CHAPTER VII
The Sounding of the Call
When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John
Thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts and
to journey with his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine, the
history of which was as old as the history of the country. Many men
had sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who had
never returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy
and shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldest
tradition stopped before it got back to him. From the beginning there
had been an ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it,
and to the mine the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony
with nuggets that were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were
dead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a
dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve
where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sledded
seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,
passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart
itself became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked
the backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the
wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the
wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased.
Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of
the day's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on
travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come to
it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill of
fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, and
the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and
indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they
would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they
would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes
through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by
the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they
feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune
of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs,
rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown
rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.
The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through
the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been
if the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer
blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between
the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid
swarming gnats and 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 wild- fowl had been, but where then there was no life nor
sign of life-- only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in
sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails
of men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed
through the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near.
But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained
mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained
mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of
a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton
found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay
Company gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was
worth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all--no hint as
to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun
among the blankets.
Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they
found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where
the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan.
They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands
of dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The
gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled
like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants
they toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they
heaped the treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat
now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing
by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more
frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking
by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he
watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and
hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts
and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the
darkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the
beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell- fish and ate them as he
gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and
with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through
the forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they
were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and
nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck.
The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as
on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a
dozen feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his
grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the
ground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath trees
wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still
sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and
he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what.
Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it
were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might
dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the
black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth
smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind
fungus- covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all
that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he
hoped to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not
know why he did these various things. He was impelled to do them,
and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp,
dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift
and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet
and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and
across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to
run down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the
woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he
could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But
especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights,
listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs
and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious
something that called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils
quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the
forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted),
distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike,
any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way,
as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in
swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry
he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an
open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches,
with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.
He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried to
sense his presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body
gathered compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with
unwonted care. Every movement advertised commingled threatening
and overture of friendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the
meeting of wild beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him.
He followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. He ran him
into a blind channel, in the bed of the creek where a timber jam barred
the way. The wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the
fashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling,
clipping his teeth together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.
Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in with
friendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made
three of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.
Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed.
Time and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was
in poor condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He
would run till Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirl
around at bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.
But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding
that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they
became friendly, and played about in the nervous, half- coy way with
which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the
wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was
going somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and
they ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek
bed, into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide
where it took its rise.
On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level
country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and
through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun
rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He
knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood
brother toward the place from where the call surely came. Old
memories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of
old he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had
done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered
world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the
unpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck
remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on
toward the place from where the call surely came, then returned to him,
sniffing noses and making actions as though to encourage him. But
Buck turned about and started slowly on the back track. For the better
part of an hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Then
he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was a mournful
howl, and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and
fainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and
sprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling
upon him, licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom-
fool," as John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back
and forth and cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton
out of his sight. He followed him about at his work, watched him
while he ate, saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the
morning. But after two days the call in the forest began to sound more
imperiously than ever. Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he
was haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land
beyond the divide and the run side by side through the wide forest
stretches. Once again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild
brother came no more; and though he listened through long vigils, the
mournful howl was never raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a
time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went
down into the land of timber and streams. There he wandered for a
week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat
as he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never
to tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere
into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by
the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest
helpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the
last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days later, when he
returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the
spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind
who would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a
killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone,
by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a
hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this
he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated
itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself in all
his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly
as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat
if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on his muzzle and
above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down
his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger
than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard father he had
inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given
shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle,
save that was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head,
somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale. His cunning
was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherd
intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an
experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a
creature as any that intelligence roamed the wild. A carnivorous animal
living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his
life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a
caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the
hand, each hair discharing its pent magnetism at the contact. Every
part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most
exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium
or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required
action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky
dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap twice as
quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded in less
time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or hearing.
He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant. In
point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and responding
were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals of time between
them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles were surcharged
with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. Life
streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it
seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and pour forth
generously over the world.
"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp.
"When he was made, the mould was broke," said Pete.
"Py jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans affirmed.
They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant
and terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within
the secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a
thing of the wild, stealing along softly, cat- footed, a passing shadow that
appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a
snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, kill a
rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing a
second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick
for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killed to
eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed himself.
So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his delight to steal
upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to let them go,
chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.
As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater
abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and less
rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown
calf; but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and
he came upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. A band
of twenty moose had crossed over from the land of streams and timber,
and chief among them was a great bull. He was in a savage temper,
and, standing over six feet from the ground, was as formidable an
antagonist as even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his
great palmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing
seven feet within the tips. His small eyes burned with a vicious and
bitter light, while he roared with fury at sight of Buck.
From the bull's side, just forward of the flank, protruded a feathered
arrow-end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinct
which came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck
proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He
would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach of the
great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have stamped
his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on the fanged
danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage. At
such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring him on by
a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thus separated from
his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon
Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.
There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life
itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the
snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs
peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck
as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the
young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and
driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For half a day this
continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking from all sides,
enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his victim as
fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of creatures
preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures preying.
As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the
northwest (the darkness had come back and the fall nights were six
hours long), the young bulls retraced their steps more and more
reluctantly to the aid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was
harrying them on to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never
shake off this tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not
the life of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life
of only one member was demanded, which was a remoter interest than
their lives, and in the end they were content to pay the toll.
As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his
mates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he
had mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading
light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless
fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more
than half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight
and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature
whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees.
From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a
moment's rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or the
shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull
opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams
they crossed. Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of flight.
At such times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily at his
heels, satisfied with the way the game was played, lying down when the
moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove to eat or drink.
The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and
the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long
periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and
Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to
rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes
fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was coming
over the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the land. As the
moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in.
Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. The
news of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but
by some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet
knew that the land was somehow different; that through it strange things
were afoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had
finished the business in hand.
At last, at the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down.
For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn
and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face
toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and
went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading
straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that
put man and his magnetic needle to shame.
As he held on he became more and more conscious of the new stir in
the land. There was life abroad in it different from the life which had
been there throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in
upon him in some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the
squirrels chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several
times he stopped and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs,
reading a message which made him leap on with greater speed. He was
oppressed with a sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity
already happened; and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped
down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with greater caution.
Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hair
rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton.
Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense,
alert to the multitudinous details which told a story--all but the end.
His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the life on the
heels of which he was travelling. He remarked die pregnant silence of
the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were in hiding.
One only he saw,--a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb
so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his
nose was jerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had
gripped and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a thicket and
found Nig. He was lying on his side, dead where he had dragged
himself, an arrow protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body.
A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs
Thornton had bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a
death-struggle, directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without
stopping. From the camp came the faint sound of many voices, rising
and falling in a sing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the
clearing, he found Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a
porcupine. At the same instant Buck peered out where the spruce-
bough lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straight up on his
neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He
did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible
ferocity. For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp
cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John
Thornton that he lost his head. The Yeehats were dancing about the
wreckage of the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful roaring
and saw rushing upon them an animal the like of which they had never
seen before. It was Buck, a live hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon
them in a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the foremost man (it was the
chief of the Yeehats), ripping the throat wide open till the rent jugular
spouted a fountain of blood. He did not pause to worry the victim, but
ripped in passing, with the next bound tearing wide the throat of a
second man. There was no withstanding him. He plunged about in
their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying, in constant and terrific
motion which defied the arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so
inconceivably rapid were his movements, and so closely were the
Indians tangled together, that they shot one another with the arrows; and
one young hunter, hurling a spear at Buck in mid air, drove it through
the chest of another hunter with such force that the point broke through
the skin of the back and stood out beyond. Then a panic seized the
Yeehats, and they fled in terror to the woods, proclaiming as they fled
the advent of the Evil Spirit.
And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and
dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It was a
fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the
The Call of the Wild
81
country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors
gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for
Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He
found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment
of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the
earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deep
pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful to
the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes,
effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton; for
Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no trace led away.
All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the
camp. Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away
from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was
dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void
which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he
paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of
it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride
greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the
noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and
fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It
was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all,
were it not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he
would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their
arrows, spears, and clubs.
Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky,
lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming of
the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a
stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats had
made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a
faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the
moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew
them as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory.
He walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call,
the many- noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever
before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton
was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.
Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the
flanks of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over
from the land of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into
the clearing where the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery
flood; and in the centre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a
statue, waiting their coming. They were awed, so still and large he
stood, and a moment's pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for
him. Like a flash Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood,
without movement, as before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind
him. Three others tried it in sharp succession; and one after the other
they drew back, streaming blood from slashed throats or shoulders.
This was sufficient to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell,
crowded together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down
the prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good
stead. Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was
everywhere at once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken
so swiftly did he whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent
them from getting behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool
and into the creek bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank.
He worked along to a right angle in the bank which the men had made in
the course of mining, and in this angle he came to bay, protected on
three sides and with nothing to do but face the front.
And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolves
drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the
white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying
down with heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their
feet, watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool.
One wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly
manner, and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for
a night and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they
touched noses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck
writhed his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with
him, Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and
broke out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And
now the call came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down
and howled. This over, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded
around him, sniffing in half- friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders
lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves
swung in behind, yelping in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by
side with the wild brother, yelping as he ran.
* * *
And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many
when the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for
some were seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a
rift of white centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this,
the Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They
are afraid of this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing
from their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs,
and defying their bravest hunters.
Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to
the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow
greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow
the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never
enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over
the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an abiding- place.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which
the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and
yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling timber
land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here a
yellow stream flows from rotted moose- hide sacks and sinks into the
ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for
a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on
and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen
running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or
glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat
a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.