Call of the Wild: Chapter 7

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of the Call of the Wild by Jack London.
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(00:26):
the Wild by Jack London, Chapter seven, 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

(00:48):
his partners into the east after a fabled lost mine,
the history of which was as old as the history
of the country. Many men had sought it, few had
found it, and more than a few there were who
had never returned from the quest. This lost mine was

(01:11):
steeped in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew
of the first man, the oldest tradition stopped before it
got back to him. From the beginning, there had been
an ancient and ramshackle cabin, dying men had sworn to

(01:32):
it and to the mine, the sight of which it marked,
clinching their testimony with nuggets that were unlike any known
grade of gold in the Northland. But no living man
had looted this treasure house, and the dead were dead.
Wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and

(01:54):
half a dozen other dogs faced into the East on
an unknown trail to a chieve where men and dogs
as good as themselves had failed. They sledded seventy miles
at the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stuart River,
passed the Mayo and the me Question, and held on

(02:17):
until the Stewart itself became a streamlet threading the upstanding
peaks which marked the backbone of the Cottont. 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,

(02:40):
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 traveling, secure in the
knowledge that sooner or later he would come to it.

(03:02):
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 book. It was
boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places.

(03:28):
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

(03:50):
they went hungry, sometimes they feasted righteously, all according to
the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived,
and the dogs and men, parked on their backs, rafted
across blue mountain lakes and descended or ascended unknown rivers

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in slender boats whip sawed 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.

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They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the
midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and
the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats
and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries
and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland

(04:55):
could boast. In the fall of the year, they pinished
treated 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

(05:18):
rippling of waves on lonely beaches. And through another winter
they wandered on the obliterated trails of men who had
gone before. Once they came upon a path blazed through
the forest, an ancient path, and the lost cabin seemed

(05:38):
very near. But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere,
and it remained mystery, as the man who made it
and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time
they chanced upon the time graven wreckage of a hunting lodge,
and amid the shreds of rotted blankets, John Thornton found

(06:01):
a long barreled flint look he knew it for a
Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days in the Northwest,
when such a gun was worth its height. In Beaver
skins packed flat, and that was all no hint as
to the man who in an early day had reared
the lodge and left the gun among the blankets. Spring

(06:24):
came on once more, and at the end of all
their wandering they found not the lost cabin, but a
shallow placer and a broad valley, where the gold showed
like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing pan.
They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them

(06:46):
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 spring spow lodge. Like giants, they toiled days,
flashing on the heels of days like dreams, as they

(07:07):
heaped the treasure up. There was nothing for the dogs
to do save the hauling in of meat. Now and
again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing
by the fire. The vision of the short legged hairy
man came to him more frequently now that there was

(07:29):
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

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between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that
he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakes, at which
times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling
morewood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach
of a sea where the hairy Man gathered shellfish and

(08:15):
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 harry Man's heels, and
they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears

(08:40):
twitching and moving, and nostrils quivering. For the man heard
and smelled as keenly as Buck. The harry 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,

(09:04):
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 knights of vigil spent beneath
trees wherein the hairy Man roosted, holding on tightly as
he slept, and closely akin to the visions of the

(09:24):
hairy man. Was the call still sounding in the depths
of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. They 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

(09:49):
into the forest, looking for it as though it were
a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood
might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool
wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew,
and snort with joy at the fat earth smells. Or

(10:14):
he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind
fungus covered trunks of fallen trees, wide eyed and wide
eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It
might be lying thus that he hoped to surprise this
call he could not understand. But he did not know

(10:37):
why he did these various things. He was impelled to
do them, and did not reason about them at all,
irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp,
dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly
his head would lift and his ears cook up intent

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and listen, and he would spring to his feet and
dash away, and on and on for hours through the
forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched.
He loved to run down dry water courses and to
creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods.

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For a day at a time he would lie in
the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and
strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run
in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to
the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs
and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking

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for the mysterious something that called called waking or sleeping
at all times for him to come. One night he
sprang from sleep with a start, eager eyed, nostrils quivering
and scenting his mane bristling, and recurrent waves from the forest.

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Came the call, or one note of it, For the
call was many noted, distinct and definite as never before,
a long drawn howl, like yet unlike any noise made
by husky dog, and he knew it in the old

(12:31):
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 cushion in every movement, till he came to an
open place among the trees, and looking out sore erect

(12:54):
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,

(13:19):
tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted care. Each
moment advertised or mingled threatening and overture of friendliness. It
was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild
beasts that prey. But the wolf flared at sight of him.

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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 doors,
snarling and bristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous

(14:05):
and rapid succession of snaps. Buck did not attack, but
circled about him and hedged him in with friendly advances.
The wolf was suspicious and afraid, for Buck made three
of him in wait, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.

(14:29):
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

(14:50):
around at bay, only to dash away again at the
first opportunity. But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded,
for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally
sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly and played

(15:12):
about in the nervous half coy way with which fierce
beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this, the
wolf started off at an easy loop, in a manner
that plainly showed he was going somewhere. He made it
clear to Bock that he was to come, and they
ran side by side through the somber twilight, straight up

(15:36):
the creek bed into the gorge from which it ensued,
and across the bleak divide, where it took its rise
on the opposite slope of the watershed. They came down
into a level country where were great stretches of forest
and menaced dreams. And through these great stretches they ran steadily,

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hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the day
growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was
at last answering the cool, running by the side of
his wood brother toward the place from where the cool
surely came. Old memories were coming upon him fast, and

(16:21):
he was stirring to them as of old. He stirred
to the realities of which they were the shadows. He
had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and
dimly remembered weld, and he was doing it again, now,
running free in the open, the unparked earth underfoot, the

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wide sky overhead. They stopped by a running stream to
drink and stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton. He sat down.
The wolf started on toward the place from where the
cool surely came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and

(17:08):
making actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turned
about and started slowly on the back track. For the
better part of an hour. The wild brother ran by
his side, whining softly. Then he sat down, pointed his
nose upward, and howled. It was a mournful howl, and

(17:35):
as Buck held steadily on his way, he heard it
grow fainter and fainter, until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner, and 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

(17:59):
the general tomfool, as John Thoughton 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

(18:20):
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 and perilously than ever. Buck's
restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by

(18:42):
recollections of the wild Brother and of the smiling land
beyond the divide, and the run side by side through
the wild 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

(19:05):
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

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signs of the Wild Brother, killing his meat as he traveled,
and traveling with the long, easy lope that seemed 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.

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Even so, it was a hard fight, and at a
roused the last latent remnants of a book's ferocity. And
two days later, when he returned to his kill and
found a dozen wolverines quarreling over the spoil, he scattered
them like chaff, and those that fled left two behind

(20:17):
who would quarrel no more. The blood Longing became stronger
than ever before. He was a killer, a thing that preyed,
living on the things that lived, unaided, lone by virtue
of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a
hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this,

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he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which
communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being. It
advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the
play of every muscle, spoke plainly our speech, in the
way he carried himself, and made his glorious fairy coat

(21:07):
of anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on
his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash
of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he
might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger
than the largest of the breed. From his sat Bernard

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father he had inherited size and weight, but it was
his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size
and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle save
that was larger than the muzzle of any wolf, and
his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a

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massive scale. His cunning was wolf cunning and wild cunning.
His intelligence shepherd intelligence and sat Bernard intelligence, and all this,
plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made
him as formidable a creature as any that intelligence roamed

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the wild. A carnivorous animal living on a straight meat diet,
he was in full flour at that high tide of
his life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed
a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling
followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at

(22:34):
the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve, tissue and
fiber 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

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responded with lightning quick rapidityquickly 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,

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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 fatality

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and snapped into place sharply like steel springs. Life streamed
through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it
seemed that it would burst him asunder and sheer ecstasy
and pour forth generously over the world. Never was there

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such a dog, said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp. When he was
made the mold was broke, said Pete py Jingo, I
think so myself. Hans affirmed. They saw him marching out

(24:24):
of camp, but they did not see the instant and
terrible transformation which took place. As soon as he was
within the secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched
at once. He became a thing of the wild, stealing
along softly, cat footed a passing shadow that appeared and disappeared.

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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 time from its nest, kill a rabbit as
it slept, and snap in mid air as the little

(25:06):
chipmunks fleeing a second too late for the trees. Fish
in open pools were not too quick for him, nor
were beaver mending their dams too wary. He killed to eat,
not from wanton ness, but he preferred to eat what

(25:27):
he killed himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds,
and it was his delight to steal upon the squalls,
and when he all but had them, to let them
go chattering in mortal fear to the tree tops. As

(25:47):
the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared
in greater abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter
in the lower and less rigorous valleys. Buck had already
dragged down a stray, part grown calf, but he wished
strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and he came

(26:09):
upon it one day on the divide at the head
of a creek, a band of twenty moose had crossed
over from the land of streams and timber, and chief
among them was a great bull. He was in a
savage temper, and standing over six feet from the ground,

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was as formidable an antagonist as even Buck could desire.
Back and forth, the bull tossed his great palmated antlers,
branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feet within the tips.
His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light,

(26:50):
while he roared with fury at sight of Buck. From
the bull's side, just forward of the flank protruded a
feathered arrow end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by
that instinct which came from the old hunting days of
the primordial world, Buck proceeded to cut the bull out

(27:12):
from the herd. It was no slight task. He would
bark and dance about in front of the bull, just
out of reach of the great antlers and of the
terrible splay hoofs, which could have stamped his life out
with a single blow. Unable to turn his back, on
the fanged danger and go on. The bull would be

(27:34):
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.

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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

(28:24):
when it hunts its living food, and 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 ball marred
with helpless rage. For half a day, this continued, Buck

(28:48):
multiplied himself, attacking from all sides, enveloping the herd in
a well 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 praying. As the day wore along

(29:11):
and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest,
the darkness had come back, and the full nights were
six hours long. The young bulls retraced their steps more
and more reluctantly to the air of their beset leader.
The down coming winter was harrying them on to the
lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off

(29:33):
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.

(30:00):
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 mustered. As this
shambled on at a rapid pace through the feigning light,
he could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless,

(30:23):
fined terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight
more than half a ton he weighed, he had lived
a long, strong, life, full of fight and struggle, and
at the end he faced death at the teeth of
a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great

(30:44):
knuckled knees from then on, night and day, but never
left his prey, never gave it a moment's rest, never
permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or the
shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give
the wounded bull opportunity to slake his burning thirst in

(31:04):
the slender, trickling streams they crossed. Often in desperation, he
burst into long stretches of flight. At such times, Buck
did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily at
his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played,

(31:25):
lying down when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely.
When he strove to eat or drink. The great head
dropped more and more under its tree of horns, and
a shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to
standing for long periods with nose to the ground, and
dejected ears dropped limply, and Buck found more time in

(31:47):
which to get water for himself and in which to rest.
At such moments, panting with red lulling 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

(32:10):
life were coming in forest and stream, and air seemed
palpitent with their presence. The news of it was borne
in upon him, not by sight or sound or smell,
but by some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing,
saw nothing, yet knew that the land was somehow different,

(32:33):
that through it strange things were afoot unraging, and he
resolved to investigate after he finished the business in hand.
At last, at the end of the fourth day, he
pulled the great moose down. For a day and night.
He remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn and

(32:56):
turn about. Then rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his
face toward Camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long,
easy loop and went on hour after hour, never at
last for the tangled way, heading straight home through strange country,

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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

(33:37):
this fact barn in upon him in some subtle, mysterious way.
The birds talked of it, the squirrels chatted 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.

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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

(34:22):
upon a fresh trail that set his neck hair rippling
and bristling. It led straight toward Camp, and John Thornton
Buck hurried on swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining intense
alert to the multitudinous detail which told a story. All

(34:44):
but the end. His nose gave him a varying description
of the passage of the life of the heels of
which he was traveling. He remarked the pregnant silence of
the forest. The bird lie had flittered, the squalls were
n hiding one only he saw a sleek gray fellow

(35:07):
flattened against a gray dead limb, so that he seemed
a part of it. A woody excrescence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow,
his nose was jerked suddenly to the side, as though
a positive force had gripped and pulled it. He followed

(35:30):
the new scent into a thicket and found nig He
was lying on his side, dead, where he had dragged
himself an arrow protruding head and feathers from either side
of his body. A hundred yards farther on, Buck came

(35:51):
upon one of the sled dogs Thornton had bought in Dosin.
This dog was thrashing about in a death struggle directly
on the tree, and Buck passed around him without stopping.
From the camp came the faint sound of many voices
rising and falling in a sing song chant. Bellying forward

(36:13):
to the edge of the clearing, he found hands lying
on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At
the same instant Buck peered out where the spruce bough
lodge had been, and saw what made his hair leap
straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust of

(36:35):
overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that
he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity.
For the last time in his life, he allowed passion
to usurp cunning and reason. And it was because of
his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.

(36:58):
The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce
bough lodge when they heard a fearful roaring, and saw
rushing upon them an animal the like of which they
had never seen before. It was Buck, a live hurricane
of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy.

(37:19):
He sprang at the foremost man. It was the chief
of the Hats, ripping the throat wide open till the
rented jugglas 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.

(37:40):
There was nowithstanding him. He plunged about in their very
midst tearing, rending, destroying, inconstant and terrific motion, which defied
the arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably
rapid were his movements, and so close mostly were the

(38:00):
Indians tangled together that they shot one another with the arrows,
and one young hunter, hurling a spirit 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 behind. Then a panic seized the Yeehats,

(38:21):
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 streets.
It was a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered

(38:44):
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 deathlated camp. He found Pete, where he had been
killed in his blankets. In the first moment of surprise,

(39:10):
Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh written on the earth, and
Buck sent at every detail of it down to the
edge of a deep pool. By the edge haid, and
four feet in the water lay skeet, faithful to the last.
The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes,

(39:32):
effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton.
For Buck followed his trace into the water, from which
no trace led away. All day, Buck brooded by the pool,
or roamed restlessly about the camp. Death as a cessation

(39:52):
of movement, as a passing out and away from the
lives of the living. He knew he knew John Thornton
was dead. It left a great void in him, something
akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached,
and which food could not fill. At times when he

(40:14):
paused to contemplate the carcasses of the yeehats, he forgot
the pain of it. And at such times he was
aware of a great pride in himself, a pride greater
than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man,
the noblest game of all, and he had killed in
the face of the law of club and fang. He

(40:38):
sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It
was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They
were no match at all. Were it not for their
arrows and spears and clubs, thenceforward he would be unafraid
of them, except when they bore in their hands there arrows, spears,

(41:01):
and clubs. Night came on, and a full moon rose
high over the trees into the sky, lighting the land
till it lay bathed in ghostly light. And with the
coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool,
Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life

(41:22):
in the forest other than that which the yeehats had made.
He stood up, listening, and scenting from far away drifted
a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar
sharp yelps. After the moments passed, the yelps grew closer

(41:44):
and louder. Again, Buck knew them as things heard in
that other world which persisted in his memory. He walked
to the center of the open space and listened. It
was the call, the many noted call, sounding more leeringly
and compellingly than ever before, and as never before, he

(42:09):
was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The last
tie was broken man, and the claims of man no
longer bound him hunting their living meat as the ee

(42:30):
huts were hunting it on the flanks of the migrating moose.
The wolf pack had at last crossed over from the
land of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley into
the clearing where the moonlight streamed. They poured in a
silvery flood, and in the center of the clearing stood Buck,

(42:52):
motionless as a statue, waiting their coming. They were awed
so still a large he stood, and a moment's pause
fell till the boldest one leaped straight for him like
a flash box, struck breaking the neck. Then he stood

(43:16):
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

(43:39):
whole pack forward, pell mell crowded together, blocked and confused
by its eagerness to pull down the prey. Buck's marvelous
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

(44:03):
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

(44:23):
men had made in the course of mining. And in
this angle he came to bay, protecting 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 lulling, the white fangs

(44:47):
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 other these were lapping
water from the pool. When wolf, long and lean and
gray advanced cautiously in a friendly manner, and Buck recognized

(45:11):
the wild brother with whom he had run for a
night and a day. He was whining softly, and as
Buck whined, they touched noses. Then an old wolf gaunt,
and battlescarred came forward. Buck writhed his lips into the

(45:32):
preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him, whereupon
the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon,
and broke out the long wolf howl. The others sat
down and howled, And now the cool came to Buck
in unmistakable accents. He too sat down and howled. This over,

(46:00):
he came out of his angle, and the pack crowded
around him, sniffing in a half friendly, half savage manner.
The leaders lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang
away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yupping
in chorus, and Book ran with them, side by side

(46:23):
with a wild brother, yepping as he ran. And here
may well end the story of Buck. The years were
not many when the yehats noted a change in the
breed of timber wolves, for some were seen with splashes
of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift
of white centering down the chest. But more remarkable than this,

(46:48):
the yehats tell of a ghost dog that runs at
the head of the pack. They are afraid of this
ghost dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing
from their camps and feet at winters, rubbing their traps,
slaying their dogs, and defying their bravest hunters. Nay, the

(47:09):
tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return
to the camp, And hunters there have been whom their
tribesmen found with throats slashed cruelly open, and with wolf's
prints about them in the snow, greater than the prince
of any wolf. Each fall, when the yeehats follow the

(47:31):
movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which
they never enter, And women there are who become sad
when the word goes over the fire of how the
evil spirit came to select that valley for an abiding
place in the summers. There is one visitor, however, to

(47:53):
that valley, of which thee hurts do not know. It
is a great, gloriously coated wolf like and yet unlike
all the other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling timberland,
and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here,

(48:16):
a yellow stream flows from rotted moose hide sacks and
sinks into the ground, with long grasses growing through it
and vegetable mold over running 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

(48:43):
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 jagged
antic above his fellows, his great throat a bellow as

(49:05):
he sings a song of the younger world, which is
the song of the pack. End of Chapter seven, end
of Jack London, The Ghaul of the Wild