Chapter Seven
The Sounding of the Call
When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John Thornton,
he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts and to journey
with 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 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 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 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.
The End. |
