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 wildfowl 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 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 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 it 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 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 discharging 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 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 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
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.
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