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

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

-1-

newspapers, and he did not know that
Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was
an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had
one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese
lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one
besetting weakness—faith in a system; and
this made his damnation certain. For to play
a system requires money, while the wages
of a gardener's helper do not lap over the
needs of a wife and numerous progeny.

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

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

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

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

-2-

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

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

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

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

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

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

There he lay for the remainder of the weary
night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride.
He could not understand what it all meant.
What did they want with him, these strange
men? Why were they keeping him pent up in
this narrow crate? He did not know why, but
he felt oppressed by the vague sense of
impending calamity. Several times during
the night he sprang to his feet when the
shed door rattled open, expecting to see the
Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it
was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper
that peered in at him by the sickly light of a
tallow candle. And each time the joyful bark
that trembled in Buck's throat was twisted
into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in
the morning four men entered and picked

-3-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-4-

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

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

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

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

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

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was
not broken. He saw, once for all, that he
stood no chance against a man with a club.
He had learned the lesson, and in all his
after life he never forgot it. That club was a
revelation. It was his introduction to the reign
of primitive law, and he met the introduction
halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer
aspect; and while he faced that aspect
uncowed, he faced it with all the latent
cunning of his nature aroused. As the days

-5-

unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum
for so fine an animal. The Canadian
Government would be no loser, nor would
its despatches travel the slower. Perrault
knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he
knew that he was one in a thousand—"One in
ten t'ousand," he commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and
was not surprised when Curly, a good-
natured Newfoundland, and he were led
away by the little weazened man. That was
the last he saw of the man in the red
sweater, and as Curly and he looked at
receding Seattle from the deck of the
Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm
Southland. Curly and he were taken below
by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced
giant called Francois. Perrault was a
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 grew honestly to respect them. He
speedily learned that Perrault and Francois
were fair men, calm and impartial in
administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

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

-6-

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

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

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

-7-

the combined tuition of his two mates and
Francois made remarkable progress. Ere
they returned to camp he knew enough to
stop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush," to swing
wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the
wheeler when the loaded sled shot downhill
at their heels.

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

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

By evening Perrault secured another dog,
an old husky, long and lean and gaunt, with
a battle-scarred face and a single eye
which flashed a warning of prowess that
commanded respect. He was called Sol-

-8-

and again he returned. Were they in the tent?
No, that could not be, else he would not
have been driven out. Then where could
they possibly be? With drooping tail and
shivering body, very forlorn indeed, he
aimlessly circled the tent. Suddenly the
snow gave way beneath his fore legs and
he sank down. Something wriggled under
his feet. He sprang back, bristling and
snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown.
But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and
he went back to investigate. A whiff of
warm air ascended to his nostrils, and
there, curled up under the snow in a snug
ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly,
squirmed and wriggled to show his good
will and intentions, and even ventured, as a
bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face with his
warm wet tongue.

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

Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the
noises of the waking camp. At first he did
not know where he was. It had snowed
during the night and he was completely
buried. The snow walls pressed him on
every side, and a great surge of fear swept
through him—the fear of the wild thing for the
trap. It was a token that he was harking back
through his own life to the lives of his
forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an
unduly civilized dog, and of his own
experience knew no trap and so could not of
himself fear it. The muscles of his whole
body contracted spasmodically and
instinctively, the hair on his neck and

-9-

the rest of the team was strung out ahead,
single file, to the leader, which position was
filled by Spitz.

Buck had been purposely placed between
Dave and Sol-leks so that he might receive
instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they
were equally apt teachers, never allowing
him to linger long in error, and enforcing
their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave
was fair and very wise. He never nipped
Buck without cause, and he never failed to
nip him when he stood in need of it. As
Francois's whip backed him up, Buck
found it to be cheaper to mend his ways
than to retaliate. Once, during a brief halt,
when he got tangled in the traces and
delayed the start, both Dave and flew at him
and administered a sound trouncing. The
resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck
took good care to keep the traces clear
thereafter; and ere the day was done, so
well had he mastered his work, his mates
about ceased nagging him. Francois's
whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault
even honored Buck by lifting up his feet and
carefully examining them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Canon,
through Sheep Camp, past the Scales and
the timber line, across glaciers and
snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and over
the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands
between the salt water and the fresh and
guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely
North. They made good time down the chain
of lakes which fills the craters of extinct
volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the
huge camp at the head of Lake Bennett,
where thousands of goldseekers were
building boats against the break-up of the
ice in the spring. Buck made his hole in the
snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted
just, but all too early was routed out in the
cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.

-10-

chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he
was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward
blunderer who was always getting caught,
was punished for Buck's misdeed.

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

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

His development (or retrogression) was
rapid. His muscles became hard as iron,
and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He
achieved an internal as well as external

-11-

the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.

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

Chapter 3 The Dominant Primordial Beast

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

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

-12-

or five score of them, who had scented the
camp from some Indian village. They had
crept in while Buck and Spitz were fighting,
and when the two men sprang among them
with stout clubs they showed their teeth and
fought back. They were crazed by the smell
of the food. Perrault found one with head
buried in the grub-box. His club landed
heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box
was capsized on the ground. On the instant
a score of the famished brutes were
scrambling for the bread and bacon. The
clubs fell upon them unheeded. They yelped
and howled under the rain of blows, but
struggled none the less madly till the last
crumb had been devoured.

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

-13-

wounded dogs.

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

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

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

Nothing daunted him. It was because
nothing daunted him that he had been
chosen for government courier. He took all
manner of risks, resolutely thrusting his little
weazened face into the frost and struggling
on from dim dawn to dark. He skirted the
frowning shores on rim ice that bent and
crackled under foot and upon which they
dared not halt. Once, the sled broke
through, with Dave and Buck, and they were

-14-

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

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

-15-

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

He openly threatened the other's
leadership. He came between him and the
shirks he should have punished. And he did
it deliberately. One night there was a heavy
snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the
malingerer, did not appear. He was
securely hidden in his nest under a foot of
snow. Francois called him and sought him
in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath. He raged
through the camp, smelling and digging in
every likely place, snarling so frightfully that
Pike heard and shivered in his hiding-
place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and
Spitz flew at him to punish him, Buck flew,
with equal rage, in between. So unexpected
was it, and so shrewdly managed, that
Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet.
Pike, who had been trembling abjectly,
took heart at this open mutiny, and sprang
upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom
fair play was a forgotten code, likewise

-16-

regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they
lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie
chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.

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

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

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile
run, on the first day; and the second day

-17-

amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

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

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

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit
of life, and beyond which life cannot rise.
And such is the paradox of living, this
ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and
it comes as a complete forgetfulness that
one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness
of living, comes to the artist, caught up and
out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes
to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field
and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck,
leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry,
straining after the food that was alive and
that fled swiftly before him through the

-18-

with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to
remember it all,—the white woods, and
earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle.
Over the whiteness and silence brooded a
ghostly calm. There was not the faintest
whisper of air—nothing moved, not a leaf
quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs
rising slowly and lingering in the frosty air.
They had made short work of the snowshoe
rabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed
wolves; and they were now drawn up in an
expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their
eyes only gleaming and their breaths
drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was
nothing new or strange, this scene of old
time. It was as though it had always been,
the wonted way of things.

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

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the
neck of the big white dog. Wherever his
fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were
countered by the fangs of Spitz. Fang
clashed fang, and lips were cut and
bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his
enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and
enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes.
Time and time again he tried for the snow-
white throat, where life bubbled near to the
surface, and each time and every time Spitz
slashed him and got away. Then Buck took
to rushing, as though for the throat, when,
suddenly drawing back his head and
curving in from the side, he would drive his
shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram

-19-

forth, snarling with horrible menace, as
though to frighten off impending death.
Then Buck sprang in and out; but while he
was in, shoulder had at last squarely met
shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on
the moon-flooded snow as Spitz
disappeared from view. Buck stood and
looked on, the successful champion, the
dominant primordial beast who had made
his kill and found it good.

Chapter 4 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
light pointed them out.

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

"An' dat Buck fight lak two hells," was
Francois's answer. "An' now we make
good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble,
sure."

While Perrault packed the camp outfit and
loaded the sled, the dog-driver proceeded
to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the
place Spitz would have occupied as leader;
but Francois, not noticing him, brought Sol-
leks to the coveted position. In his
judgment, Sol-leks was the best lead-dog
left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury,
driving him back and standing in his place.

"Eh? eh?" Francois cried, slapping his
thighs gleefully. "Look at dat Buck. Heem
keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."

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

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and

-20-

good.

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

"T'row down de club," Perrault
commanded.

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

Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued
Buck, with his two devils, he found, while
the day was yet young, that he had
undervalued. At a bound Buck took up the
duties of leadership; and where judgment
was required, and quick thinking and quick
acting, he showed himself the superior
even of Spitz, of whom 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 none of their business.
Their business was to toil, and toil mightily,
in the traces. So long as that were not

-21-

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

It was a record run. Each day for fourteen
days they had averaged forty miles. For
three days Perrault and 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 worshipful crowd of dog-
busters and mushers. Then three or four
western bad men aspired to clean out the
town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for
their pains, and public interest turned to
other idols. Next came official orders.
Francois called Buck to him, threw his arms
around him, wept over him. And that was
the last of 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 mates, and in company with a dozen
other dog-teams he started back over the
weary trail to Dawson. It was no light running
now, nor record time, but heavy toil each
day, with a heavy load behind; for this was
the mail train, carrying word from the world
to the men who sought gold under the
shadow of the Pole.

Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the
work, taking pride in it after the manner of
Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his
mates, whether they prided in it or not, did
their fair share. It was a monotonous life,
operating with machine-like regularity. One

-22-

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

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

-23-

by straining to start it, he would cry out with
pain. The driver examined him, but could
find nothing. All the drivers became
interested in his case. They talked it over at
meal-time, and over their last pipes before
going to bed, and one night they held a
consultation. He was brought from his nest
to the fire and was pressed and prodded till
he cried out many times. Something was
wrong inside, but they could locate no
broken bones, could not make it out.

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

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

-24-

hitch ahead again for a few more inches.
His strength left him, and the last his mates
saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and
yearning toward them. But they could hear
him mournfully howling till they passed out of
sight behind a belt of river timber.

Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-
breed slowly retraced his steps to the camp
they had left. The men ceased talking. A
revolver-shot rang out. The man came back
hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells
tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the
trail; but Buck knew, and every dog knew,
what had taken place behind the belt of river
trees.

Chapter 5 The Toil of Trace and Trail

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

They were all terribly footsore. No spring or
rebound was left in them. Their feet fell
heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and
doubting the fatigue of a day's travel. There
was nothing the matter with them except
that they were dead tired. It was not the
dead-tiredness that comes through brief
and excessive effort, from which recovery
is a matter of hours; but it was the dead-
tiredness that comes through the slow and
prolonged strength drainage of months of
toil. There was no power of recuperation
left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had

-25-

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

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

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

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

-26-

preparing to lash out at them with the whip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-27-

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

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

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in
half, was still a formidable bulk. Charles
and Hal went out in the evening and bought
six Outside dogs. These, added to the six of
the original team, and Teek and Koona, the
huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the
record trip, brought the team up to fourteen.
But the Outside dogs, though practically
broken in since their landing, did not amount
to much. Three were short-haired pointers,
one was a Newfoundland, and the other two
were mongrels of indeterminate breed.
They did not seem to know anything, these
newcomers. Buck and his comrades

-28-

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

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

Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke
one day to the fact that his dog-food was
half gone and the distance only quarter
covered; further, that for love or money no
additional dog-food was to be obtained.
So he cut down even the orthodox ration
and tried to increase the day's travel. His
sister and brother-in-law seconded him;
but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit

-29-

speech, and hard words were first on their
lips in the morning and last at night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever
Mercedes gave them a chance. It was the
cherished belief of each that he did more
than his share of the work, and neither
forbore to speak this belief at every
opportunity. Sometimes Mercedes sided
with her husband, sometimes with her
brother. The result was a beautiful and
unending family quarrel. Starting from a
dispute as to which should chop a few
sticks for the fire (a dispute which
concerned only Charles and Hal), presently
would be lugged in the rest of the family,
fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people
thousands of miles away, and some of
them dead. That Hal's views on art, or the
sort of society plays his mother's brother
wrote, should have anything to do with the
chopping of a few sticks of firewood,
passes comprehension; nevertheless the
quarrel was as likely to tend in that direction
as in the direction of Charles's political
prejudices. And that Charles's sister's 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
unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's
family. In the meantime the fire remained
unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs
unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance—the
grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft,
and had been chivalrously treated all her
days. But the present treatment by her
husband and brother was everything save
chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless.
They complained. Upon which
impeachment of what to her was her most
essential sex-prerogative, she made their
lives unendurable. She no longer

-30-

longer pull, he fell down and remained down
till blows from whip or club drove him to his
feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had
gone out of his beautiful furry coat. The hair
hung down, limp and draggled, or matted
with dried blood where Hal's club had
bruised him. His muscles had wasted away
to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had
disappeared, so that each rib and every
bone in his frame were outlined cleanly
through the loose hide that was wrinkled in
folds of emptiness. It was heartbreaking,
only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The
man in the red sweater had proved that.

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

There came a day when Billee, the good-
natured, fell and could not rise. Hal had
traded off his revolver, so he took the axe
and knocked Billee on the head as he lay in
the traces, then cut the carcass out of the
harness and dragged it to one side. Buck
saw, and his mates saw, and they knew that
this thing was very close to them. On the
next day Koona went, and but five of them
remained: Joe, too far gone to be
malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only
half conscious and not conscious enough

-31-

bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening
life, under the blazing sun and through the
soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to
death, staggered the two men, the woman,
and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping
and riding, Hal swearing innocuously, and
Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they
staggered into John Thornton's camp at the
mouth of White River. When they halted, the
dogs dropped down as though they had all
been struck dead. Mercedes dried her eyes
and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat
down on a log to rest. He sat down very
slowly and painstakingly what of his great
stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton
was whittling the last touches on an axe-
handle he had made from a stick of birch.
He whittled and listened, gave monosyllabic
replies, and, when it was asked, terse
advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his
advice in the certainty that it would not be
followed.

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

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

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

-32-

aware that he was being beaten. The last
sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt
anything, though very faintly he could hear
the impact of the club upon his body. But it
was no longer his body, it seemed so far
away.

And then, suddenly, without warning,
uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more
like the cry of an animal, John Thornton
sprang upon the man who wielded the club.
Hal was hurled backward, as though struck
by a failing tree. Mercedes screamed.
Charles looked on wistfully, wiped his
watery eyes, but did not get up because of
his stiffness.

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

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

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

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

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his
hands were full with his sister, or his arms,
rather; while Buck was too near dead to be
of further use in hauling the sled. A few
minutes later they pulled out from the bank
and down the river. Buck heard them go and

-33-

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

To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested
no jealousy toward him. They seemed to
share the kindliness and largeness of John
Thornton. As Buck grew stronger they
enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous
games, in which Thornton himself could not
forbear to join; and in this fashion Buck
romped through his convalescence and into
a new existence. Love, genuine passionate
love, was his for the first time. This he had
never experienced at Judge Miller's down
in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With
the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping, it
had been a working partnership; with the
Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous
guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a
stately and dignified friendship. But love
that was feverish and burning, that was
adoration, that was madness, it had taken
John Thornton to arouse.

-34-

hour, eager, alert, at Thornton's feet,
looking up into his face, dwelling upon it,
studying it, following with keenest interest
each fleeting expression, every movement
or change of feature. Or, as chance might
have it, he would lie farther away, to the
side or rear, watching the outlines of the
man and the occasional movements of his
body. And often, such was the communion
in which they lived, the strength of Buck's
gaze would draw John Thornton's head
around, and he would return the gaze,
without speech, his heart shining out of his
eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

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

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

-35-

themselves the stuff of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon
him, that each day mankind and the claims
of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep
in the forest a call was sounding, and as
often as he heard this call, mysteriously
thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn
his back upon the fire and the beaten earth
around it, and to plunge into the forest, and
on and on, he knew not where or why; nor
did he wonder where or why, the call
sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.
But as often as he gained the soft unbroken
earth and the green shade, the love for John
Thornton drew him back to the fire again.

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

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to
grow and grow. He, alone among men,
could put a pack upon Buck's back in the
summer travelling. Nothing was too great
for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded.
One day (they had grub-staked themselves
from the proceeds of the raft and left
Dawson for the head-waters of the
Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on

-36-

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

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved
John Thornton's life in quite another
fashion. The three partners were lining a
long and narrow poling-boat down a bad
stretch of rapids on the Creek. Hans and
Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with
a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while
Thornton remained in the boat, helping its
descent by means of a pole, and shouting
directions to the shore. Buck, on the bank,
worried and anxious, kept abreast of the
boat, his eyes never off his master.

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

-37-

Thornton was abreast of him and a bare
half-dozen strokes away while he was
being carried helplessly past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as
though Buck were a boat. The rope thus
tightening on him in the sweep of the
current, he was jerked under the surface,
and under the surface he remained till his
body struck against the bank and he was
hauled out. He was half drowned, and Hans
and Pete threw themselves upon him,
pounding the breath into him and the water
out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell
down. The faint sound of Thornton's voice
came to them, and though they could not
make out the words of it, they knew that he
was in his extremity. His master's voice
acted on Buck like an electric shock, He
sprang to his feet and ran up the bank
ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.

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

Thornton came to, belly downward and

-38-

deliberately, so that all could hear, "I've got
a thousand dollars that says he can't. And
there it is." So saying, he slammed a sack
of gold dust of the size of a bologna
sausage down upon the bar.

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

"I've got a sled standing outside now, with
twenty fiftypound sacks of flour on it,"
Matthewson went on with brutal directness;
"so don't let that hinder you."

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

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

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

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into

-39-

capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against
Matthewson's six hundred.

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

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

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

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

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

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He

-40-

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

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

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

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

-41-

threading the upstanding peaks which
marked the backbone of the continent.

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

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

The months came and went, and back and
forth they twisted through the uncharted
vastness, where no men were and yet
where men had been if the Lost Cabin were
true. They went across divides in summer
blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun
on naked mountains between the timber
line and the eternal snows, dropped into
summer valleys amid swarming gnats and

-42-

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

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

And closely akin to the visions of the hairy
man was the call still sounding in the depths
of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a
vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware
of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew

-43-

made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the
old familiar way, as a sound heard before.
He sprang through the sleeping camp and in
swift silence dashed through the woods. As
he drew closer to the cry he went more
slowly, with caution in every movement, till
he came to an open place among the trees,
and looking out saw, erect on haunches,
with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean,
timber wolf.

He had made no noise, yet it ceased from
its howling and tried to sense his presence.
Buck stalked into the open, half crouching,
body gathered compactly together, tail
straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted
care. Every movement advertised
commingled threatening and overture of
friendliness. It was the menacing truce that
marks the meeting of wild beasts that prey.
But the wolf fled at sight of him. He
followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy to
overtake. He ran him into a blind channel, in
the bed of the creek where a timber jam
barred the way. The wolf whirled about,
pivoting on his hind legs after the fashion of
Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling
and bristling, clipping his teeth together in a
continuous and rapid succession of snaps.

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

But in the end Buck's pertinacity was

-44-

until it was lost in the distance.

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

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

He began to sleep out at night, staying away
from camp for days at a time; and once he
crossed the divide at the head of the creek
and went down into the land of timber and
streams. There he wandered for a week,
seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild
brother, killing his meat as he travelled and
travelling with the long, easy lope that
seems never to tire. He fished for salmon in
a broad stream that emptied somewhere
into the sea, and by this stream he killed a
large black bear, blinded by the mosquitoes
while likewise fishing, and raging through
the forest helpless and terrible. Even so, it
was a hard fight, and it aroused the last
latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two
days later, when he returned to his kill and
found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over

-45-

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

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

"When he was made, the mould was broke,"
said Pete.

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

They saw him marching out of camp, but
they did not see the instant and terrible
transformation which took place as soon as
he was within the secrecy of the forest. He
no longer marched. At once he became a
thing of the wild, stealing along softly, , a
passing shadow that appeared and
disappeared among the shadows. He knew
how to take advantage of every cover, to
crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a
snake to leap and strike. He could take a

-46-

danger and go on, the bull would be driven
into paroxysms of rage. At such moments
he charged Buck, who retreated craftily,
luring him on by a simulated inability to
escape. But when he was thus separated
from his fellows, two or three of the younger
bulls would charge back upon Buck and
enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.

There is a patience of the wild—dogged,
tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds
motionless for endless hours the spider in
its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in
its ambuscade; this patience belongs
peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food;
and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the
flank of the herd, retarding its march,
irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows
with their half-grown calves, and driving the
wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For
half a day this continued. Buck multiplied
himself, attacking from all sides,
enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of
menace, cutting out his victim as fast as it
could rejoin its mates, wearing out the
patience of creatures preyed upon, which is
a lesser patience than that of creatures
preying.

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

As twilight fell the old bull stood with

-47-

and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw
nothing, yet knew that the land was
somehow different; that through it strange
things were afoot and ranging; and he
resolved to investigate after he had finished
the business in hand.

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

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

Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail
that sent his neck hair rippling and bristling,
It led straight toward camp and John
Thornton. Buck hurried on, swiftly and
stealthily, every nerve straining and tense,
alert to the multitudinous details which told a
story—all but the end. His nose gave him a
varying description of the passage of the
life on the heels of which he was travelling.

-48-

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

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

All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed

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migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last
crossed over from the land of streams and
timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into the
clearing where the moonlight streamed,
they poured in a silvery flood; and in the
centre of the clearing stood Buck,
motionless as a statue, waiting their
coming. They were awed, so still and large
he stood, and a moment's pause fell, till the
boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a
flash Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then
he stood, without movement, as before, the
stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him.
Three others tried it in sharp succession;
and one after the other they drew back,
streaming blood from slashed throats or
shoulders.

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

And so well did he face it, that at the end of
half an hour the wolves drew back
discomfited. The tongues of all were out
and lolling, the white fangs showing cruelly
white in the moonlight. Some were lying
down with heads raised and ears pricked
forward; others stood on their feet,
watching him; and still others were lapping
water from the pool. One wolf, long and lean

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there are who become sad when the word
goes over the fire of how the Evil Spirit
came to select that valley for an abiding-
place.

In the summers there is one visitor,
however, to that valley, of which the Yeehats
do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated
wolf, like, and yet unlike, all other wolves.
He crosses alone from the smiling timber
land and comes down into an open space
among the trees. Here a yellow stream
flows from rotted sacks and sinks into the
ground, with long grasses growing through
it and vegetable mould overrunning it and
hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he
muses for a time, howling once, long and
mournfully, ere he departs. But he is not
always alone. When the long winter nights
come on and the wolves follow their meat
into the lower valleys, he may be seen
running at the head of the pack through the
pale moonlight or glimmering borealis,
leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great
throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the
younger world, which is the song of the
pack.

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