THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

<< FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN

VII

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

HEN 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

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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

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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

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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

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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 the 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 tree-tops.

As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater

abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and less

rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray 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

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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

THE CALL OF THE WILD

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.

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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

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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

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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;

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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

THE SOUNDING OF THE CALL

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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