Jack London - "The Call Of The Wild" - 1903 - Classic Short Stories - AI Narrator

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jack London, The Call of the Wild, published in nineteen
o three. Chapter one into the primitive Old Longing's nomadic leap,
chafing at custom's chain again from its brummel sleep wakens
the ferine strain. Buck did not read the newspapers, or

(00:21):
he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone
for himself, but for every tide water dog, strong of
muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to
San Diego. Because men groping in the Arctic darkness had
found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies
were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into

(00:43):
the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they
wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil,
and furry coats to protect them from the frost. Buck
lived at a big house in the sun kissed Santa
Clara Valley, Judge Miller's Place it was called. It stood

(01:03):
back from the road, half hidden among the trees through
which glimpses could be caught of the wide, cool veranda
that ran around its four sides. The house was approached
by gravel 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

(01:24):
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

(01:46):
cool in the hot afternoon. And over this great Domaine
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

(02:08):
lived obscurely in the recesses of the house, after the
fashion of Toots the Japanese pug, or Isabel 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 Isabel, looking out of

(02:29):
the windows at them, and protected by a legion of
housemaids armed with brooms and mops. But Buck was neither
house dog nor kennel dog. The whole realm was his.
He plunged into the swimming tank, or went hunting with
the judges sons. He escorted Molly and Alice, the Judge's daughters,
on long twilight or early morning rambles. On wintry nights,

(02:52):
he lay at the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire.
He carried the Judge's grandsons on his back, or rolled
them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild
adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and
even beyond, where the paddocks were and the berry patches.
Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Isabel

(03:14):
he utterly ignored, for he was king, king over all creeping, crawling,
flying things of Judge Miller's place. Humans included his father, Elmo,
a huge saint. Bernard had been the Judge's inseparable companion,
and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of
his father. He was not so large. He weighed only

(03:34):
one hundred and forty pounds. For his mother shep had
been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty
pounds to which was added the dignity that comes of
good living and universal respect enabled him to carry himself
in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood,
he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat. He

(03:56):
had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle
egot artistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their
insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming
a mere pampered house dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights
had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles. And
to him, as to the cold tubbing races, the love

(04:18):
of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.
And this was the manner of dog Buck was in
the fall of eighteen ninety seven when the Klondike strike
dragged men from all the world into the frozen North.
But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did
not know that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was
an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved

(04:43):
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 new umous progeny.
The judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers Association,

(05:05):
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

(05:26):
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 and gulchoke m plante,
said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. Buck

(05:47):
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
end ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands,
he growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure in

(06:08):
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 half way, grappled him close by
the throat, and with a deft twist, threw him over
on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck

(06:28):
struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his
mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all
his life had he been so vilely treated, and never
in all his life had he been so angry. But
his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing.
When the train was flagged and the two men threw
him into the baggage car. The next he knew he

(06:51):
was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting, and that
he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance.
The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling across Lossing told
him where he was. He had traveled too often with
the judge not to know the sensation of riding in
a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them
came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man

(07:14):
sprang for his throat, but buck was too quick for him.
His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax
till his senses were choked out of him once more.
Yep has fits, the man said, hiding his mangled hand
from the baggage man, who had been attracted by the
sounds of struggle. I'm taquen am up for the boss

(07:35):
to Frisco. A crack dog doctor there thinks that he
can cure them. Concerning that knight's ride, the man spoke
most eloquently for himself in a little shed back of
a saloon on the San Francisco water front. All I
get is fifty for it, he grumbled, And I wouldn't
do it over for a thousand cold cash. His hand

(07:59):
was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser
leg was ripped from knee to ankle. How much did
the other mug get? The saloon keeper demanded? A hundred
was the reply. Wouldn't take us so less, So help me.
That makes one hundred and fifty, the saloon keeper calculated.

(08:20):
And he's worth it, or I'm a square head. The
kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated hand.
If I don't get the hydrophobe, it'll be because you
was born to hang, laugh the saloon keeper. Here, lend
me a hand before you pull your freight, he added. Dazed,

(08:42):
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 case like crate. There he lay for the remainder

(09:04):
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

(09:25):
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

(09:48):
in the morning four men entered and picked up the crate.
More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were evil looking creatures,
ragged and unkempt, and he stormed and raged at them
through through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks
at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth, till
he realized that that was what they wanted, whereupon he

(10:10):
lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted
into a wagon. Then he and the crate in which
he was imprisoned began a passage through many hands clerks
in the express office took charge of him. He was
carted about in another wagon. A truck carried him with
an assortment of boxes and parcels upon a ferry steamer.

(10:31):
He was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot,
and finally he was deposited in an express car. For
two days and nights, this express car was dragged along
at the tail of shrieking locomotives, and for two days
a knight's buck neither ate nor drank in his anger,
he had met the first advances of the express messengers

(10:52):
with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When
he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they
laughed at him and taunted him. They growled and barked
like detestable dogs, mewed and flapped their arms and crowed.
It was all very silly, he knew, But therefore the

(11:12):
more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed.
He did not mind the hunger so much, but the
lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his
wrath to fever. Pitch for that matter, high strung and
finely sensitive. The ill treatment had flung him into a fever,
which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and

(11:33):
swollen throat and tongue. He was glad for one thing.
The rope was off his neck. That had given them
an unfair advantage. But now that it was off, he
would show them they would never get another rope around
his neck. Upon that he was resolved. For two days
and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those

(11:55):
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

(12:15):
the train at Seattle. For 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

(12:38):
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 pants.

(13:02):
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 read I devil, he said, when he had

(13:23):
made an opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's body.
At the same time, he dropped the hatchet and shifted
the club to his right hand. And Buck was truly
a red eyed devil as he drew himself together for
the spring, hair bristling, mouth, foaming a mad glitter in
his blood shot eyes. Straight at the man, he launched

(13:45):
his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with
the pent passion of two days and nights. In mid air,
just as his jaws were about to close on the man,
he received a shock that checked his body and brought
his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over,
fetching the ground on his back and side. He had

(14:05):
never been struck by a club in his life and
did not understand. With a snarl that was part bark
and more scream, he was again on his feet and
launched into the air. And again the shock came and
he was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he
was aware that it was the club, but his madness
knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and as

(14:27):
often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet
two days to rush. He staggered limply about the blood
flowing from nose and mouth and ears. His beautiful coat
sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced
and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on the nose.

(14:51):
All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared
with the exquisite agony of this. With a roar that
was almost lion like in its ferocity. He again hurled
himself at the man, but the man, shifting the club
from right to left, coolly caught him by the underjaw
at the same time. Wrenching downward and backward. Buck described

(15:12):
a complete circle in the air and half of another,
then crashed to the ground on his head and chest.
For the last time he rushed. The man struck the
shrewd blow he had purposely withheld for so long, and
Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterly senseless. He's
no slouch a dog breakin' That's what I say, one

(15:34):
of the men on the wall cried, enthusiastically. Drew their
brake 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

(15:55):
sweater answers to the name of Buck. The man so liloquized,
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,

(16:17):
and I know mine. Be a good dog, and all
llll go well, and the goose hang high, be a
bad dog, and I'll wail the stuffin out. O 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

(16:40):
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

(17:01):
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 half way. The facts of
life took on a fiercer aspect, And while he faced
that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent
cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by,

(17:22):
other dogs came in crates and at the ends of ropes,
some docilely and some raging and roaring as he had come,
And one and all he watched them pass under the
dominion of the man in the red sweater again and again.
As he looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was
driven home to Buck. A man with a club was
a logiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated.

(17:48):
Of this last, Buck was never guilty, though he did
see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man and wagged
their tails and licked his hand. Also he saw one
dog that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in
the struggle for mastery. Now and again men came strangers
who talked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all kinds of fashions

(18:11):
to the man in the red sweater. And at such
times that money passed between them, the strangers took one
or more of the dogs away with them. Buck wondered
where they went, for they never came back. But the
fear of the future was strong upon him, and he
was glad each time when he was not selected yet
his time came in the end in the form of

(18:33):
a little weasoned man who spat broken English in many
strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck could not understand. Sacradam,
he cried when his eyes lit upon Buck, Dat one
damn bully dog at how much three hundred and a present? At?

(18:53):
That was the prompt reply of the man in the
red sweater, and seem its government money? You aim got
no kick coming? Eh, perout, Perout grinned, considering that the
price of dogs had been boomed skyward by the unwonted demand.
It was not an unfair sum for so fine an animal.

(19:14):
The Canadian government would be no loser, nor would its
despatches travel the slower. Peraut knew dogs, and when he
looked at Buck, he knew that he was one in
a thousand, one in ten ty thousand, he commented mentally.
Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised
when Curley, a good natured Newfoundland, and he were led

(19:36):
away by the little weason 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. Peraut was a French Canadian and swarthy, but

(19:58):
Francois was a friend bunch 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

(20:19):
administering justice, and too wise in the way of dogs
to be fooled by dogs. In the between decks of
the narwhal, Buck and Curley joined two other dogs. One
of them was a big snow white fellow from Spitzbergen
who had been brought away by a wailing captain, and
who had later accompanied a geological survey into the barons.

(20:41):
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

(21:03):
that was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half
breed began his rise. In Buck's estimation, the other dog
made no advances, nor received any. Also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy,
morose fellow, and he showed Curly plainly that all he
desired was to be left alone, and further that there

(21:25):
would be trouble if he were not left alone. Dave
he was called, and he ate and slept or yawned
between times, and took interest in nothing, not even when
the narvel crossed Queen Charlotte sound and rolled and pitched
and bucked like a thing possessed. When Buck and Curly
grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head

(21:45):
as though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned
and went to sleep again. Day and night the ship
throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though
one day was very like another. It was apparent to
Buck that the way was steadily growing colder. At last,
one morning, the propeller was quiet and the narvel was

(22:06):
pervaded with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as
did the other dogs, and knew that a change was
at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck.
At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet
sank into a white mushy, something very like mud. He
sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff

(22:29):
was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more
of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then
licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire,
and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He
tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously,

(22:50):
and he felt ashamed. He knew not why, for it
was his first snow. Chapter two, The Law of Club
and Fong. Buck's first day on the Dye beach was
like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise.
He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization

(23:10):
and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy
son 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

(23:33):
men were not town dogs and men. They were savages,
all of them, who knew no law but the law
of club and fong. He had never seen dogs fight
as these wolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught
him an unforgettable lesson. It is true it was a
vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit

(23:55):
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,

(24:16):
and Curley'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

(24:37):
which they were licking their chops. Curley 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, dreaming

(25:00):
with agony beneath the bristling mass of bodies. So sudden
was it, and so unexpected that Buck was taken aback.
He saw spits run out his scarlet tongue in a
way he had of laughing, And he saw Francois swinging
an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men
with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did

(25:23):
not take long. Two minutes from the time Curly went down,
the last of her assailants were clubbed off, but she
lay there, limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow,
almost literally torn to pieces. The swart half breed standing
over her and cursing horribly the scene often came back
to Buck to trouble him in his sleep. So that

(25:45):
was the way, no fair play. Once down, that was
the end of you. Well, he would see to it
that he never went down. Spits ran out his tongue
and laughed again, And from that moment Buck hated him
with a bitter and deathless hatred. Before he had recovered
from the shock caused by the tragic passing of Curley,

(26:07):
he received another shock. Francois fastened upon him an arrangement
of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as
he had seen the grooms put on the horses at home,
and as he had seen horses work. So he was
set to work, hauling Francois on a sledge to the
forest that fringed the valley, and returning with a load

(26:28):
of firewood. Though his dignity was sorely hurt by thus
being made a draft animal, he was too wise to rebel.
He buckled down with a will and did his best.
Though it was all new and strange, Francois was stern,
demanding instant obedience, and by virtue of his whip, receiving
instant obedience, while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped

(26:51):
Buck's hind quarters whenever he was in error. Spitz was
the leader, likewise experienced, and while he could not always
get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now and again,
or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk
Buck into the way he should go. Buck learned easily,
and under the combined tuition of his two mates, and Francois,

(27:12):
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 sledge shot downhill at
their heels tree verre good dogs, Francois told perout dat
buck heem pool lack hell I titch him queak as

(27:36):
ennettey n g. By afternoon, Perot, who was in a
hurry to be on the trail with his dispatches, returned
with two more dogs, bill Lee 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. Billie's one fault was his excessive good nature,

(27:59):
while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with
a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received them
in comradeley fashion. Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to
thrash first one and then the other. Billy wagged his
tail appeasingly, turned to run when he saw that appeasement
was of no avail, and cried still appeasingly when Spitz's

(28:23):
sharp teeth scored his flank. But no matter how Spit circled,
Joe whirled around on his heels to face him. Main
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

(28:45):
that Spits was forced to forego disciplining him, But to
cover his own discomfiture, he turned upon the inoffensive and
wailing Billy and drove him to the confines of the camp.
By evening, Perot 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 soul Lex, which means the

(29:09):
angry one. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing, expected nothing,
and when he marched slowly and deliberately into their midst,
even Spits left him alone. He had one peculiarity, which
Buck was unlucky enough to discover. He did not like
to be approached on his blind side. Of this offense,

(29:30):
Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he had
of his indiscretion was when soul Lex whirled upon him
and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches
up and down. Forever after, Buck avoided his blind side,
and to the last of their comradeship had no more trouble.
His only apparent ambition, like Dave's, was to be left alone, though,

(29:52):
as Buck was afterward to learn, each of them possessed
one other and even more vital ambition. That night, Buck
fe faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent, illumined
by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the
white plain, and when he, as a matter of course,
entered it, both Perot and Francois bombarded him with curses

(30:13):
and cooking utensils till he recovered from his consternation and
fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill wind was
blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with a special
venom into his wounded shoulder. He lay down on the
snow and attempted to sleep, but the frost soon drove
him shivering to his feet. Miserable and disconsolate, he wandered

(30:35):
about among the many tents, only to find that one
place was as cold as another. Here and their savage
dogs rushed upon him, but he bristled his neck hair
and snarled, for he was learning fast, and they let
him go his way unmolested. Finally, an idea came to him.
He would return and see how his own team mates

(30:56):
were making out. To his astonishment, they had disappeared. Again.
He wandered about through the great camp looking for them,
and again he returned. Were they in the tent? No,
that could not be else he would not have been
driven out. Then where could they possibly be? With drooping

(31:17):
tail and shivering body, very forlorn, indeed, he aimlessly circled
the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his four 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

(31:39):
back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to
his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in
a snug ball lay Billy. 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

(32:03):
way they did it. Ere 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

(32:23):
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

(32:44):
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

(33:05):
on his neck and shoulders stood on end, and with
a ferocious snarl, he bounded straight up into the blinding day,
the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere
he landed on his feet, he saw the white camp
spread out before him, and knew where he was, and
remembered all that had passed from the time he went
for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had
dug for himself the night before. A shout from Francois

(33:29):
hailed his appearance. What I say, the dog driver, cried
to Perrault. Dat buck for sure learned quak as enetaey
en g Perrat nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian government,
bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs,
and he was particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.

(33:53):
Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour,
making a total of nine, and before another quarter of
an hour had passed, they were in harness and swinging
up the trail. Toward the day Cannon Buck was glad
to be gone, and though the work was hard, he
found he did not particularly despise it. He was surprised
at the eagerness which animated the whole team, and which

(34:13):
was communicated to him. But still more surprising was the
change wrought in Dave and sol Lex. They were new dogs,
utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and unconcern had
dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious that
the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever

(34:34):
by delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of
the traces seemed the supreme expression of their being and
all that they lived for, and the only thing in
which they took delight. Dave was wheeler or sled dog.
Pulling in front of him was Buck. Then came sol Lex.
The rest of the team was strung out ahead, single
file to the leader, which position was filled by spits.

(34:59):
Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and soul Let
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

(35:21):
he stood in need of it. As Francois 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 Solos flew at him and administered a
sound trouncing. The resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck

(35:43):
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 Whip
snapped less frequently, and Perraut even honored Buck by lifting
up his feet and carefully examining them. It was a
hard day's run up the cannon, through sheep camp, past

(36:04):
the scales in the timber line across glaciers and snow
drifts 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

(36:25):
huge camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands
of gold seekers 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.
That day they made forty miles the trail being packed,

(36:46):
But the next day and for many days to follow,
they broke their own trail, worked harder, and made poorer time.
As a rule, Perot traveled ahead of the team, packing
the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them. Francois,
guiding the sledge at the g pole, sometimes exchanged places
with him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry,

(37:09):
and he prided himself on his knowledge of ice, which
knowledge was indispensable. For the fall ice was very thin,
and where there was swift water there was no ice
at all. Day after day for days unending, Buck toiled
in the traces. Always they broke camp in the dark,
and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the

(37:30):
trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always
they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish,
and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous.
The pound and a half of sun dried salmon, which
was his ration for each day, seemed to go nowhere.
He never had enough and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs.

(37:54):
Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were
born to the life, received a pound only of the
fish and managed to keep in good condition. He swiftly
lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life. A
dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed
him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it.

(38:17):
While he was fighting off two or three, it was
disappearing down the throats of the others. To remedy this,
he ate as fast as they, and so greatly did
hunger compel him. He was not above taking what did
not belong to him. He watched and learned when he
saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malinger

(38:38):
and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon. When Perrault's
back was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day,
getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised,
but he was unsuspected, while Dubb, an awkward blunderer who
was always getting caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed. This

(38:58):
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.

(39:21):
It was all well enough in the Southland under the
law of love and fellowship to respect private property in
personal feelings. But in the Northland, under the law of
club and fong, 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.

(39:42):
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,

(40:03):
the defense of Judge Miller's riding whip, But the completeness
of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to
flee from the defense of a moral consideration and so
save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it,
but because of the clamour of his stomach, he did
not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of

(40:23):
respect for club and fong. In short, the things he
did were done because it was easier to do them
than not to do them. His development or retrogression was rapid.
His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous
to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well
as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how

(40:47):
loathsome or indigestible, and once eaten, the juices of his
stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment, and his
blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body,
building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight
and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such
acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound

(41:07):
and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned
to bite the ice out with his teeth when it
collected between his toes, and when he was thirsty and
there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole,
he would break it by rearing and striking it with
stiff fore legs. His most conspicuous trait was an ability
to scent the wind and forecast it a night in advance,

(41:30):
no matter how breathless the air. When he dug his
nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew
inevitably found him to leeward, sheltered and snug, And not
only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead
became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him in
vague ways. He remembered back to the youth of the breed,

(41:52):
to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through
the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran
it down. It was not te task for him to
learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick
wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They
quickened the old life within him. And the old tricks
which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed

(42:13):
were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery,
as though they had been his always. And when on
the still cold nights he pointed his nose at a
star and howled long and wolf like, it was his ancestors,
dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down
through the centuries and through him and his cadences were

(42:35):
their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe, and what
to them was the meaning of the stiffness and the
cold and dark. Thus, as token of what a puppet
thing life is, the ancient song surged through him, and
he came into his own again. And he came because
men had found a yellow metal in the north, and
because Manuel was a gardener's helper whose wages did not

(42:58):
lap over the needs of his wife and diverse small
copies of himself. Chapter three, The dominant Primordial Beast. The
dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the
fierce conditions of trail life, it grew and grew. Yet
it was a secret growth. His new born cunning gave

(43:18):
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 Spits, he betrayed no impatience

(43:40):
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

(44:01):
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 Lebarge. 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

(44:23):
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 tenth they
had discarded at Dai in order to travel light. A
few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that
thawed down through the ice and left them to eat
supper in the dark. Close in under the sheltering rock,

(44:46):
Buck made his nest. So snug and warm was it
that he was loath to leave it when Francois distributed
the fish which he had first thawed over the fire.
But when Buck finished his ration and returned, he found
his nest occupied. A warning snarl told him that the
trespasser was spits. Till now, Buck had avoided trouble with

(45:06):
his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in
him roared. He sprang upon spits with a fury which
surprised them both, and spits particularly for his whole experience
with Buck had gone to teach him that his rival
was an unusually timid dog who managed to hold his
own only because of his great weight and size. Francois

(45:29):
was surprised too when they shot out in a tangle
from the disrupted nest, and he divined the cause of
the trouble. H h ah, he cried to Buck, jiff
it tohim by gar jiff it to him the dirty tea.
Eef Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer

(45:50):
rage and eagerness as he circled back and forth for
a chance to spring in. Buck was no less eager
and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back in
forth for the advantage. But it was then that the
unexpected happened. The thing which projected their struggle for supremacy
far into the future, passed many a weary mile of

(46:10):
trail and toil an oath from perault. The resounding impact
of a club upon a bony frame and a shrill
yelp of pain heralded the breaking forth of pandemonium. The
camp was suddenly discovered to be alive, with skulking furry
forms starving huskies for a five score of them, who
had scented the camp from some Indian village. They had

(46:33):
crept in while Buck and Spits 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. Peraut found one with head
buried in the grub box. His club landed heavily on
the gaunt ribs, and the grub box was capsized on

(46:53):
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

(47:15):
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

(47:36):
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. Bill Lee
was crying as usual. Dave and sol Leks, dripping blood

(47:57):
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

(48:18):
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 spits treacherously attacking from
the side. Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part

(48:41):
of the camp, hurried to save their sled dogs. The
wild wave of famished beasts rolled back before them, and
Buck shook himself free, but it was only for a moment.
The two men were compelled to run back to save
the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack
on the team. Bill Ully, terrified into bravery, sprang through

(49:02):
the savage circle and fled away over the ice pike,
and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of
the team behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring
after them, out of the tail of his eye, he
saw Spits rush upon him with the evident intention of
overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass
of huskies, there was no hope for him, but he

(49:26):
braced himself to the shock of Spitz's charge, then joined
the flight out on the lake. Later, the nine team
dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the forest, though unpursued.
They were in a sorry plight. There was not one
who was not wounded in four or five places, while
some were wounded grievously. Dub was badly injured in a

(49:49):
hind leg. Dolly, the last husky added to the team
at Dai, had a badly torn throat. Joe had lost
an eye, while bill Lee, the good natured with an
ear chewed and rent to ribbons, cried and whimpered throughout
the night. At daybreak, they limped wearily back to camp
to find the marauders gone and the two men in
bad tempers. Fully half their grub supply was gone. The

(50:14):
huskies had chewed through the sled, lashings and canvas coverings.
In fact, nothing no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them.
They had eaten a pair of Perot's moose hide moccasins,
chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet
of lash from the end of Froncois whip. He broke
from a mournful contemplation of it to look over his

(50:35):
wounded dogs. Ah, my friends, he said, softly, mebbit mech
you mad dog? Dose many bites meb all mad dog?
Sacradam what you t ink eh? Perot the Courier shook
his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail still

(50:56):
between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have
madness breakout 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

(51:18):
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.

(51:39):
A dozen times perrot 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 goth garments. Nothing

(52:02):
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 weasoned 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

(52:25):
the sledge broke through with Dave and Buck, and they
were half frozen and all but drowned by the time
they were dragged out. The usual fire was necessary to
save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the
two men kept them on the run around the fire,
sweating and thawing, so close that they were singed by
the flames. At another time, Spitz went through, dragging the

(52:49):
whole team after him, up to Buck, who strained backward
with all his strength, his fore paws on the slippery
edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But
behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the
sled was Francois, pulling till his tendons cracked again. The
rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was

(53:11):
no escape except up the cliff. Peraut scaled it by
a miracle, while Francois prayed for just that miracle, and
with every thong and sled lashing in the last bit
of harness, rove into a long rope. The dogs were
hoisted one by one to the cliff crest. Francois came
up last after the sled and load. Then came the

(53:32):
search for a place to descend, which descent was ultimately
made by the aid of the rope, and night found
them back on the river with a quarter of a
mile to the day's credit. By the time they made
the hoodelinqua and good ice, Buck was played out. The
rest of the dogs were in like condition, but Perraut
to make up lost time, pushed them late and early.

(53:55):
The first day they covered thirty five miles to the
big salmon, the next day thirty five to the little salmon,
the third day forty miles, which brought them well up
toward the five fingers. Buck's feet were not so compact
and hard as the feet of the huskies. His had
softened during the many generations since the day his last

(54:15):
wild ancestor was tamed by a cave dweller or riverman.
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

(54:38):
after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins
to make for 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

(55:01):
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, heart breaking wolf
howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang
straight for Buck. He had never seen a dog go mad,

(55:24):
nor did he have any reason to fear madness. Yet
he knew that here was horror, and fled away from
it in a panic straightway. 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

(55:45):
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

(56:06):
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 down upon Mad Dolly's head.
Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath, helpless.

(56:30):
This was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice
his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and
tore the flesh to the bone. Then Francois lash descended,
and Buck had the satisfaction of watching Spits received the
worst whipping as yet administered to any of the teams.
One devil dat Spitz remarked, Perot, some damn day hem

(56:54):
keel dat Buck, dat Buck two devils was Francois rejoinder
all the tam I watched dat Buck. I know for sure,
Lisen some damn fine day he'm get mad, lack Helen
Denheim chew dat spits all up and spit heam out
on the snow. Sure I know from then on it

(57:16):
was war between them. Spits. As lead dog and acknowledged
master of the team felt his supremacy threatened by this
strange Southland dog, and strange Buck was to him. For
of the many Southland dogs he had known, not one
had shown up worthily in camp and on trail. They
were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost,

(57:39):
and starvation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured and prospered,
matching the husky in strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he
was a masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was
the fact that the club of the man in the
red sweater had knocked all blind, pluck and rashness out
of his desire for master. He was pre eminently cunning

(58:02):
and could bide his time with a patience that was
nothing less than primitive. It was inevitable that the clash
for leadership should come. Buck wanted it. He wanted it
because it was his nature, because he had been gripped
tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and trace,
That pride which holds dogs in the toil to the

(58:23):
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 weealed
dog of soul 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

(58:46):
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 spits and made him thrash
the sled dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces
or hid away at harness up to 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.

(59:10):
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

(59:33):
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 Spits flew at him to
punish him, Buck flew with equal rage in between. So
unexpected was it, and so shrewdly managed that Spitz was

(59:56):
hurled backward and off his feet. Pike, who had been trembling,
abjectly took heart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon
his overthrown leader, Buck, to whom fair play was a
forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spits. But Francois, chuckling at
the incident, while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought

(01:00:18):
his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This
failed to drive Buck from his prostrate rival, and the
butt of the whip was brought into play. Half stunned
by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash
laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished
the many times offending Pike. In the days that followed,

(01:00:38):
as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still continued to
interfere between Spits and the Culprits, but he did it
craftily when Francois was not around. With the covert mutiny
of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave
and sol Leks were unaffected, but the rest of the
team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right.

(01:01:02):
There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot,
and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog driver was in constant apprehension
of the life and death struggle between the two, which
he knew must take place sooner or later, and on
more than one night the sounds of quarreling and strife
among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe,

(01:01:24):
fearful that Buck and Spits were at it, but the
opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson
one dreary afternoon, with the great fight still to come.
Here were many men and countless dogs, and Buck found
them all at work. It seemed the ordained order of
things that dogs should work all day. They swung up

(01:01:46):
and down the main street in long teams, and in
the night their jingling bells still went by. They hauled
cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and
did all manner of work that horses did in the
Santa Clair Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs,
but in the main they were the wild wolf. Husky
breed every night, regularly at nine, at twelve, at three

(01:02:11):
they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant,
in which it was Buck's delight to join with the
Aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in
the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under
its pall of snow. This song of the huskies might
have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched
in minor key, with long drawn wailings and half sobs,

(01:02:35):
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.

(01:02:58):
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

(01:03:20):
bank by the barracks to the Yukon Trail and pulled
for Dayee 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

(01:03:41):
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
traveling light. They made sixty mile which is a fifty
mile on the first day, and the second day saw

(01:04:02):
them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.
But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble
and vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt
led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team.
It no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces.
The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all

(01:04:24):
kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader
greatly to be feared. The old awe departed, and they
grew equal to challenging his authority. Pike robbed him of
half a fish one night and gulped it down under
the protection of Buck. Another knight, Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And

(01:04:47):
even bill Lee, the good natured, was less good natured,
and whined not half so placatingly as in former days.
Buck never came near Spitz without snarling and bristling menacingly.
In fact, his conduct approached that of a bully, and
he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's
very nose. The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the

(01:05:11):
dogs in their relations with one another. They quarreled and
bickered more than ever among themselves, till at times the
camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and sol Leks alone
were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling.
Francois swore strange, barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in
feudal rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always

(01:05:35):
singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail.
Directly his back was turned, they were at it again.
He backed up Spits with his whip, while Buck backed
up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was
behind all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew. But
Buck was too clever ever again to be caught red handed.

(01:05:56):
He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil had
become a dul light to him. Yet it was a
greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight amongst his mates
entangle the traces. At the mouth of the Taquina. 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

(01:06:20):
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 plowed through by main strength.
Buck led the pack sixty strong around, bend after bend,

(01:06:43):
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

(01:07:06):
forest and plane, 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

(01:07:27):
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.

(01:07:49):
It comes to the soldier or 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 dead fled swiftly before
him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of
his nature, and of the parts of his nature that
were deeper than he. Going back into the womb of time.

(01:08:11):
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the
tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle,
joint and sinew in that it was everything that was
not death, that it was a glow and rampant, expressing
itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over
the face of dead matter that did not move but spits,

(01:08:32):
cold and calculating, even in his supreme moods, left the
pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where
the creek made a long bend around. Buck did not
know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the
frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he
saw another larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank
into the immediate path of the rabbit. It was spits.

(01:08:55):
The rabbit could not turn, and as the white teeth
broke its back in mid Airage creaked as loudly as
a stricken man may shriek. At sound of this, the
cry of life plunging down from life's apex in the
grip of death. The fall pack at Buck's heels raised
a hell's chorus of delight. Buck did not cry out,

(01:09:16):
He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spits,
shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.
They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Spits
gained his feet almost as though he had not been overthrown,
slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear twice. His
teeth clipped together like the steel jaws of a trap

(01:09:37):
as he backed away for better footing, with lean and
lifting lips that writhed and snarled. In a flash, Buck
knew it the time had come. It was to the death.
As they circled about, snarling ears, laid back, keenly, watchful
for the advantage. The scene came to Buck with a
sense of familiarity. He seemed to rem remember at all

(01:10:00):
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

(01:10:23):
were ill tamed wolves, and they were now drawn up
in an expectant circle. They too were silent, their eyes
only gleaming in their breaths, drifting slowly upward to Bucket.
Was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time.
It was as though it had always been the wonted
way of things. Spits was a practiced fighter, from Spitzbergen,

(01:10:47):
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

(01:11:08):
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 fang struck for the softer flesh, they were countered
by the fangs of Spits. Fong clashed, fong, and lips
were cut and bleeding, But Buck could not penetrate his

(01:11:29):
enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Spits 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

(01:11:51):
and curving in from the side, he would drive his
shoulder at the shoulder of Spits as a ram by
which to overthrow him. But instead Buck's shoulder was slashed
down each time as Spits leaped lightly away, Spits was untouched,
while Buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. The
fight was growing desperate, and all the while the silent

(01:12:14):
and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down.
As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he
kept him staggering for footing. Once Buck went over and
the whole circle of sixty dogs started up, but he
recovered himself almost in mid air, and the circle sank
down again and waited. But Buck possessed a quality that

(01:12:35):
made for greatness imagination. He fought by instinct, but he
could fight by head as well. He rushed as though
attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant
swept low to the snow and in his teeth closed
on Spitz's left fore leg. There was a crunch of
breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three legs.

(01:12:59):
Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the
trick and broke the right four leg. Despite the pain
and helplessness, Spit struggled madly to keep up. He saw
the silent circle, with gleaming eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery
breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him, as he had
seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists in the past,

(01:13:22):
only this time he was the one who was beaten.
There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy
was a thing reserved for gentler climbs. He maneuvered for
the final rush. The circle had tightened till he could
feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. He
could see them beyond Spits and to either side, half

(01:13:44):
crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A
pause seemed to fall. Every animal was motionless, as though
turned to stone. Only Spits quivered and bristled as he
staggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though
to frighten off impending death. Then Buck sprang in and out,

(01:14:05):
but while he was in shoulder had at last squarely
met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the
moon flooded snow. As Spits 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 four,
Who has won to mastership? Add what I say I

(01:14:31):
spic true w N 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 lack hell, said Pierrot as he surveyed the
gaping rips and cuts, And dat Buck fight lac two

(01:14:54):
hells was Francois's answer. And now we make good time,
no more, 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
Spits would have occupied as leader, but Francois, not noticing him,

(01:15:16):
brought soul Lex to the coveted position in his judgment,
soul Lex was the best lead dog left. Buck sprang
upon soul Lex in a fury, driving him back and
standing in his place. At at Francois cried, slapping his
thighs gleefully. Look at dat Buck. Heem keeled, Dat spits

(01:15:41):
heimed tee ink to take the job. Go away, chook,
he cried, but Buck refused to budge. He took Buck
by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog
growled threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced soul Lex.
The old dog did not like it and showed plainly

(01:16:01):
that he was afraid of Buck. Francois was obdurate, but
when he turned his back, Buck again displaced soul Lex,
who was not at all unwilling to go. Francois was
angry now by gar I fix you, he cried, coming
back with a heavy club in his hand. Buck remembered

(01:16:21):
the man in the red sweater and retreated slowly. Nor
did he attempt to charge in when soul Lex was
once more brought forward, but he circled just beyond the
range of the club, snarling with bitterness and rage. And
while he circled, he watched the club so as to
dodge it if thrown by Francois, for he was become
wise in the way of clubs. The driver went about

(01:16:43):
his work, and he called to Buck when he was
ready to put him in his old place in front
of Dave. Buck retreated two or three steps. Francois followed
him up, whereupon he again retreated. After some time of this,
Francois threw down the club, think thinking that Buck feared
a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted

(01:17:05):
not to escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership.
It was his by right, he had earned it, and
he would not be content with less. Peraut took a
hand between them. They ran him about for the better
part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged.

(01:17:26):
They cursed him and his fathers and mothers before him,
and all his seed to come after him, down to
the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and
drop of blood in his veins. And he answered curse
with snarl and kept out of their reach. He did
not try to run away, but retreated around and around
the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met,

(01:17:47):
he would come in and be good Francois sat down
and scratched his head. Peraut 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

(01:18:10):
Francois went up to where soul Lek stood and called
to Buck. Buck laughed as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance.
Francois unfastened soul lex his 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's save at the front. Once

(01:18:33):
more Francois called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.
Trow down the club, Perout 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

(01:18:55):
out on to the river trail highly as the dog
driver had fore ves valued 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 Spits,

(01:19:15):
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 Lex
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

(01:19:37):
interfered with, they did not care what happened. Bill Lee,
the good natured, could lead for all they cared, so
long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however,
had grown unruly during the last days of Spits, and
their surprise was great now that Buck proceeded to lick
them into shape. Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and

(01:20:00):
who never put an ounce more of his weight against
the breast ban than he was compelled to do, was
swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing, and ere the first
day was done, he was pulling more than ever before
in his life. The first night in camp Joe, the
sour one was punished roundly. A thing that spits had
never succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue

(01:20:22):
of superior weight and cut him up till he ceased
snapping and began to whine for mercy. The general tone
of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its old
time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one
dog in the traces at the rink rapids. Two native huskies,
Teak and Cunna, were added, and the celerity with which

(01:20:44):
Buck broke them and took away Francois breath. Naver such
a dog as dat Buck, He cried, No, naver heem
worth one t thousand dull are by gar Ad? What
you say, Perot? And Perot nodded. He was ahead of

(01:21:06):
the record then, and gaining day by day. The trail
was in excellent condition, well packed and hard, and there
was no new fallen snow with which to contend. It
was not too cold. The temperature dropped to fifty below
zero and remained there the whole trip. The men rode
and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on

(01:21:27):
the jump with but infrequent stoppages. The thirty mile river
was comparatively coated with ice, and they covered in one
day going out what had taken them ten days coming in.
In one run, they made a sixty mile dash from
the foot of Lake Lebarge to the White Horse Rapids,
across Marsh, Taggish and Bennetts, seventy miles of lakes. They

(01:21:50):
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 Skagway 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,

(01:22:13):
Perrault and Francois threw chests up and down the main
street of Skagway and were deluged with invitations to drink.
While the team was the constant center 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

(01:22:33):
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 Perault. Like
other men, they passed out of Buck's life for good.
A Scotch half breed took charge of him and his mates,

(01:22:54):
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

(01:23:16):
to the work, taking pride in it after the manner
of Dave and sol Leks, and seeing that his mates,
whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share.
It was a monotonous life, operating with machine like regularity.
One day was very like another. At a certain time
each morning, the cooks turned out, fires were built, and

(01:23:37):
breakfast was eaten. Then while some broke camp, others harnessed
the dogs and they were under weigh an hour or
so before the darkness fell, which gave warning of dawn.
At night, camp was made, some pitched the flies. Others
cut firewood and pine boughs for the beds, and still
others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the

(01:24:01):
dogs were fed to them. This was the one feature
of the day, though it was good to loaf around
after the fish was eaten for an hour or so
with the other dogs, of which there were five score
and nod. There were fierce fighters among them, but three
battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery, so that
when he bristled and showed his teeth, they got out

(01:24:22):
of his way. Best of all, perhaps he loved to
lie near the fire, hind legs crouched under him, for
legs stretched out in front had raised, and eyes blinking
dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's
big house in the sun kissed Santa Clara Valley, and
of the cement swimming tank, and Isabel the Mexican hairless

(01:24:45):
and Toots the Japanese pug. But oftener he remembered the
man in the red sweater, the death of Curly, the
great fight with spits, and the good things he had
eaten or would like to eat. He was not homesick.
The soun Oneland was very dim and distant, and such
memories had no power over him. Far more potent were

(01:25:06):
the memories of his heredity, that gave things he had
never seen before a seeming familiarity. The instincts which were
but the memories of his ancestors become habits, which had
lapsed in later days and still later in him, quickened
and become alive again. Sometimes, as he crouched there, blinking
dreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were

(01:25:27):
of another fire, and that as he crouched by this
other fire, he saw another indifferent 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,

(01:25:50):
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 ste
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.

(01:26:11):
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,

(01:26:33):
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

(01:26:53):
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,

(01:27:14):
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 shouted at him, hey, you buck, wake up, whereupon
the other world would vanish, and the real world come
into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn

(01:27:35):
and stretch as though he had been asleep. It was
a hard trip with the mail behind them, and the
heavy work wore them down. They were short of weight
and in poor condition when they made Dawson, and should
have had a ten days or a week's rest at least,
But in two days time they dropped down the Yukon
Bank from the barracks, loaded with letters for the outside.

(01:27:58):
The dogs were tired drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse,
it snowed every day. This meant a soft trail, greater
friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs.
Yet the drivers were fair through it all and did
their best for the animals. Each night the dogs were
attended to first. They ate before the drivers ate, and

(01:28:21):
no man sought his sleeping robed till he had seen
to the feet of the dogs he drove. Still, their
strength went down. Since the beginning of the winter, they
had traveled eighteen hundred miles dragging sleds the whole weary distance,
and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the
toughest buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their

(01:28:41):
work and maintaining discipline, though he too was very tired.
Bill Lee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night.
Joe was sourer than ever, and soul Lex was unapproachable
blind side or other side. But it was Dave who
suffered more most of all. Something had gone wrong with him.

(01:29:04):
He became more morose and irritable, and when camp was
pitched at once made his nest where his driver fed him.
Once out of the harness and down, he did not
get on his feet again till harness up time in
the morning. Sometimes in the traces, when jerked by a
sudden stoppage of the sled or by straining to start it,
he would cry out with pain. The driver examined him

(01:29:27):
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

(01:29:49):
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 trace. The
Scotch half breed called a halt and took him out
of the team, making the next dog, soul Lex, fast
to the sled. His intention was to rest Dave, letting

(01:30:11):
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 heartily when he saw
soul Lex 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

(01:30:32):
dog should do his work. When the sled started, he
floundered in the soft snow alongside the beaten trail, attacking
soul Lex 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, yelping,

(01:30:52):
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,

(01:31:12):
where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he
fell and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the
long train of sleds churned by. With the last remnant
of his strength, he managed to stagger along behind till
the train made another stop. When he floundered past the
sleds to his own, where he stood alongside soul Lex.

(01:31:35):
His driver lingered a moment to get a light for
his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and
started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with
remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped
in surprise. The driver was surprised too, the sled had
not moved. He called his comrades to witness the sight.

(01:31:58):
Dave had bidden through both of soul Lex's traces and
was standing directly in front of the sled in his
proper place. He pleaded with his eyes to remain there.
The driver was perplexed. His comrades talked of how a
dog could break its heart through being denied the work
that killed it, and recalled instances they had known where

(01:32:19):
dogs too old for the toil or injured had died
because they were cut out of the traces. Also, they
held it a mercy, since Dave was to die anyway,
that he should die in the traces, heart easy and content,
so he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled
as of old, though more than once he cried out
involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Several times

(01:32:44):
he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and
once the sled ran upon him, so that he limped
thereafter in one of his hind legs. But he held
out till camp was reached, when his driver made a
place for him by the fire. Morning found him too
weak to travel at harness up time, he tried to
crawl to his driver by convulsive efforts. He got on

(01:33:06):
his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward,
slowly toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates.
He would advance his four legs and drag up his
body with a sort of hitching movement, when he would
advance his four legs and hitch a head again for
a few more inches. His strength left him, and the

(01:33:27):
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

(01:33:49):
shot rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whip snapped,
the bells tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail.
But Buck knew, and every day knew what had taken
place behind the belt of river trees. Chapter five, The
Toil of Trace and Trail thirty days from the time

(01:34:11):
it left Dawson the Salt Water Mail, with Buck and
his mates at the fore arrived at Skagway, they were
in a wretched state, worn out and worn down. Bucks
one hundred forty pounds had dwindled to one hundred fifteen.
The rest of his mates, though lighter dogs, had relatively
lost more weight than he. Pike, the malingerer, who in

(01:34:33):
his lifetime of deceit had often successfully feigned a hurt leg,
was now limping in earnest soul. Lex 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

(01:34:55):
and doubling the fatigue of a day's travel. There was
nothing the matter with them except that they were dead tired.
It was not the dead tiredness that comes through brief
and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours.
But it was the dead tiredness that comes through the
slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There

(01:35:16):
was no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to
call upon. It had been all used, the last least
bit of it. Every muscle, every fiber, every cell was tired,
dead tired, and there was reason for it. In less
than five months, they had traveled twenty five hundred miles

(01:35:36):
during the last eighteen hundred, of which they had had
but five days rest. When they arrived at Skagway, they
were apparently on their last legs. They could barely keep
the traces taut, and on the downgrades just managed to
keep out of the way of the sled mush on
poor sore feats. The driver encouraged them as they tottered

(01:35:57):
down the main street of Skagway. This is delas then
we get one long res ad, for sure, one bully
long res The drivers confidently expected a long stopover themselves.
They had covered twelve hundred miles with two days rest,

(01:36:18):
and in the nature of reason and common justice, they
deserved an interval of loafing. But so many were the
men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many
were the sweethearts, wives and kin that had not rushed
in that the congested male was taking on alpine proportions. Also,
there were official orders. Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs

(01:36:39):
were to take the places of those worthless for the trail.
The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and
since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to
be sold. Three days passed, by which time Buck and
his mates found how really tired and weak they were. Then,
on the morning of the fourth day, two men from

(01:37:00):
the States came along and bought them harness and all
for a song. The men addressed each other as Hal
and Charles. Charles was a middle aged, lightish colored man,
with weak and watery eyes and a mustache that twisted
fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the limply
drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen

(01:37:22):
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 calonus, a calonis, sheer and unutterable. Both
men were manifestly out of place, and why such as
they should adventure the north is part of the mystery

(01:37:43):
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 male
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
owner's camp, Buck saw a slipshot and slovenly affair tent,

(01:38:06):
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

(01:38:27):
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

(01:38:49):
the sled, she suggested it should go on the back,
And when they had put it on the back and
covered it over with a couple of other bundles, she
discovered overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else but in
that very sack, and they unloaded again. Three men from
a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning and
winking at one another. You've got a right smart load

(01:39:11):
as it is, said one of them. And it's not
me should tell you your business. But I wouldn't tote
that tent along if I was you undreamed of, cried Mercedes,
throwing up her hands in dainty dismay. However in the
world could I manage without a tent. It's springtime and
you won't get any more cold weather, the man replied.

(01:39:34):
She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and how put
the last odds and ends on top the mountainous load.
Think it'll ride? One of the men asked, why shouldn't it,
Charles demanded rather shortly. Oh that's all right, that's all right.
The man hastened meekly to say, I was just a

(01:39:55):
wonderin that is all. It seemed a mite top heavy.
Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as
well as he could, which was not in the least well.
And of course the dogs can hike along all day
with that contraption behind them, affirmed a second of the
men certainly said hal with freezing politeness, taking hold of

(01:40:18):
the g pull with one hand and swinging his whip
from the other. Mush He shouted, mush on there. The
dog sprang against the breast bands strained hard for a
few moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move. The
sled the lazy brutes. I'll show them, he cried, preparing

(01:40:40):
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

(01:41:02):
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

(01:41:23):
as water if you want to know, came the reply
from one of the men. Plumb 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 defense of

(01:41:46):
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

(01:42:09):
were an anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting.
The whip was whistling savagely. When once more Mercedes interfered.
She dropped on her knees before Buck, with tears in
her eyes, and put her arms around his neck. You poor,
poor DearS, she cried sympathetically. Why don't you pull hard

(01:42:31):
then you wouldn't be whipped. Buck did not like her,
but he was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking
it as part of the day's miserable work. One of
the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress
hot speech, now spoke up. It's not that I care
a whoop what becomes of you, But for the dog's sakes,
I just want to tell you you can help them

(01:42:53):
a mighty lot by breaking out that sled. The runners
are froze fast, throw your weight again against the g
pole right and left, and brake it out. A third
time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice,
How broke out the runners, which had been frozen to
the snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead. Buck

(01:43:16):
and his mate struggling frantically under the rain of blows.
A hundred yards ahead, the path turned and sloped steeply
into the main street. It would have required an experienced
man to keep the top heavy sled upright, and Hal
was not such a man. As they swung on the turn,
the sled went over, spilling half its load through the
loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The lightened sled bounded

(01:43:42):
on its side behind them. They were angry because of
the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load.
Buck was raging. He broke into a run. The team
following his lead. Hal cried woe, woe, but they gave
no oheed. He tripped and was pulled off his feet.

(01:44:04):
The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed
on up the street, adding to the gaiety of Skagway.
As they scattered the remainder of the outfit along its
chief thoroughfare. Kind hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered
up the scattered belongings. Also they gave advice half the
load and twice the dogs if they ever expected to

(01:44:27):
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

(01:44:50):
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 traveling on a place?
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,

(01:45:14):
and she cried in particular over each discarded thing. She
clasped hands about knees, rocking back and forth, broken heartily,
she averred she would not go an inch, not for
a dozen charless. 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.

(01:45:39):
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 Hell went out in the
evening and bought six outside dogs. These added to the
six of the original team, and Teak and Cunna, the

(01:46:01):
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

(01:46:21):
did not seem to know anything these newcomers. Buck and
his comrades looked upon them with disgust, and though he
speedily taught them their places and what not to do.
He could not teach them what to do. They did
not take kindly to trace and trail, with the exception
of the two mongrels. They were bewildered and spirit broken

(01:46:41):
by the strange, savage environment in which they found themselves
and by the ill treatment they had received. The two
mongrels were without spirit at all. Bones were the only
things breakable about them. With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn,
and the old team worn out by twenty five hundred
miles of continue trail, the outlook was anything but bright.

(01:47:03):
The two men, however, were quite cheerful, and they were
proud too. They were doing the thing in style with
fourteen dogs. They had seen other sleds depart over the
pass for Dawson or come in from Dawson, but never
had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs.

(01:47:23):
In the nature of Arctic travel, there was a reason
why fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, and that
was that one sled could not carry the food for
fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hell did not know this.
They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so
much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days
q edy Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded comprehensively.

(01:47:47):
It was also very simple. Late next morning, Buck led
the long team up the street. There was nothing lively
about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows.
They were starting dead, weary for times he had covered
the distance between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that,
jaded and tired he was facing the same trail once

(01:48:10):
more made him bitter. His heart was not in the work,
nor was the heart of any dog. The outsides were
timid and frightened, the insides without confidence in their masters.
Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these
two men and the woman. They did not know how
to do anything, and as the days went by it

(01:48:31):
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

(01:48:55):
days they were unable to get started at all, and
on no day did they 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.

(01:49:16):
The outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by
chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites.
And when in addition to this, the worn out huskies
pulled weakly, hel decided that the orthodox ration was too small,
he doubled it, and to cap it all. When Mercedes,

(01:49:37):
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 sap their strength severely.

(01:49:58):
Then came the undefeed 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,

(01:50:20):
but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their
own incompetence. It was a simple matter to give the
dogs less food, but it was impossible to make the
dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under
way earlier in the morning prevented them from traveling longer hours.
Not only did they not know how to work dogs,

(01:50:40):
but they did not know how to work themselves. The
first to go was dub poor blundering thief that he
was always getting caught and punished, he had none the
less been a faithful worker. His wrenched shoulder blade, untreated
and unrest went from bad to worse till finally hel
Shot caught him with the big Colt's revolver. It is

(01:51:02):
a saying of the country that an outside dog starves
to death on the ration of the husky, So the
six outside dogs under Buck could do no less than
die on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland
went first, followed by the three short haired pointers, the
two mongrels, hanging more grittily on to life, but going
in the end. By this time all the amenities and

(01:51:25):
gentlenesses of the Southland had fallen away from the three people.
Shorn of its glamour and romance, Arctic travel became to
them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood.
Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied with
weeping over herself and with quarreling with her husband and brother.
To quarrel was the one thing they were never too

(01:51:47):
weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery,
increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful
patience of the trail, which comes to men who toy
ill hard and suffer sore and remained sweet of speech
and kindly, did not come to these two men and
the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience.

(01:52:10):
They were stiff and in pain, their muscles ached, their
bones ached, their very hearts ached. And because of this
they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first
on their lips in the morning and last at night.
Charles and Hell 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

(01:52:32):
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 Hell presently would
be lugged in the rest of the family fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

(01:52:56):
people thousands of miles away, and some of them dead.
That Hou'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

(01:53:18):
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 the 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

(01:53:42):
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

(01:54:02):
most essential sex prerogative. She made their lives unendurable. She
no longer considered the dogs, and because she was sore
and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She
was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and
twenty pounds, a lusty last straw to the load. Dragged
by the weak and starving animals, she rode for days

(01:54:26):
till they fell in the traces and the sled stood still.
Charles and How begged her to get off and walk,
pleaded with her, entreated though while she wept and importuned
Heaven with a recital of their brutality. On one occasion
they took her off the sled by main strength. They
never did it again. She let her legs go limp

(01:54:47):
like a spoiled child, and sat down on the trail.
They went on their way, but she did not move.
After they had traveled three miles, they unloaded the sled,
came back for her, and by may strength put her
on the sled again. In the excess of their own misery,
they were callous to the suffering of their animals. Hal's theory,

(01:55:09):
which he practiced on others, was that one must get hardened.
He had started out preaching it to his sister and
brother in law. Failing there, he hammered it into the
dogs with a club at the five fingers. The dog
food gave out, and a toothless old squaw offered to
trade them a few pounds of frozen horse hide for
the colt's revolver that kept the big hunting knife company

(01:55:32):
at Hal's hip. A poor substitute for food was this hide,
just as it had been stripped from the starved horses
of the cattleman six months back. In its frozen state,
it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when
a dog wrestled it into his stomach, it thawed into
thin and innutritious leathery strings, and into a mass of
short hair, irritating and indigestible, and threw it all bucks

(01:55:57):
staggered along at the head of the team as in
a nightmare. He pulled when he could. When he could
no longer pull, he fell down and remained down till
blows from whip or club drove him to his feet again.
All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his
beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled
or matted with dried blood. Where How's club had bruised him,

(01:56:21):
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
heart breaking. Only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in
the red sweater had proved that, as it was with Buck,

(01:56:42):
so was it with his mates. They were perambulating skeletons.
There were seven altogether, 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.

(01:57:04):
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

(01:57:24):
feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and staggered on.
There came a day when bill Lee, the good natured,
fell and could not rise. Hell had traded off his revolver,
so he took the axe and knocked bill Lee 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

(01:57:47):
knew that this thing was very close to them. On
the next day, Kuna went, and but five of them remained.
Joe too far gone to be malignant, Pike crippled and limping,
only half conscious, and not conscious enough longer to malinger,
sol Leks, the one eyed, still faithful to the toil
of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had

(01:58:09):
so little strength with which to pull Teek, who had
not traveled so far that winter, and who was now
beaten more than the others, because he was fresher and
buck still at the head of the team, but no
longer enforcing discipline, was striving to enforce it, blind with weakness,
half the time, in keeping the trail by the loom
of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

(01:58:32):
It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans
were aware of it. Each day the sun rose earlier
and set later. It was dawned by three in the morning,
and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long
day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence
had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

(01:58:55):
This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the
joy of living. It came from the things that lived
and moved again, things which had been as dead and
which had not moved during the long months of frost.
The sap was rising in the pines. The willows and
aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines

(01:59:16):
were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in
the nights and in the days, All manner of creeping,
crawling things rustled forth into the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers
were booming and knocking in the forest. Squirrels were chattering,
birds singing, and overhead honked the wild foul driving up
from the south in cutting wedges that split the air.

(01:59:39):
From every hill slope came the trickle of running water,
the music of unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping.
The yukon was straining to break loose the ice that
bound it down. It ate away from beneath the sun,
ate from above. Air Holes formed, fissures, sprang and spread apart,

(02:00:00):
art while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into
the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of
awakening life under the blazing sun and through the soft,
sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men,
the woman and the huskies, With the dogs falling, Mercedes

(02:00:20):
weeping and riding, hol 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.

(02:00:44):
What of his great stiffness? How 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.

(02:01:08):
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

(02:01:29):
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.

(02:01:49):
All the same, we'll go on to Dawson. He uncoiled
his whip. Get up there, Buck, Hi, get up there,
mush On. Thornton went on whittling. It was idle. He
knew to get between a fool and his folly, while
two or three fools more or less would not alter

(02:02:10):
the scheme of things. But the team did not get
up at the command. It had long since passed into
the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The
whip flashed out here and there on its merciless errands.
John Thornton compressed his lips. Sol Les was the first
to crawl to his feet. Teak followed. Joe came next,

(02:02:35):
yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice, he fell
over when half up, and on the third attempt managed
to rise. Buck made no effort. He lay quietly where
he had fallen. The lash bit into him again and again,
but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times Thornton started

(02:02:58):
as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture
came into his eyes, and as the whipping continued, he
arose and walked irresolutely up and down. This was the
first time Buck had failed, in itself, a sufficient reason
to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip
for the customary club. Buck refused to move under the

(02:03:21):
rain of heavier blows which now fell upon him. Like
his mates, he barely able to get up, But unlike them,
he had made up his mind not to get up.
He had a vague feeling of impending doom. This had
been strong upon him when he pulled into the bank,
and it had not departed from him. What of the

(02:03:41):
thin and rotten eyes he had felt under his feet
all day, It seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand,
out there ahead on the ice, where his master was
trying to drive him. He refused to stir. So greatly
had he suffered, and so far gone was he that
the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued
to fall upon him, the spark of life within flickered

(02:04:04):
and went down. It was nearly out. He felt strangely numb,
as though from a great distance he was aware that
he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him.
He no longer felt anything, though very faintly He could
hear the impact of the club upon his body, but

(02:04:24):
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,

(02:04:49):
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

(02:05:12):
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,

(02:05:35):
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

(02:05:58):
in hauling the sledge. A few minutes later they pulled
out from the bank and down the river. Buck heard
them go and raised his head to see. Pike was leading,
sol Lex was at the wheel, and between were Joe
and Teak. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding
the loaded sled. Hal guided at the g poll, and

(02:06:19):
Charles stumbled along in the rear. As Buck watched them,
Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly hands searched
for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed
nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation.
The sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog
and man watched it crawling along over the ice. Suddenly

(02:06:43):
they saw its back end drop down as into a rut,
and the g pull, with Hal clinging to it, jerk
into the air. Mercedes' scream came to their ears. They
saw Charles turn and make one step to run back,
and then a whole section of ice give way, and
dogs and humans disappear. A yawning hole was all that

(02:07:05):
was to be seen. The bottom had dropped out of
the trail. John Thornton and Buck looked at each other,
You poor devil, said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.
Chapter six, For the Love of a Man. When John
Thornton froze his feet in the previous December, his partners

(02:07:26):
had made him comfortable and left him to get well,
going on themselves up the river to get out a
raft of saw logs for Dawson. He was still limping
slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the
continued warm weather, even the slight limp left him. And here,
lying by the river bank through the long spring days,
watching the running water, listening lazily to the songs of

(02:07:48):
birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back
his strength. A rest comes very good after one has
traveled three thousand miles. And it must be confessed that
Buck waxed lays 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,

(02:08:09):
and Skeat and Nig, waiting for the raft to come
that was to carry them down to Dawson. Skeat 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

(02:08:31):
and cleansed Buck's wounds regularly each morning after he had
finished his breakfast. She performed herself appointed task till he
came to look for her ministrations as much as he
did for Thornton's. Nig. Equally friendly, though less demonstrative, was
a huge black dog, half bloodhound and half deerhound, with
eyes that laughed in a boundless good nature. To buck surprise,

(02:08:56):
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

(02:09:19):
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

(02:09:43):
was adoration. That was madness. It had taken John Thornton
to arouse. This man had saved his life, which was something.
But further, he was the ideal master. Other men saw
to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of
duty in business, excit expediency. He saw to the welfare
of his as if they were his own children, because

(02:10:04):
he could not help it. And he saw further, he
never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, And
to sit down for a long talk with them gas
he called it was as much his delight as theirs.
He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between
his hands and resting his own head upon Buck's of
shaking him back and forth, though while calling him ill

(02:10:26):
names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no
greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of
murmured oaths. And at each jerk back and forth, it
seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body,
so great was its ecstasy. And when released, he sprang
to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his

(02:10:47):
throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained
without movement. John Thornton would reverently exclaim, God, you can
all but speak. Buck had a trick of love express
rush that was akin to hurt. He would often see
Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that
the flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some

(02:11:08):
time afterward, And as Buck understood the othes to be
love words, so the man understood this feigned bite for
a caress. For the most part, however, Buck's love was
expressed in adoration, while he went wild with happiness when
Thornton touched him or spoke to him. He did not
seek these tokens, unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove

(02:11:31):
her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till
petted or nig who would stalk up and rest his
great head on Thornton's knee. Buck was content to adore
at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager alert,
at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it,
studying it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every

(02:11:54):
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

(02:12:14):
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.

(02:12:39):
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

(02:13:01):
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 weediness.
He was a thing of the wild, come in from

(02:13:22):
the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than
a dog of the soft Southland, stamped with the marks
of generations of civilization. Because of his very great love,
he could not steal from this man, but from any
other man in any other camp. He did not hesitate
an instant. While the cunning with which he stole enabled
him to escape detection, his face and body were scored

(02:13:46):
by the teeth of many dogs, and he fought as
fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeat and Nig were
too good natured for quarreling. Besides, they belonged to John Thornton.
But the strange dog, no matter what a breed or valor,
swiftly acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life
with a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had

(02:14:10):
learned well the law of club and fawn, and he
never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe.
He had started on the way to death. He had
lessened from spits and from the chief fighting dogs of
the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course.
He must master or be mastered. While to show mercy
was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life.

(02:14:35):
It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.
Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten was the law,
and this mandate down out of the depths of time,
he obeyed. He was older than the days he had
seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the
past with the present and the eternity behind him throb

(02:14:57):
threw him in a mighty rhythm, to which he swayed
as the t hides and seasons swayed. He sat by
John Thornton's fire, a broad breasted dog, white fanged, and
long furred. But behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half wolves, and wild wolves, urgent and prompting,
tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for

(02:15:17):
the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening
with him and telling him the sounds made by the
wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions,
lying down to sleep with him when he lay down,
and dreaming with him and beyond him, and becoming themselves
the stuff of his dreams. So peremptorily did these shades

(02:15:38):
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

(02:15:59):
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 travelers might

(02:16:20):
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

(02:16:43):
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 saw mill 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

(02:17:07):
put a pack upon Buck's back. In the summer traveling,
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 Tannina. The men and dogs were sitting on
the crest of a cliff which fell away straight down
to naked bed rock three hundred feet below. John Thornton

(02:17:32):
was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of
Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind.
Jump Buck, he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over
the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with Buck
on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging

(02:17:54):
them back into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it
was over and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook
his head. No, it is splendid, and it is terrible too.
Do you know it sometimes makes me afraid. I'm not
hankering to be the man that lays hands on you

(02:18:15):
while he's around, Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head. Toward Buck.
P y Jingo was Hans's contribution, not mine's self either.
It was at Circle City ere the year was out
that Pete's apprehensions were realized. Black Burton, a man evil
tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a

(02:18:38):
tenderfoot at the bar when Thornton stepped good naturedly between Buck,
as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head
on pause, watching his master's every action. Burton struck out
without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning
and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail

(02:18:58):
of the bar. Those who were looking on heard what
was neither bark nor yelp, but a something which is
best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's body
rise up in the air as he left the floor
for Burton's throat. The man saved his life by instinctively
throwing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the
floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his

(02:19:20):
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

(02:19:41):
forced back by an array of hostile clubs. A miner's
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 the year, he

(02:20:01):
saved John Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The three
partners were lining a long and narrow poling boat down
a bad stretch of rapids on the forty Mile Creek.
Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a
thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton remained
in the boat, helping its descent by means of a
pole and shouting directions to the shore. Buck on the bank,

(02:20:25):
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 pulled 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

(02:20:48):
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 into
the bank bottom up, while Thornton flung sheer out of
it was carried down streamed toward the worst part of
the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no
swimmer could live. Buck had sprung in on the instant,

(02:21:11):
and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a
mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt
him grasp his tail. Buck headed for the bank, swimming
with all his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow,
the progress down stream amazingly rapid. From below came the
fatal roaring ere. The wild current went wilder and was

(02:21:33):
rent in shreds and spray by the rocks, which thrust
through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck
of the water as it took the beginning of the
last steep pitch was frightful and Thornton knew that the
shore was impossible. He scraped furiously over a rock, bruised
across a second, and struck a third with crushing force.

(02:21:55):
He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck,
and above the roar of the churning water, shouted, go Buck, Go.
Buck could not hold his own and swept on down stream,
struggling desperately but unable to win back. When he heard
Thornton's command repeated, he partly reared out of the water,

(02:22:17):
throwing his head high as though for a last look,
then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and
was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very
point where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.
They knew that the time a man could cling to
a slippery rock in the face of that driving current
was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast

(02:22:39):
as they could up the bank to a point far
above where Thornton was hanging on. They attached the line
with which they had been snubbing the boat to Buck's
neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle
him nor impede his swimming and launched him into the stream.
He struck out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream.
He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast

(02:23:02):
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

(02:23:24):
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

(02:23:46):
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

(02:24:06):
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,

(02:24:30):
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 into
the bank. Thornton came to belly downward and being violently
propelled back and forth across a drift log by Hans

(02:24:51):
and Pete. His first glance was for Buck, over whose
limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a
howl while Skip was licking the wet face and closed eyes.
Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully
over Buck's body when he had been brought around, finding
three broken ribs that settles it. He announced, we camp

(02:25:16):
right here, and camp they did till Buck's ribs knitted
and he was able to travel that winter. At Dawson,
Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one
that put his name many notches higher on the totem
poll of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to

(02:25:37):
the three men, for they stood in need of the
outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to make a
long desired trip into the Virgin East, where miners had
not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation
in the El Dorado saloon in which men waxed boastful
of their favorite dogs. Buck, because of his record, was

(02:25:57):
the target for these men, and Thornton was driven stoutly
to defend him. At the end of half an hour,
one man stated that his dog could start a sledge
with five hundred pounds and walk off with it. A
second bragged six hundred for his dog, and a third
seven hundred. Pooh pooh, said John Thornton. Buck can start

(02:26:19):
a thousand pounds and break it out and walk off
with it for a hundred yards, demanded Matthewson, a bonanza king,
he of the seven hundred vaunt and break it out
and walk off with it for one hundred yards. John
Thornton said coolly. Well, Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so

(02:26:42):
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

(02:27:02):
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.

(02:27:25):
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 sledge standing outside now
with twenty fifty pound sacks of flour on it. Matthewson
went on with brutal directness. So don't let that hinder you.

(02:27:46):
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

(02:28:08):
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 its little faith, I'm
having John, that the beast can do the trick. The

(02:28:29):
El Dorado emptied its occupants into the street to see
the test. The tables were deserted, and the dealers and
gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager
and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred and mittened,
banked around the sled within easy distance Matthewson's sled, loaded
with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for

(02:28:51):
a couple of hours, and in the intense cold it
was sixty below zero. The runners had frozen fast to
the hard packed snow. Men offered odds of two to
one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble
arose concerning the phrase break out. O'Brien contended it was
Thornton's privilege to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to

(02:29:13):
break it out from a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that
the phrase included breaking the runners from the frozen grip
of the snow. A majority of the men who had
witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor.
Whereat the odds went up to three to one against Buck,
there were no takers. Not a man believed him capable

(02:29:34):
of the feat. Thornton had been hurried into the wager
heavy with doubt, and now that he looked at the
sled itself, the concrete fact with the regular team of
ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the
more impossible the task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant. Three to
one he proclaimed, I'll lay you another thousand at that figure, Thornton,

(02:29:59):
what do you say? Thornton's doubt was strong in his face,
but his fighting spirit was aroused. The fighting spirit that
soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and is
deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called
Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and
with his own, the three partners could rake together only

(02:30:21):
two hundred dollars in the ebb of their fortunes. This
sum was their total capital, yet they laid it unhesitatingly
against Matthewson's six hundred. The team of ten dogs was unhitched,
and Buck, with his own harness, was put into the sled.
He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and he

(02:30:41):
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 worth so many pounds of grit
and virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of

(02:31:02):
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

(02:31:26):
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 Scuoham benches.
I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before the test, Sir,
eight hundred, just as he stands. Thornton shook his head

(02:31:50):
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

(02:32:11):
in their eyes for them to loosen their pouch strings.
Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head
in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. He
did not playfully shake him, as was his wont or
murmur soft love curses, but he whispered in his ear,
As you love me, Buck, As you love me, was

(02:32:34):
what he whispered. Buck whined with suppressed eagerness. The crowd
was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It seemed
like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck
seized his mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with
his teeth and releasing slowly, half reluctantly. It was the

(02:32:57):
answer in terms not of speed each, but of love.
Thornton stepped well back now, Buck, he said. Buck tightened
the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several inches.
It was the way he had learned. Gee. Thornton's voice

(02:33:18):
rang out sharp in the tense silence. Buck swung to
the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took
up the slack, and with a sudden jerk, arrested his
one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from
under the runners arose a crisp crackling, hull Thornton commanded

(02:33:39):
Buck duplicated the maneuver, this time to the left. The
crackling turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the
runners slipping and grating several inches to the side. The
sled was broken out. Men were holding their breaths intensely,
unconscious of the fact. Now mush Thornton's command cracked out

(02:34:01):
like a pistol shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the
traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered
compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and
nodding 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

(02:34:24):
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,

(02:34:44):
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.

(02:35:06):
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

(02:35:27):
shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling
over in a general, incoherent babble. 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

(02:35:54):
the Scukham bench, king. I'll give you a thousand for him, sir,
A thousand, sir, twelve hundred sir, Thornton rose to his feet.
His eyes were wet, the tears were streaming frankly down
his cheeks. Sir, he said to the Scukham bench king, No, sir,

(02:36:16):
you can go to Hell, Sir, It's the best I
can do for you, Sir. Buck seized Thornton's hand in
his teeth. Thornton shook him back and forth, as though
animated by a common impulse. The onlookers drew back to
a respectful distance, nor were they again indiscreet enough to
interrupt Chapter seven the sounding of the Call. When Buck

(02:36:42):
earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John Thornton,
he made it possible for his master to pay off
certain debts and to journey with his partners into the
east after a fabled lost mine, the history of which
was as old as the history of the country. Many
men had sought it, few had found it, and more
than a few there were who had never returned from
the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy and

(02:37:06):
shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man
the oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him.
From the beginning, there had been an ancient and ramshackle cabin.
Dying men had sworn to it and to the mind
the sight of which it marked, clinching their testimony with
nuggets that were unlike any known grade of gold in

(02:37:27):
the Northland. But no living man had looted this treasure house,
and the dead were dead. Wherefore John Thornton and Pete
and Hans, with Buck and half a dozen other dogs
faced into the east on an unknown trail to achieve
where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed.
They sled seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the

(02:37:48):
left into the Stuart River, past the Mayo and the
Ma Question, and held on until the Steward itself became
a streamlet threading the upstanding peaks which marked the backbone
of the continent. John Thornton asked little of man or nature.
He was unafraid of the wild. With a handful of
salt and a rifle, he could plunge into the wilderness

(02:38:10):
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 traveling,
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

(02:38:33):
principally made up the load on the sled, and the
time card was drawn upon the limitless future. To bucket
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

(02:38:55):
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

(02:39:18):
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

(02:39:40):
the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats
and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries
and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland
could boast. In the fall of the year, they penetrated
a weird lake country, sad and silent where wildfowl had been,
but where then there was no life nor sign of life,

(02:40:01):
only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice
in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on
lonely beaches. And through another winter they wandered on the
obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once they
came upon a path blazed through the forest, an ancient path,
and the lost cabin seemed very near. But the path

(02:40:25):
began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as
the man who made it and the reason he made it,
remained mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time graven
wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of
rotted blankets, John Thornton found a long barreled flint lock.
He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of

(02:40:45):
the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun
was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat. And
that was all no hint as to the man who
in an early day had reared the lodge and left
the gun among the blankets. Spring came on once more,
and at the end of all their wandering they found
not the lost cabin, but a shallow placer in a

(02:41:05):
broad valley, where the gold showed like yellow butter across
the bottom of the washing pan. They sought no farther.
Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in
clean dust and nuggets. And they worked every day. The
gold was sacked in moose hide bags, fifty pounds to
the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the

(02:41:26):
spruce bow lodge. Like giants. They toiled days, flashing on
the heels of days like dreams, as they heaped the
treasure up. There was nothing for the dogs to do
save the hauling in of meat. Now and again that
Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the
fire the vision of the short legged hairy man came

(02:41:47):
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's seemed fear. When
he watched the hairy Man sleeping by the fire head
between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that

(02:42:08):
he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, 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
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.

(02:42:31):
They crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy Man's heels, and
they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them ears
twitching and moving in nostrils quivering for the man heard,
and smelt 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,

(02:42:54):
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 vigils spent beneath
trees wherein the hairy Man roost, holding on tightly as
he slept, and closely akin to the visions of the
hairy Man was the call still sounding in the depths

(02:43:14):
of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague,
sweet gladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings,
for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call
into the forest, looking for it as though it were
a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood

(02:43:36):
might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool
with moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew,
and snort with joy at the fat earth smells. Or
he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind
fungus covered trunks of fallen trees, wide eyed and wide
eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It

(02:43:57):
might be lying thus that he hoped to surprise this
call he could not understand. But he did not know
why he did these various things. He was impelled to
do them, and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp,
dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly

(02:44:19):
his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent
and listening, and he would spring to his feet and
dash away, and on and on for hours through the
forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched.
He loved to run down dry water courses and to
creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods.
For a day at a time he would lie in

(02:44:41):
the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and
strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run
in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to
the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs
and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking
for the mysterious something that called called waking or sleeping.

(02:45:01):
At all times for him to come one night, he
sprang from sleep with a start, eager eyed, nostrils quivering
and scenting, his main bristling in recurrent waves from the forest,
came the call, or one note of it, for the
call was many noted, distinct and definite as never before,
a long drawn howl, like yet unlike any noise made

(02:45:24):
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

(02:45:46):
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

(02:46:07):
movement advertised, commingled, threatening an 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

(02:46:27):
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.

(02:46:49):
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

(02:47:12):
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 pergnacity was rewarded
for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended. Finally,
sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly and played
about in the nervous half coy way with which fierce

(02:47:33):
beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this, the
wolf started off at an easy lope, in a manner
that plainly showed he was going somewhere. He made it
clear to Buck that he was to come, and they
ran side by side through the somber twilight, straight up
the creek bed into the gorge from which it issued,
and across the bleak divide, where it took its rise

(02:47:56):
on the opposite slope of the watershed. They came down
into a level country where were great stretches of forest
and many streams. And through these great stretches they ran steadily,
hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the day
growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was
at last answering the call, running by the side of
his wood brother toward the place from where the call

(02:48:18):
Shirley came. Old memories were coming upon him fast, and
he was stirring to them, as of old. He stirred
to the realities of which they were the shadows. He
had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and
dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now
running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the

(02:48:38):
wide sky overhead. They stopped by a running stream to drink,
and stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The
wolf started on toward the place from where the call
Shirley came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and making
actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turned about

(02:48:59):
an started slowly on the back track. For the better
part of an hour. The wild brother ran by his side,
whining softly. Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward,
and howled. It was a mournful howl, and as Buck
held steadily on his way, he heard it grow faint
and fainter, until it was lost in the distance. John

(02:49:21):
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 night's Buck never left camp never

(02:49:43):
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

(02:50:05):
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

(02:50:26):
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 traveled,
and traveling 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

(02:50:47):
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 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,

(02:51:10):
and those that fled left two behind who would quarrel
no more. The blood longing became stronger than ever before.
He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on
the things that lived unaided alone by virtue of his
own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment
where only the strong survived. Because of all this, he

(02:51:32):
became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated
itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised
itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play
of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech, in the way
he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat, if
anything more glorious but for the stray brown on his

(02:51:53):
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 Saint Bernard father,
he had inherited size and weight, but it was his
shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight.
His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle save that was

(02:52:16):
larger than the muzzle of any wolf, and his head,
somewhat broader was the wolf head on a massive scale.
His cunning was wolf cunning and wild cunning. His intelligence
shepherd intelligence and Saint 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 the wild.

(02:52:39):
A carnivorous animal living on a straight meat diet, he
was in full flower at the high tide of his life,
overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a caressing
hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand,
each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact. Every part,

(02:53:00):
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 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.

(02:53:23):
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.

(02:53:48):
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

(02:54:11):
of camp. When he was made, the mold was broke,
said Pete p y Jingo, I teeing so mine's self.
Hans affirmed they saw him marching out of camp, but
they did not see the instant in terrible transformation which
took place. As soon as he was within the secrecy
of the forest. He no longer marched at once. He

(02:54:35):
became a thing of the wild, stealing along softly, cat footed,
a passing shadow that appeared and disappeared. Among the shadows.
He knew how to take advantage of every cover, to
crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake,
to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from
its nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap

(02:54:56):
in mid air. The little chipmunks fleeing a second too
late for the trees. Fish in open pools were not
too quick for him, nor were beaver mending their dams
too wary. He killed to eat, not from wantonness, but
he preferred to eat what he killed himself. So a
lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his

(02:55:17):
delight to steal upon the squirrels, and when he all
but had them, to let them go chattering in mortal
fear to the tree tops. As the fall of the
year came on, the moose appeared in greater abundance, moving
slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and
less rigorous valleys, Buck had already dragged down a stray,

(02:55:37):
part grown calf, but he wished strongly for larger and
more formidable quarry, and he came upon it one day.
On the divide at the head of the creek, a
band of twenty moose had crossed over from the land
of streams and timber, and chief among them was a
great bull. He was in a savage temper, and standing
over six feet from the ground, was as formidable an

(02:56:00):
antagonist as even Buck could desire. Back and forth, the
bull tossed his great palmate antlers, branching to fourteen points
and embracing seven feet within the tips. His small eyes
burned with a vicious and bitter light, while he roared
with fury at sight of Buck. From the bull side,
just forward of the flank protruded a feathered arrow, and

(02:56:23):
which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinct which
came from the old hunting days of the primordial world,
Buck proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd.
It was no slight task. He would bark and dance
about in front of the bull, just out of reach
of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs,
which could have stamped his life out with a single blow.

(02:56:47):
Unable to turn his back on the fanged danger and
go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage.
At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring
him on by a simulated inability to a escae ape.
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.

(02:57:11):
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

(02:57:34):
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

(02:57:56):
than that of creatures praying. 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

(02:58:18):
this tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was
not the life of the herd or of the young
bulls that was threatened. The life of only one member
was demanded, which was a remoter interest than their lives,
and in the end they were content to pay the toll.
As twilight fell, the old bull stood with lowered head,

(02:58:39):
watching his mates. The cows he had known, the calves
he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered. As they
shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light.
He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless,
fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight
more than half a ton he weighed. He had lived
a long, strong, life, full of fight and struggle, and

(02:59:02):
at the end he faced death at the teeth of
a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great
knuckled knees. From then on, night and day, Buck never
left his prey, never gave it a moment's rest, never
permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or the
shoots of young birch and willow, Nor did he give
the wounded bull opportunity to slake his burning thirst in

(02:59:24):
the slender, trickling streams they crossed. Often in desperation, he
burst into long stretches of flight. At such times, Buck
did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily at
his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played,
lying down when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely
when he strove to eat or drink, The great head

(02:59:47):
drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and
the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to
standing for long periods with nose to the ground and dejected.
Ears dropped limply, and Buck found more time in which
to get water for himself and in which to rest.
At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue, and with
eyes fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck

(03:00:09):
that a change was coming over the face of things.
He could feel a new stir in the land. As
the moose were coming into the land. Other kinds of
life were coming in forest and stream, and air seemed
palpitant with their presence. The news of it was borne
in upon him, not by sight or sound or smell,

(03:00:30):
but by some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing,
saw nothing, yet knew that the land was somehow different,
that through its 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

(03:00:51):
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

(03:01:13):
man in 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 upon him in some subtle,
mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered

(03:01:35):
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

(03:01:59):
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 intense 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

(03:02:21):
the heels of which he was traveling. He remarked the
pregnant silence of the forest. The bird life had flitted,
the squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw a
sleek gray fellow flattened against a gray dead limb, so
that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence
upon the wood itself. As Buck slid along with the

(03:02:43):
obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly
to the side, as though a positive force had gripped
and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a
thicket and found Nigeria. He was lying on his side, dead,
where he had dragged himself, an arrow protruding and feathers
from either side of his body. A hundred yards farther on,

(03:03:05):
Buck came upon one of the sledge dogs Thornton had
bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a
death struggle directly on the trail, and Buck passed around
him without stopping. From the camp came the faint sound
of many voices rising and falling in a sing song chant.
Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found

(03:03:27):
Hans lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine.
At the same instant, Buck peered out where the spruce
bow lodge had been and saw what made his hair
leap straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust
of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know
that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity.

(03:03:49):
For the last time in his life, he allowed passion
to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of
his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.
The yee Hats were dancing about the wreckage of the
Spruce bow 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

(03:04:09):
hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy
to destroy. He sprang at the foremost man. It was
the chief of the yee Hats, ripping the throat wide
open till the rent juggular 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 nowithstanding him. He plunged

(03:04:34):
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

(03:04:56):
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 ye Hats, 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

(03:05:19):
a fateful day for the yee Hats. 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

(03:05:43):
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 four 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

(03:06:04):
Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no
trace led away. All day, Buck brooded by the pool,
or roamed restlessly about the camp. Death as a cessation
of movement, as a passing out and away from the
lives of the living. He knew, and he knew John
Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him,

(03:06:25):
somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached,
and which food could not fill. At times when he
paused to contemplate the carcasses of the yee hats, 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

(03:06:47):
the face of the law of club and fong. He
sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It
was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They
were no match at all. Were it not for their
arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid
of them, except when they bore in their hands their arrows,

(03:07:08):
spears and clubs. Night came on, and a full moon
rose high over the trees into the sky, lighting the
land till it lay bathed in ghostly day, and with
the coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool,
Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life
in the forest other than that which the yee hats
had made. He stood up, listening and scenting from far

(03:07:32):
away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus
of similar sharp yelps. As the moments passed, the yelps
grew closer and louder. Again, Buck knew them as things
heard in that other world which persisted in his memory.
He walked to the center of the open space and listened.
It was the call, the many noted call, sounding more

(03:07:55):
luringly and compellingly than ever before, and as never before,
he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The
last tie was broken man, and the claims of man
no longer bound him hunting their living meat as the
yee hats were hunting it on the flanks of the
migrating moose. The wolf pack had at last crossed over

(03:08:18):
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, 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.

(03:08:43):
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,

(03:09:03):
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 swiftly did he whirl and guard from side to side.

(03:09:24):
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

(03:09:46):
so well did he face it that at the end
of half an hour, the wolves drew back, discomfited. The
tongues of all were out and lolling, the white fangs
showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down
with heads raised and ears pricked forward. Others stood on
their feet watching him, and still others were lapping water
from the pool. One wolf, long and lean and gray

(03:10:10):
advanced cautiously in a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the
wild brother with whom he had run for a night
and a day. He was whining softly, and as Buck whined,
they touched noses. Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle scarred,
came forward. Buck writhed his lips into the preliminary of

(03:10:31):
a snarl, but sniffed noses with him, whereupon the old
wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke
out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled,
And now the call came to Buck in unmistakable accents.
He too sat down and howled. This over, he came

(03:10:51):
out of his angle, and the pack crowded around him,
sniffing in half friendly, half savage manner. The leaders lifted
the yelp of the pack and sprang away into the woods.
The wolves swung in behind, yelping in chorus, and Buck
ran with them, side by side, with the wild brother,
yelping as he ran. And here may well end the

(03:11:14):
story of Buck. The years were not many when the
ye hats 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, the yee Hats
tell of a ghost dog that runs at the head
of the pack. They are afraid of this ghost dog,

(03:11:36):
for it has cunning greater than they, stealing from their
camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs,
and defying their bravest hunters. Nay, the tail grows worse.
Hunters there are who fail to return to the camp,
And hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open, and with wolf prints about them

(03:11:58):
in the snow, greater than the prince of any wone.
Each fall, when the ye hats follow the movement of
the moose, there is a certain valley which they never enter,
And women there are who become sad when the word
goes over the fire of how the evil spirit came
to select that valley for an abiding place in the summers.
There is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which

(03:12:21):
the yee hats do not know. It is a great,
gloriously coated wolf like, and yet unlike all other wolves,
he crosses alone from the smiling timber land and comes
down into an open space among the trees. Here a
yellow stream flows from rotted moose hide sacks and sinks
into the ground, with long grasses growing through it in

(03:12:42):
vegetable mold, 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 valley, he may be
seen running at the head of the pack through the

(03:13:02):
pale moonlight, or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows,
his great throat up bellow as he sings a song
of the younger world, which is the song of the pack,

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Jack London - "The Call Of The Wild" - 1903

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Jack London - "The Call Of The Wild" - 1903