and knew there was no middle course. He must mas- 20 
 ter or be mastered ; while to show mercy was a weak- 
 ness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It 
 was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstand- 
 ings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, 
 was the law ; and this mandate, down out of the depths 25 
 of Time, he obeyed. 
 
 He was older than the days he had seen and the 
 breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the 
 present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through 
 him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the 30
 
 88 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thorn- 
 ton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long- 
 furred ; but behind him were the shades of all manner 
 of dogs, half -wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompt- 
 5 ing, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for 
 the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listen- 
 ing with him and telling him the sounds made by the 
 wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his 
 actions, lying down to sleep witli him when he lay 
 
 10 down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and 
 becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams. 
 
 So peremptorily° did these shades beckon him, 
 that each day mankind and the claims of mankind 
 slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call 
 
 15 was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mys- 
 teriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to 
 turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth 
 around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and 
 on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder 
 
 20 where or why, the call sounding imperiously, ° deep 
 in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft un- 
 broken earth and the green shade, the love for John 
 Thornton drew him back to the fire again. 
 
 Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind 
 
 25 was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or 
 pet him ; but he was cold under it all, and from a 
 too demonstrative man he would get up and 'walk 
 away. When Thornton's partners, Hans arid Pete, 
 arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to 
 
 30 notice them till he learned they were close to Thorn-
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 89 
 
 ton ; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of 
 way, accepting favors from them as though he favored 
 them by accepting. They were of the same large 
 type° as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking 
 simply and seeing clearly ; and ere they swung the 5^ 
 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 Sheet and Nig. 
 
 For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow 
 and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack 10 
 upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Noth- 
 ing w^as too great for Buck to do, when Thornton com- 
 manded. One day (they had gTub-staked° themselves 
 from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the 
 head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were 15 
 sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight 
 down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. 
 John Thornton was sitting near the edge. Buck at his 
 shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and 
 he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experi-20 
 ment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he com- 
 manded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. 
 The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the 
 extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them 
 back into safety. 25 
 
 "It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and 
 they had caught their speech. 
 
 Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and 
 it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes 
 me afraid." 30
 
 90 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 "I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands 
 on you while he's around," Pete announced conclu- 
 sively, nodding his head toward Buck. 
 
 "Py Jingo !" was Hans's contribution, "not mineself 
 5 either." 
 
 It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that 
 Pete's apprehensions were realized. "Black" Bur- 
 ton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been 
 picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot° at the bar, when 
 
 10 Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, 
 as w^as his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, 
 watching his master's every action. Burton struck 
 out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. 
 Thornton was sent spinning, and saved himself frofn 
 
 15 falling only by clutching the rail of the bar. 
 
 Those who were looking on heard what was neither 
 bark nor yelp, but a something which is best described 
 as a roar, and they saw Buck's body rise up in the air 
 as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man saved 
 
 20 his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was 
 hurled backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. 
 Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and 
 drove in again for the throat. This time the man suc- 
 ceeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was 
 
 25 torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he 
 was driven off ; but while a surgeon checked the 
 bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furi- 
 ously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back 
 by an array of hostile clubs. A "miners' meeting,"^ 
 
 30 called on the spot, decided that the dog had suffi-
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 91 
 
 cient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But 
 his reputation was made, and from that day his name 
 spread through every camp in Alaska. 
 
 Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John 
 Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The threes 
 partners were lining a long and narrow poling-boat° 
 down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty -Mile Creek. 
 Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing^ 
 with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thorn- 
 ton remained in the boat, helping its descent by means 10 
 of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, 
 on the bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the 
 boat, his eyes never off his master. 
 
 At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely 
 submerged rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast 15 
 off the rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out 
 into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in 
 his hand to snub the boat when he had cleared the ledge. 
 This it did, and was flying down-stream in a current 
 as swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with the 20 
 rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted 
 over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while 
 Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream 
 toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild 
 water in which no swimmer could live. 25 
 
 Buck had sprung in on the instant ; and at the 
 end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, 
 he overhauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp 
 his tail. Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all 
 his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward 30
 
 92 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 was slow ; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid. 
 From below came the fatal roaring where the wild 
 current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray 
 by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of 
 
 5 an enormous comb. The suck of the water as it took 
 the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, 
 and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. 
 He scraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a 
 second, and struck a third with crushing force. He 
 
 10 clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing 
 Buck, and above the roar of the churning water 
 shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!" 
 
 Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down- 
 stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win 
 
 15 back. When he heard Thornton's command repeated, 
 he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head 
 high, as though for a last look, then turned obedi- 
 ently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was 
 dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point 
 
 20 where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction 
 began. 
 
 They knew that the time a man could cling to a 
 slippery rock in the face of that driving current was 
 a matter of minutes, and the\' ran as fast as they could 
 
 25 up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was 
 hanging on. They attached the line with which they 
 had been snubbing the boat to Buck's neck and shoul- 
 ders, being careful that it should neither strangle him 
 nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the 
 
 30 stream. He struck out boldly, but not straight enough
 
 FOE THE LOVE OF A MAN 93 
 
 into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, 
 when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half- 
 dozen strokes away while he was being carried help- 
 lessly past. 
 
 Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though 5 
 Buck were a boat. The rope thus tightening on 
 him in the sw^eep of the current, he was jerked under 
 the surface, and under the surface he remained till 
 his body struck against the bank and he was hauled 
 out. He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete 10 
 threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath 
 into him and the water out of him. He staggered to 
 his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thornton's 
 voice came to them, and though they could not make 
 out the words of it, they knew that he was in his ex- 15 
 tremity. His master's voice acted on Buck like an 
 electric shock. He sprang to his feet and ran up the 
 bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous 
 departure. 
 
 Again the rope was attached and he was launched, 20 
 and again he struck out, but this time straight into 
 the stream. He had miscalculated once, but he 
 would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid 
 out the rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it 
 clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line 25 
 straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with 
 the speed of an express train headed down upon him. 
 Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him 
 like a battering ram, with the whole force of the current 
 behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms 30
 
 94 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope 
 around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked 
 under the water. StrangHng, suffocating, sometimes 
 one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over 
 5 the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, 
 they veered into the bank. 
 
 Thornton came to, belly downward and being vio- 
 lently propelled back and forth across a drift log by 
 Hans and Pete.° His first glance was for Buck, over 
 
 10 whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was 
 setting up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet 
 face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised 
 and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body, 
 when he had been brought around, finding three 
 
 15 broken ribs. 
 
 "That settles it," he announced. "We camp 
 right here." And camp they did, till Buck's ribs 
 knitted and he was able to travel. 
 
 That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another 
 
 20 exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his 
 name many notches higher on the totem-pole° of 
 Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly grati- 
 fying to the three men; for they stood in need of 
 the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to 
 
 25 make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where 
 miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about 
 by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which 
 men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck, 
 because of his record, was the target for these men, 
 
 30 and Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him.
 
 FOB THE LOVE OF A MAN 95 
 
 At the end of half an hour one man stated that his 
 dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and 
 walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for 
 his dog ; and a third, seven hundred. 
 
 "Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck cans 
 start a thousand pounds." 
 
 "And break it out? and walk off with it for a hun- 
 dred yards?" demanded Matthew^son, a Bonanza 
 King, he of the seven hundred vaunt. 
 
 "x\nd break it out, and walk off with it for a hun-io 
 dred yards," John Thornton said coolly. 
 
 "Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, 
 so that all could hear, "I've got a thousand dollars 
 that says he can't. And there it is." So saying, 
 he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna 15 
 sausage down upon the bar. 
 
 Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff,° if bluff it was, 
 had been called. He could feel a flush of warm blood 
 creeping up his face. His tongue had tricked him. 
 He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand 20 
 pounds. Half a ton 1 The enormousness of it appalled 
 him. He had great faith in Buck's strength and had 
 often thought him capable of starting such a load; 
 but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, 
 the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and wait- 25 
 ing. Further, he had no thousand dollars; nor had 
 Hans or Pete. 
 
 "I've got a sled standing outside now, with tw^enty 
 fifty-pound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on 
 with brutal directness ; " so don't let that hinder vou." 30
 
 96 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 Thornton did not repl}^ He did not know what 
 to say. He glanced from face to face in the absent 
 way of a man who has lost the power of thought and 
 is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start 
 5 it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon 
 King° and old-time comrade, caught his e\'es. It 
 was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him to do what 
 he would never have dreamed of doing. 
 
 "Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in 
 
 10 a whisper. 
 
 "Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a ple- 
 thoric° sack by the side of Matthewson's. "Though 
 it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast can do 
 the trick." 
 
 15 The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street 
 to see the test. The tables were deserted, and the 
 dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome 
 of the wager and to lay odds.° Several hundred men, 
 furred and mittened, banked around the sled within 
 
 20 easy distance. Matthewson's sled, loaded with a 
 thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a 
 couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty 
 below zero) the runners had frozen fast to the hard- 
 packed snow. Men offered odds of two to one that 
 
 25 Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble° arose 
 concerning the phrase "break out." O'Brien con- 
 tended it was Thornton's privilege to knock the run- 
 ners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a 
 dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase 
 
 30 included breaking the runners from the frozen grip
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 97 
 
 of the snow. A majority of the men who had wit- 
 nessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, 
 whereat the odds went up to three to one against 
 Buck. 
 
 There were no takers. Not a man believed him 5 
 capable of the feat. Thornton had been hurried 
 into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that he 
 looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the 
 regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow be- 
 fore it, the more impossible the task appeared. Mat-iO 
 thewson waxed jubilant. 
 
 "Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you 
 another thousand at that figure, Thornton. What 
 d'ye say?" 
 
 Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his 15 
 fighting spirit was aroused — the fighting spirit that 
 soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, 
 and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called 
 Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks Vv^ere slim, and 
 with his own the three partners could rake together 20 
 only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes, 
 this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it un- 
 hesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred. 
 
 The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, 
 with his own harness, was put into the sled. He 25 
 had caught the contagion of the excitement, and he 
 felt that in some way he must do a great thing for 
 John Thornton. Murmurs of admiration at his splen- 
 did appearance went up. He was in perfect condition, 
 without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hun- 30
 
 98 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 dred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many 
 pounds of grit and viriHty. His furry coat shone 
 with the sheen of silk. Dov»rn the neck and across the 
 shouklers, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled 
 5 and seemed to lift with every movement, as though ex- 
 cess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. 
 The great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than 
 in proportion with the rest of the body, where the 
 muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. 
 
 10 Men felt these muscles and proclaimed them hard 
 as iron, and the odds went down to two to one. 
 
 "Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the 
 latest dynasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. "I 
 offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before the test, 
 
 15 sir; eight hundred just as he stands." 
 
 Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.' 
 "You must stand off from him," Matthewson pro- 
 tested. "Free play and plenty of room." 
 
 The crowd fell silent ; only could be heard the voices 
 
 20 of the gamblers vainly offering two to one. Every- 
 body acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal, but 
 twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in 
 their eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings. 
 Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took 
 
 25 his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. 
 He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or 
 murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his 
 ear. "As you love me. Buck. As you love me," 
 was what he whispered. Buck whined with suppressed 
 
 .30 eagerness.
 
 FOB THE LOVE OF A MAN 99 
 
 The crowd was watching curiously. The affair 
 was growing mysterious. It seemed Hke a con jura- 
 tion. ° As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his 
 mittened hand between his jaws, pressing it with his 
 teeth and releasing slowly, half-reluctantly. It was 5 
 the answer, in terms, not of speech, but of love. Thorn- 
 ton stepped well back. 
 
 " Now, Buck," he said. 
 
 Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for 
 a matter of several inches. It was the way he hadio 
 learned. 
 
 *' Gee ! " Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the 
 tense silence. 
 
 Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in 
 a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk 15 
 arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The 
 load quivered, and from under the runners arose a 
 crisp crackling. 
 
 " Haw !" Thornton commanded. 
 
 Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the 20 
 left. The crackling turned into a snapping, the sled 
 pivoting and the runners slipping and grating several 
 inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men 
 were holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of 
 the fact. 25 
 
 "Now, Mush!" 
 
 Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol- 
 shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the 
 traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was 
 gathered compactly together in the tremendous ef-30
 
 100 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 fort, the muscles writhing and knotting Uke live 
 things under the silky fur. His great chest was 
 low to the ground, his head forAvard and down, while 
 his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the 
 shard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled 
 swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of 
 his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then 
 the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid suc- 
 cession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead 
 
 10 stop again . . . half an inch ... an inch . . . two 
 inches. . . . The jerks perceptibly diminished; as 
 the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till 
 it was moving steadily along. 
 
 Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware 
 
 15 that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thorn- 
 ton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, 
 cheery words. The distance had been measured off, 
 and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the 
 end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and 
 
 20 grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood 
 and halted at command. Every man was tearing him- 
 self loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were 
 flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not 
 matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general 
 
 25 incoherent babel. ° 
 
 But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head 
 was against head, and he was shaking him back and 
 forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, 
 and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and 
 
 30 lovingly.
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN 101 
 
 "Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the Skookum 
 Bench king. "I'll give you a thousand for him, sir, 
 a thousand, sir — twelve hundred, sir." 
 
 Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. 
 The tears were streaming frankly down his cheeks. 5 
 "Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench king, "no, 
 sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do 
 for you, sir." 
 
 Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thorn- 
 ton shook him back and forth. As though animated 10 
 by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a 
 respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet 
 enough to interrupt.
 
 VII 
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 
 
 When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five 
 minutes for John Thornton, he made it possible for his 
 master to pay off certain debts and to journey with 
 his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine,° 
 5 the history of which was as old as the history of the 
 country. INIany men had sought it; few had found 
 it; and more than a few there were who had never 
 returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped 
 in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew 'of 
 
 10 the first man. The oldest tradition^ stopped before it 
 got back to him. From the beginning there had been 
 an ancient and ramshackle^ cabin. Dying men had 
 sworn to it, and to the mine the site of which it marked, 
 clinching their testimony with nuggets that were un- 
 
 15 like any known grade of gold in the Northland. 
 
 But no living man had looted this treasure house, 
 and the dead w^ere dead; wherefore John Thornton 
 and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a dozen other 
 dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to 
 
 20 achieve where men and dogs as good as themselves had 
 failed. They sledded seventy miles up the Yukon, 
 swung to the left into the Stewart River, passed the 
 102
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 103 
 
 Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stew- 
 art itself became a streamlet, threading the upstand- 
 ing peaks which marked the backbone of the continent. 
 
 John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He 
 was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of salt and 5 
 a rifle he could plunge into the wilderness and fare 
 wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Being 
 in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in 
 the course of the day's travel ; and if he failed to find 
 it, like the Indians, he kept on traveUing, secure in lO 
 the knowledge that sooner or later he would come to 
 it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight 
 meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools prin- 
 cipally made up the load on the sled, and the time- 
 card was drawn upon the limitless future.° 15 
 
 To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, 
 fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange 
 places. For weeks at a time they would hold on 
 steadily, day after day ; and for weeks upon end they 
 would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the 20 
 men burning holes through frozen muck° and gravel 
 and washing countless pans of dirt° by the heat of the 
 fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they 
 feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of 
 game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, 25 
 and dogs and men packed° on their backs, rafted across 
 blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended un- 
 known rivers in slender boats whipsawed° from the 
 standing forest. 
 
 The months came and went, and back and forth 30
 
 104 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where 
 no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost 
 Cabin were true. They went across divides" in sum- 
 mer bHzzards, shivered under the midnight sun on 
 5 naked mountains between the timber Une° and the 
 eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid 
 swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers 
 picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any 
 the Southland could boast. In the fall of the year they 
 
 10 penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent, where 
 wild-fowl had been, but where then there was no life 
 nor sign of life — only the blowing of chill winds, the 
 forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy 
 rippling of waves on lonely beaches. 
 
 15 And through another winter they wandered on the 
 obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once, 
 they came upon a path blazed tlu-ough the forest, an 
 ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. 
 But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and 
 
 20 it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the 
 reason he made it remained mystery. Another time 
 they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a 
 hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets 
 John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock.° 
 
 25 He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company" gun of the 
 young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was 
 worth its height in beaver skins packed flat. And 
 that was all — no hint as to the man who in an early 
 day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the 
 
 30 blanliets.
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 105 
 
 Spring came on once more, and at the end of all 
 their wandering they found, not the Lost Cabin, but 
 a shallow placer° in a broad valley where the gold 
 showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the 
 washing-pan. ° They sought no farther. Each day 5 
 they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean 
 dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The 
 gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to 
 the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the 
 spruce-bough lodge, hike giants they toiled, days 10 
 flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped 
 the treasure up. 
 
 There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the 
 haiding in of meat now and again that Thornton killed, 
 and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The 15 
 vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more 
 frequently, now that there was little work to be done ; 
 and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with 
 him in that other world v/hich he remembered. 
 
 The salient thing° of this other world seemed fear. 20 
 When he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, 
 head between his knees and hands clasped above. 
 Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts 
 and awakenings, at which times he would peer fear- 
 fully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the 25 
 fire. Did they w^alk by the beach of a sea, where the 
 hairy man gathered shell-fish and ate them as he 
 gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for 
 hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the 
 wind at its first appearance. Through the forest they 30
 
 106 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 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 
 5 hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel 
 ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms 
 from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, let- 
 ting go and catching, never falling, never missing his 
 grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 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, 
 
 20 barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. 
 He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or 
 into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort 
 with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch 
 for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered 
 
 25 trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all 
 that moved and sounded about him. It might be, 
 lying thus, that he hoped to surprise this call he could 
 not understand. But he did not know why he did 
 these various things. He was impelled to do them, 
 
 30 and did not reason about them at all.
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 107 
 
 Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be ly- 
 ing in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when 
 suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, in- 
 tent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and 
 dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the 5 
 forest aisles and across the open spaces where the nig- 
 gerheads° bunched. He loved to run down dry water- 
 courses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the 
 woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the under- 
 brush where he could watch the partridges drumming 10 
 and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to 
 run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listen- 
 ing to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, 
 reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and 
 seeking for the mysterious something, that called • — 15 
 called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come. 
 
 One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager- 
 eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his mane bris- 
 tling in recurrent waves. ° From the forest came the 
 call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted), 20 
 distinct and definite as never before, — a long-drawn 
 howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made by husky dog. 
 And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound 
 heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp 
 and in swift silence dashed through the woods. As 25 
 he drew closer to the cry he went more slowly, with 
 caution in everj^ movement, till he came to an open 
 place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on 
 haunches, with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, 
 timber wolf. 30
 
 108 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 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 to- 
 gether, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with un- 
 6 wonted care. Every movement advertised commingled 
 threatening and overture" of friendliness. It was 
 the menacing truce° that marks the meeting of wild 
 beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. 
 He followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. 
 
 10 He ran him into a blind channel, in the bed of the 
 creek, where a timber jam barred the way. The 
 wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the 
 fashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling 
 and bristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous 
 
 15 and rapid succession of snaps. 
 
 Buck did not attack, but circled him about and 
 hedged him in with friendly advances. The wolf 
 was suspicious and afraid ; for Buck made three of 
 him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's 
 
 20 shoulder. Watching his chance, he darted away, and 
 the chase was resumed. Time and again he was cor- 
 nered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor 
 condition or Buck could not so easily have overtaken 
 him. He would run till Buck's head was even with 
 
 25 his flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to 
 dash away again at the first opportunity. 
 
 But in the end Buck's pertinacity" was rewarded; 
 for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally 
 sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly, 
 
 30 and played about in the nervous, half-coy° way with
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 109 
 
 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, 5 
 straight up the creek bed, into the gorge from which 
 it issued, and across the bleak divide where it took its 
 rise. 
 
 On the opposite slope of the watershed" they came 
 down into a level country where were great stretches 10 
 of forest and many streams, and through these great 
 stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun 
 rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was 
 wildly glad. He knew he was at last answering the 
 call, running by the side of his wood brother toward 15 
 the place from where the call surely came. Old 
 memories were comin'g upon him fast, and he was 
 stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of 
 which they were the shadows. He had done this 
 thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly re- 20 
 membered world, and he was doing it again, now, 
 running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, 
 the wide sky overhead. 
 
 They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, 
 stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton. He sat 25 
 down. The wolf started on toward the place from 
 where the call surely came, then returned to him 
 sniffing noses and making actions as though to encour- 
 age him. But Buck turned about and started slowly 
 on the back track. For the better part of an hour the 30
 
 110 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Then 
 he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled. 
 It was a mournful howl, and as Buck held steadily on 
 his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was 
 
 5 lost in the distance. 
 
 John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed 
 into camp and sprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, 
 overturning him, scrambling upon him, licking his 
 face, biting his hand — " playing the general tom- 
 
 10 fool," as John Thornton characterized it, the while he 
 shook Buck back and forth and cursed him lovingly. 
 
 For two days and nights Buck never left camp, 
 never let Thornton out of his sight. He followed him 
 about at his work, watched him while he ate, saw him 
 
 15 into his blankets at night and out of them in the morn- 
 ing. But after two days the call in the forest began to 
 sound more imperiously" than "ever. Buck's restless- 
 ness came back on him, and he was haunted by recol- 
 lections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land 
 
 20 beyond the divide and the run side by side through the 
 wide forest stretches. Once again he took to wander- 
 ing in the woods, but the wild brother came no more ; 
 and though he listened through long vigils, the mourn- 
 ful howl was never raised. 
 
 25 He began to sleep out at night, staying away from 
 camp for days at a time ; and once he crossed the 
 divide at the head of the creek and went dow^n into the 
 land of timber and streams. There he wandered for 
 a week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, 
 
 30 killing his meat as he travelled and travelling with
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 111 
 
 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. 5 
 Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last 
 latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days 
 later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen 
 wolverenes quarrelling over the spoil, he scattered them 
 like chaff ; and those that fled left two behind who 10 
 would quarrel no more. 
 
 The blood-longing became stronger than ever be- 
 fore. He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on 
 the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his 
 own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in 15 
 a hostile environment where only the strong survived. 
 Because of all this he became possessed of a great pride 
 in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion 
 to his physical being. It advertised itself in all his 
 movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, 20 
 spoke plainly as speech in the w^ay he carried himself, 
 and made his glorious furry coat if anything more 
 glorious. But for the stray brown on his muzzle and 
 above his eyes, and for the splash of w^hite hair that 
 ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been 25 
 mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of 
 the breed. From his St. Bernard father he had in- 
 herited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother 
 who had given shape to that size and weight. His 
 muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that it was larger 30
 
 112 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 than the muzzle of any wolf ; and his head, somewhat 
 broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale. 
 
 His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; 
 his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard 
 5 intelligence ; and all this, plus an experience gained 
 in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a 
 creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorous 
 animal, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full 
 flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with 
 
 10 vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a caressing 
 hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed 
 the hand, each hair discharging its pent° magnetism 
 at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve 
 tissue and fibre, was kej'ed to the most exquisite pitch ; 
 
 15 and between all the parts there was a perfect 
 equilibrium^ or adjustment. To sights and sounds 
 and events which required action, he responded with 
 lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could 
 leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap 
 
 20 twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard 
 sound, and responded in less time than another dog 
 required to compass the mere seeing or hearing. He 
 perceived and determined and responded in the same in- 
 stant. In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, 
 
 25 determining, and responding were sequentiaP ; but so 
 infinitesimal^ were the intervals of time between them 
 that the}' appeared simultaneous. His muscles were 
 surcharged with vitality, and snapped into pla}' sharply, 
 like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splen- 
 
 30 did flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 113 
 
 would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour 
 forth generous!}' over the world. 
 
 "Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton 
 one day, as the partners watched Buck marching out 
 of camp. 5 
 
 "When he was made, the mould was broke," said 
 Pete. 
 
 "Py Jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans affirmed. 
 
 They saw him marching out of camp, but they did 
 not see the instant and terrible transformation which lo 
 took place as soon as he was within the secrecy of the 
 forest. He no longer marched. At once he became 
 a thing of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a 
 passing shadow that appeared and disappeared among 
 the shadows. He knew how to take advantage of 15 
 every cover, to crawl on his bell}' like a snake, and like 
 a snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan° 
 from its nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid 
 air the little chipmunks fleeing a second too late for 
 the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick for 20 
 him; nor were the beaver, mending their dams, too 
 wary. He killed to eat, not from wantonness ; but he 
 preferred to eat what he killed himself. So a lurking 
 himior ran through his deeds, and it was his delight 
 to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had 25 
 them, to let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the 
 tree-tops. 
 
 As the 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 30
 
 114 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf; 
 but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable 
 quarry, and he came upon it one day on the divide at 
 the head of the creek. A band of twenty moose had 
 5 crossed o^'er from the land of streams and timber, 
 and chief among them was a great bull. He was in a 
 savage temper, and, standing over six feet from the 
 ground, was as formidable an antagonist as even Buck 
 could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his 
 
 10 great palmated° antlers, branching to fourteen points 
 and embracing seven feet within the tips. His small 
 eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light, while he 
 roared with fury at sight of Buck. 
 
 From the bull's side, just forward of the flank. 
 
 15 protruded a feathered arrow-end, w^hich accounted for 
 his savageness. Guided by that instinct which came 
 from the old hunting days of the primordial world, 
 Buck proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. 
 It was no slight task. He would bark and dance about 
 
 20 in front of the bull, just out of reach of the great 
 antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs° which could 
 have stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable 
 to turn his back on the fanged danger and go on, the 
 bull would be driven into paroxysms" of rage. At 
 
 25 such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, 
 luring him on by a simulated" inability to escape. 
 But when he was thus separated from his fellows, two 
 or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon 
 Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd. 
 
 30 There is a patience of the wild — dogged, tireless,
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 115 
 
 persistent as life itself — that holds motionless for 
 endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its 
 coils, the panther in its ambuscade ; this patience be- 
 longs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; 
 and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of 5 
 the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, 
 worrying the cows with their half -grown calves, and 
 driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For 
 half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, 
 attacking from all sides, en^'eloping the herd in a whirl- 10 
 wind of menace, cutting out his victim as . fast as it 
 could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of 
 creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than 
 that of creatures preying. 
 
 As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its 15 
 bed in the northwest (the darkness had come back 
 and the fall nights were six hours long), the young 
 bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly 
 to the aid of their beset° leader. The down-coming 
 winter was harrying them on to the lower levels, and 20 
 it seemed they could ne\'er shake off this tireless crea- 
 ture that held them back. Besides, it was not the life 
 of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threat- 
 ened. The life of only one member was demanded, 
 which was a remoter interest than their lives, and in 25 
 the end they were content to pay the toll.° 
 
 As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered 
 head, watching his mates — • the cows he had known, 
 the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered 
 — as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the 30
 
 116 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 fading light. He could not follow, for before his nose 
 leaped the merciless fanged terror that would not let 
 him go. Three hundredweight more than half a ton 
 he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of 
 
 5 fight and struggle, and at the end he faced death at 
 the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach be- 
 yond his great knuckled knees. 
 
 From then on, night and day, Buck never left his 
 prey, never gave it a moment's rest, never permitted 
 
 10 it to browse the leaves of trees or the shoots of young 
 birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull 
 opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender 
 trickling streams they crossed. Often, in desperation, 
 he burst into long stretches of flight. At such times 
 
 15 Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily 
 at his heels, satisfied with the way the game was 
 played, lying down when the moose stood still, attack- 
 ing him fiercely when he strove to eat or drink. 
 
 The great head drooped more and more under its 
 
 20 tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weaker 
 and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, 
 with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped 
 hmply; and Buck found more time in which to get 
 water for himself and in which to rest. At such mo- 
 
 25 ments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes 
 fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a 
 change was coming over the face of things. He could 
 feel a new stir in the land. As the moose were coming 
 into the land, other kinds of life were coming in. 
 
 30 Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant" with their
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 117 
 
 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 ; 5 
 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, lo 
 Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his 
 face toward camp and John Thornton. He broke 
 into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, 
 never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home 
 through strange country with a certitude of direction 15 
 that put man and his magnetic needle to shame. 
 
 As he held on he became more and more conscious 
 of the new stir in the land. There was life abroad in 
 it different from the life which had been there through- 
 out the sum^mer. No longer was this fact borne in 20 
 upon him in some subtle, mysterious way. The birds 
 talked of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very 
 breeze whispered of it. Several times he stopped 
 and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, read- 
 ing a message which made him leap on with greater 25 
 speed. He was oppressed with a sense of calamity 
 happening, if it v/ere not calamity already happened; 
 and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped 
 down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with 
 greater caution. 30
 
 118 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 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, 
 5 alert to the multitudinous details which told a story — 
 all but the end. His nose gave him a varj'ing descrip- 
 tion of the passage of the life on the heels of which he 
 was travelling. He remarked the pregnant silence° of 
 the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels 
 
 10 were in hiding. One only he saw, — a sleek gray fel- 
 low, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed 
 a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself. 
 As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding 
 shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly to the side as 
 
 15 though a positive force had gripped and pulled it. He 
 followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig. 
 He was lying on his side, dead where he had dragged 
 himself, an arrow protruding, head and feathers, from 
 either side of his body. 
 
 20 A hundred yards farther on. Buck came upon one 
 of the sled-dogs Thornton had bought in Dawson. 
 This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle, 
 directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him 
 without stopping. From the camp came the faint 
 
 25 sound of many voices, rising and falling in a sing-song 
 chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing 
 he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with ar- 
 rows like a porcupine. At the same instant Buck peered 
 out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and saw 
 
 30 what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL ' 119 
 
 shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over 
 him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled 
 aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in 
 his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, 
 and it was because of his great love for John Thornton 5 
 that he lost his head. 
 
 The Yeehats° were dancing about the wreckage of 
 the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful 
 roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal the 
 like of which they had never seen before. It was 10 
 Buck, a live hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon 
 them in a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the fore- 
 most man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), ripping 
 the throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a 
 fountain of blood. He did not pause to worry the 15 
 victim, but ripped in passing, with the next bound 
 tearing wide the throat of a second man. There was 
 no withstanding him. He plunged about in their 
 very midst, tearing, rending, destroying, in constant 
 and terrific motion which defied the arrows they dis-20 
 charged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were 
 his movements, and so closely were the Indians tangled 
 together, that they shot one another with the arrows ; 
 and one young hunter, hurling a spear at Buck in 
 mid air, drove it through the chest of another hunter 25 
 with such force that the point broke through the skin 
 of the back and stood out beyond. Then a panic 
 seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to the woods, 
 proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit. 
 
 x\nd truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at 30
 
 120 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 their heels and dragging them down like deer as they 
 raced through the trees. It was a fateful day for the 
 Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the coun- 
 try, and it was not till a week later that the last of the 
 
 5 survivors gathered together in a lower valley and 
 counted their losses. x-Vs for Buck, wearying of the 
 pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He found 
 Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the 
 first moment of surprise. Thornton's desperate strug- 
 
 lOgle was fresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented 
 every detail of it down to the edge of a deep pool. 
 By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay 
 Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool itself, muddy 
 and discolored from the sluice boxes,° effectually hid 
 
 15 what it contained, and it contained John Thornton; 
 for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which 
 no trace led away. 
 
 All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed rest- 
 lessly about the camp. Death, as a cessation of move- 
 
 20 ment, as a passing out and away from the lives of the 
 living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was 
 dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to 
 hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which 
 food could not fill. At times, and when he paused to 
 
 25 contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot 
 the pain of it; a,nd at such times he was aware of a 
 great pride in himself, — a pride greater than any he 
 had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest 
 game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of 
 
 30 club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 121 
 
 had died so easily. It was harder to kill a husky dog 
 than them. They were no match at all, were it not for 
 their arrows and speai^ and clubs. Thenceforward 
 he would be unafraid of them except when they bore 
 in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. 5 
 
 Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the 
 trees into the sky, lighting the land till it lay bathed in 
 ghostly day. And with the coming of the night, brood- 
 ing and mourning by the pool. Buck became alive to 
 a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that lO 
 which the Yeehats had made. He stood up, listening 
 and scenting. From far away drifted a faint, sharp 
 yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As 
 the moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. 
 Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other 15 
 world which persisted in his memory. He walked to 
 the centre of the open space and listened. It was the 
 call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly° 
 and compelling than ever before. And as never be- 
 fore, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. 20 
 The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man 
 no longer bound him. 
 
 Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were 
 hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating moose, 
 the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land 25 
 of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. 
 Into the clearing where the moonlight streamed, they 
 poured in a silvery flood; and in the centre of the 
 clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting 
 their coming. They were awed, so still and large he 30
 
 122 THE CALL OF THE WILD 
 
 stood, and a moment's pause fell, till the boldest one 
 leaped straight for him. Like a flash Buck struck, 
 breaking the neck. Then he stood, without move- 
 ment, as before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony be- 
 5 hind him. Three others tried it in sharp succession; 
 and one after the other they drew back, streaming blood 
 from slashed throats or shoulders. 
 
 This was sufflcient to fling the whole pack forward, 
 pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by 
 
 10 its eagerness to pull down the prey. Buck's marvel- 
 lous quickness and agility stood him in good stead. 
 Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, 
 he was everywhere at once, presenting a front which 
 was apparently unbroken so swiftly did he whirl and 
 
 15 guard from side to side. But to prevent them from 
 getting behind him, he was forced back, down past 
 the pool and into the creek bed, till he brought up 
 against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a 
 right angle in the bank which the men had made in 
 
 20 the course of mining, and in this angle he came to bay, 
 protected on three sides and with nothing to do but 
 face the front. 
 
 And so well did he face it, tliat at the end of half 
 an hour the wolves drew back discomfited. The 
 
 25 tongues of all were out and lolling, the white fangs 
 showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were 
 lying down with heads raised and ears pricked for- 
 ward ; others stood on their feet, watching him ; and 
 still others were lapping water from the pool. One 
 
 30 wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in
 
 THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL 123 
 
 a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the wild 
 brother with whom he had run for a night and a day. 
 He w^as whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they 
 touched noses. 
 
 Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came 5 
 forward. Buck writhed his lips into the preiiminar}^ 
 of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him. Whereupon the 
 old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and 
 broke out the long wolf howl. The others sat down 
 and howled. x\nd now the call came to Buck in un- lo 
 mistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. 
 This over, he came out of his angle and the pack 
 crowded around him, sniffing in half-friendly, half- 
 savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the 
 pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves 15 
 swung in behind, yelping in chorus. And Buck ran 
 with them, side by side with the wild brother, yelping 
 as he ran. 
 
 And here may well end the story of Buck. The 
 years were not 'many when the Yeehats noted a change 20 
 in the breed of timber wolves ; for some were seen with 
 splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a 
 rift of white centring down the chest. But more re- 
 markable than this, the Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog 
 that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid of 25 
 this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, 
 stealing from their camps in fierce winters, robbing 
 their traps, slaying their dogs, and defying their 
 bravest hunters.
 
 124 th:bj call of the wild 
 
 Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who 
 fail to return to the camp, and hunters there have been 
 whom then' tribesmen found with throats slashed 
 cruelly open and with wolfprints about them in the 
 5 snow greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, 
 when the Yeehats follow the movement of the moose, 
 there is a certain valley which they never enter. iVnd 
 women there are who become sad when the vv^ord goes 
 over the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that 
 
 10 valley for an abiding-place. 
 
 In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that 
 valley, of which the Yeehats do not know. It is a 
 great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yet unlike, all 
 other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling 
 
 15 timber land and comes down into an open space among 
 the trees. Here a yellow stream flows from rotted 
 moose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with 
 long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould 
 overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; 
 
 20 and here he muses for a time, howling once, long and 
 mournfully, ere he departs. 
 
 But he is not always alone. When the long winter 
 nights come on and the wolves follow their m.eat into 
 the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head 
 
 25 of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering 
 borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great 
 throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, 
 which is the song of the pack.
 
 NOTES 
 
 1 : 3. tidewater dog. Dog living on the Pacific coast. 
 
 1 : 7. booming the find. Advertising the discovery of 
 the gold in an exaggerated manner in order to stimulate 
 travel on their lines. 
 
 2:14. demesne (pronounced, de men'). A landed 
 estate. 
 
 4 : 2. strike. Discovery of a rich deposit of precious 
 metal. 
 
 4 : 9. system. The particular plan of making bets by 
 means of which confirmed gamblers, ignorant of the laws 
 of chance, believe they can overcome the odds that are 
 always against them in any professional gambling game. 
 
 6 : 17. squarehead. Stupid fellow. 
 
 8 : 26. metamorphosed. Changed. 
 
 11 : 3. break cayuses. Train Indian ponies for the 
 saddle. 
 
 11 : 10. soliloquized. Said to himseK. 
 
 11 : 29. primitive law. The law as at first developed ; 
 the law as administered in earliest times. 
 
 12 : 10. conciliated. Won over by gentle behavior. 
 
 13 : 21. swarthy. Of dark complexion. 
 
 13 : 22. French- Canadian half-breed. A person one of 
 whose parents is French-Canadian ; the other, Indian. 
 
 13 : 30. 'tween decks. Between decks ; down below. 
 
 14 : 2. Spitzbergen. An island of the Arctic Ocean 
 about four hundred miles north of Norway. 
 
 14 : 23. bucked. Acted like a bucking horse, which 
 by plunging jumps on stiff fore legs tries to throw its rider. 
 
 14 : 23. possessed. Occupied by an evil spirit. 
 125
 
 126 NOTES 
 
 16 : 16. vicarious experience. Experience gained not 
 from participation in the event but by noticing what 
 happened to another dog. 
 
 17 : 5. huskies. Native sled dogs. See Introduction, 
 " The Dog in the Northland." 
 
 17 : 25. swart. Swarthy ; of dark complexion. 
 
 18 : 16. wheeler. That dog of a team which is 
 harnessed next to the sled. See Introduction, " The Dog 
 in the Northland." 
 
 19 : 8. introspective. Thinking about himself ; not 
 turning his mind to matters outside of himself, malig- 
 nant. Malicious ; harboring ill-will. 
 
 19 : 12. appeasingly. In a manner intended to allay 
 anger. 
 
 19 : 19. Incarnation of belligerent fear. An example 
 in the flesh of a fear so great that it drove the dog to fight 
 for his life. 
 
 20 : 19. ignominiously. Disgracefully. 
 
 20 : 23. disconsolate. Sorrowful ; sad ; dejected. 
 
 21 : 15. placatingly. In a way intended to dispel anger. 
 
 22 : 2. harking back . . . forbears. Returning . . . 
 in imagination to the lives of his ancestors. 
 
 22 : 3. unduly civilized. More civilized than was good 
 for him — to Jack London's way of thinking. 
 
 22 : 18. courier. Rapidly traveUing messenger. 
 
 26 : 13. fundamental and primitive code. A body of 
 laws of first importance for the preservation of the life of 
 a dog. 
 
 26 : 16. decivilization. The remo^dng from his dog 
 mind of the habits developed in the domesticated dog. 
 
 26 : 18. ability to flee . . . consideration. Abihty to 
 ignore aU ideas of right and A\Tong in his actions. 
 
 26 : 24. retrogression. Mo\dng back from the condi- 
 tion of body of the civilized dog to that of the -uild dog. 
 See Introduction, " The Central Idea of the Book." 
 
 26 : 27. He achieved . . . economy. He acquired
 
 NOTES 127 
 
 ability not only to meet the hardships of the world with- 
 out, but also to withstand the rough usage to which his 
 organs of digestion were subjected. 
 
 27 : 13. to leeward. On the side opposite to that 
 struck by the wdnd. 
 
 28 : 1. cadences. Succession of notes in the musical 
 scale; the " tune " howled by the dogs. 
 
 28 : 5. puppet thing life is. Nature casts people and 
 events together as carelessly as a child throws down his 
 doll here or there on the ground. 
 
 28 : 10. lap over the needs. More than cover the 
 needs ; more than meet the needs. 
 
 29 : 1. dominant primordial beast. The desire to be 
 the beast that leads the pack, as in the first days of the 
 dog — the early days of the wild dog. 
 
 31 : 9. pandemonium. A noise like that made by all 
 the devils together. 
 
 31 : 30. slavered fangs. Dripping jaws. 
 
 36:6. cave-dweller or river man. For an interesting 
 and substantially accurate picture of primitive man, see 
 Jack London's " Before Adam." 
 
 39 : 9. malingerer. Shirker. 
 
 40 : 4. covert. Hidden ; concealed. 
 
 41 : 1. eerie. Weird ; mysterious ; ghostly. 
 
 41 : 3. aurora borealis. The northern lights. 
 
 41 : 9. articulate travail of existence. Vocal expression 
 of the burden of living. 
 
 42 : 9. insidious. Slyly carried out ; hard to detect. 
 42 : 10. solidarity. Sense of common responsibility. 
 42 : 27. bickered. Indulged in petty wrangling. 
 
 43 : 27. wraith. A spectre ; a ghost. 
 
 44 : 7. ecstasy. Exaltation ; strong feeling that lifts 
 one beyond himself. 
 
 44 : 9. paradox. Contradiction. 
 
 44 : 13. caught up . . . flame. Carried beyond him- 
 self by some great surge of feeling.
 
 128 NOTES 
 
 44 : 20. womb of Time. Beginnings of things. 
 44 : 24. rampant. Unchecked ; unrestrained ; exu- 
 berant. 
 
 44 : 25. exultantly. In triumph ; with great rejoicing. 
 44 : 28. supreme moods. Times of strongest feeling. 
 
 46 : 5. wonted. Customary ; usual. 
 
 47:11. instinct. Inherited knowledge. See Intro- 
 duction, "The Central-Idea of the Book." 
 
 47 : 25. inexorable. Unrelenting ; pitiless ; merciless. 
 51 : 14. sheepishly. In a silly manner ; in a manner 
 
 that showed how fooUsh he felt. 
 
 53: 28, threw chests. Slang for " swaggered." 
 
 54:1. dog-busters and mushers. Dog-team trainers 
 and dog-team drivers. 
 
 55 : 22. lapsed. Shpped away. 
 
 60 : 24. yearning toward them. Looking toward them 
 with sorrowful longing to join them. 
 
 64:11. callowness. Immaturity; lack of knowledge 
 and experience. 
 
 67 : 4. clannish. Standing up for her family. 
 
 69 : 4. inexorable elimination of the superfluous. 
 Merciless discarding of what was not needed. 
 
 70 : 21. Q. E. D. Abbreviation of the Latin, Quod erat 
 demonstrandum, " which was to be proved," the customary 
 wording at the end of a geometrical proof. 
 
 70 : 22. comprehensively. " Understandingly " seems 
 to be London's meaning. 
 
 71 : 25. orthodox. Here means "usual," " customary." 
 
 72 : 29. amenities. Agreeable manners. 
 
 73 : 1. glamour. Enchantment. 
 
 74 : 5. be relevant to. Have any connection with. 
 
 74 : 14. chivalrously. Gallantly ; courteously. 
 
 74 : 27. importuned. Here apparently used in the 
 sense of " annoyed." 
 
 77 : 7. loom. Vague outline or signs seems to be the 
 meaning here.
 
 NOTES 129 
 
 78:11. innocuously. Harmlessly. It here seems to 
 mean " uselessly." 
 
 80 : 6. impending doom. Here " coming disaster." 
 
 80 : 23. inarticulate. Not in sounds of words of ordi- 
 nary speech. 
 
 80 : 27. wistfully. Pensively ; with melancholy thought- 
 fulness. 
 
 81 : 10. chaotic abandonment of hysteria. Unre- 
 strained giving way to hysterics. 
 
 86 : 14. transient. Passing out of his life ; temporary. 
 
 87 : 18. lessoned. Learned. An unusual verb in an 
 unusual sense. 
 
 88 : 12. peremptorily. Commandingly ; in a way 
 that demands obedience. 
 
 88 : 20. imperiously. In a commanding manner ; in 
 a way not to be disobeyed. 
 
 89 : 4. same large type. Same kind of simple, big- 
 hearted man. 
 
 89 : 13. grub-staked themselves. Bought themselves 
 food and equipment for a prospecting tour in search of 
 gold. 
 
 90 : 9. tenderfoot. A new-comer, a " greenhorn." 
 
 90:29. "miners' meeting." A trial jury selected 
 from those who happened to be present. 
 
 91 : 6. Poling-boat. A boat propelled and guided by 
 pushing with poles on the river bottom. 
 
 91:8. snubbing. Checking the progress of. 
 
 94:9. being violently propelled . . .Pete. Crude first 
 aid for a man nearly drowned. 
 
 94:21. totem-pole. A tall piece of timber fantas- 
 tically carved with the " totem " or token of a particular 
 family or elan. Those of some western Indian tribes of 
 North America are brilliantly colored. In a sense the 
 totem-pole has religious significance. The totem-pole 
 'Was not erected to commemorate some great deed, as 
 London seems to think.
 
 130 NOTES 
 
 95 : 17. Thornton's bluff. Bluff, slang for an act or a 
 statement of a boastful sort intended to deceive or frighten 
 by pretended resources or power. 
 
 96 : 6. Mastodon King. One who had grown wealthy 
 from the riches of the Mastodon mine. 
 
 96 : 12. plethoric. Crammed full, 
 
 96 : 18. lay odds. Offer betting odds. 
 
 96 : 25. quibble. Argument on a mere trifle ; petty 
 discussion. 
 
 99 : 3. It seemed like a conjuration. Thornton seemed 
 to be using magic words by which to secure supernatural 
 aid. 
 
 100 : 25. incoherent babel. Loud talking by so many 
 at once that a listener could understand nothing. 
 
 102 : 4. fabled lost mine. A mine of which stories 
 were told but the location of which was no longer known. 
 
 102 : 10. tradition. Story handed down from man to 
 man for long periods. 
 
 102:12. ramshackle. Tumble-down; in a state of 
 decay. 
 
 103 : 15. time card was drawn upon the limitless future. 
 They had planned to take as long a time as might be 
 needed to succeed in their search. 
 
 103:21. Muck. A mass of decomposed vegetable 
 matter forming a top-soil. 
 
 103 : 22. washing countless pans of dirt. Testing for 
 the presence of gold. See Introduction, " Placer-Mining." 
 
 103 : 26. packed on their backs. Men and dogs carried 
 ammunition, tools, camp equipment, and food in packs on 
 their backs. 
 
 103 : 28. whipsawed. Cut with a saw of narrow blade. 
 104 : 3. divides. Ridges or conspicuous elevations are 
 
 here meant. 
 
 104 : 5. timber-line. The elevation above the sea level 
 at which timber ceases to grow. 
 
 104 : 24. flint-lock. An old-time muzzle-loading gun,
 
 NOTES 131 
 
 the powder in which was ignited by a spark produced by 
 the striking on a piece of steel of a fragment of flint set in 
 the hammer. 
 
 104 : 25. Hudson Bay Company. An English corpora- 
 tion nearly two and a half centuries old that does an 
 immense business in the Dominion of Canada. The com- 
 pany collects furs, sells general merchandise, and outfits 
 hunters and trappers. In out-of-the-way places its agents 
 administer the laws. 
 
 105:3,5. Placer, washing-pan. See Introduction, 
 " Placer-Mining." 
 
 105 : 20. salient thing. The thing that forced itself 
 on the attention ; the prominent thing. 
 
 107 : 7. niggerheads. This word generally means 
 rounded boulders, or rocks. 
 
 107:19. .recurrent waves. Waves that occur re- 
 peatedly. 
 
 108 : 6. overture. Proposal. 
 
 108 : 7. menacing truce. Outward signs of friendliness 
 carrying with them a threat of ^dolence. 
 
 108 : 27. pertinacity. Dogged perseverance. 
 108:30. half-coy. " Coy " means bashful ; shy. 
 
 109 : 9. watershed. The line of high ground separat- 
 ing the water flowing into two different rivers or river 
 basins. 
 
 110 : 17. imperiously. Commandingly ; in a way that 
 demanded obedience. 
 
 pent. Shut in. 
 
 equilibrium. Balance. 
 
 were sequential. Followed one another. 
 
 infinitesimal. Exceedingly small. 
 
 ptarmigan. A bird of the grouse family. 
 
 palmated. Like an open palm of the hand ; 
 resembling a hand open with the fingers mdely separated. 
 114 : 21. splay hoofs. Broad, flat hoofs. 
 114 : 24. paroxysms. Sudden outbursts ; fits. 
 
 112 
 
 12 
 
 112 
 
 16 
 
 112 
 
 25 
 
 112 
 
 26 
 
 113 
 
 17 
 
 114 
 
 10
 
 132 NOTES 
 
 114 : 26. simulated. Pretended. 
 
 115 : 19. beset. Set upon ; attacked. 
 
 115 : 26. pay the toll. Pay the tax on the herd in- 
 volved in the loss of the wounded moose ; stand the loss. 
 
 116 : 30. palpitant. Throbbing. 
 
 118 : 8. pregnant silence. Silence filled Tvdth meaning. 
 
 119 : 7. Yeehats. A native tribe. 
 
 120:14. sluice boxes. See Introduction, " Placer-Min- 
 ing. 
 
 121: 18. Luringly. Enticingly; in a winning way. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America.
 
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