Chapter VII. The Sounding of the Call
When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for JohnThornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debtsand 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 menhad sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who hadnever returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy andshrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldest traditionstopped before it got back to him. From the beginning there had been anancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, and to the minethe site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets thatwere unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead weredead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half adozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achievewhere men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sleddedseventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart itselfbecame a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked thebackbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of thewild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into thewilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Beingin no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of theday's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept ontravelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would cometo it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was thebill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on thesled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinitewandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would holdon steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, hereand there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozenmuck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of thefire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, allaccording to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summerarrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across bluemountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slenderboats whipsawed from the standing forest.
The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through theuncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been ifthe Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards,shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timberline and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarminggnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries andflowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fallof the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent,where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign oflife--only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in shelteredplaces, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails ofmen who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through theforest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But thepath began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as theman who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another timethey chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, andamid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelledflint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young daysin the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skinspacked flat, And that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early dayhad reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets.
Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering theyfound, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley wherethe gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan.They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands ofdollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The goldwas sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piledlike so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants theytoiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heapedthe treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat nowand again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing bythe fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him morefrequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often,blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world whichhe remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched thehairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and handsclasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts andawakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darknessand 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 legsprepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through theforest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and theywere alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving andnostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. Thehairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as onthe ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozenfeet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing hisgrip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on theground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath treeswherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call stillsounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrestand 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 thoughit were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood mightdictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into theblack soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earthsmells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behindfungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to allthat moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hopedto surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know whyhe did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did notreason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozinglazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and hisears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feetand dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles andacross the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to rundown dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in thewoods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he couldwatch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especiallyhe loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listeningto the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs andsounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious somethingthat called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrilsquivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From theforest 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, yetunlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiarway, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and inswift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cryhe went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to anopen place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, withnose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.
He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried to sensehis presence. Buck stalked into t
he open, half crouching, body gatheredcompactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwontedcare. Every movement advertised commingled threatening and overture offriendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wildbeasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. He followed, withwild 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 wolfwhirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the fashion of Joe andof all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling, clipping his teethtogether in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.
Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in withfriendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck madethree of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Timeand again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poorcondition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would runtill Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around atbay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.
But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, findingthat no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then theybecame friendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way withwhich fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this thewolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he wasgoing somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and theyran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed,into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide whereit took its rise.
On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a levelcountry where were great stretches of forest and many streams, andthrough these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, thesun rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. Heknew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his woodbrother toward the place from where the call surely came. Old memorieswere coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old hestirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had donethis thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world,and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpackedearth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buckremembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on toward theplace from where the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffingnoses and making actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turnedabout and started slowly on the back track. For the better part of anhour 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 Buckheld steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it waslost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprangupon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him,licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom-fool," asJohn Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forthand cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out ofhis 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. Butafter two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiouslythan ever. Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted byrecollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond thedivide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches. Onceagain he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came nomore; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl wasnever raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at atime; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and wentdown 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 ashe travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never totire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere intothe sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded bythe mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the foresthelpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused thelast latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days later, when hereturned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over thespoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behindwho would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, athing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone,by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in ahostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all thishe became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicateditself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itselfin all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spokeplainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his gloriousfurry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on hismuzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ranmidmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a giganticwolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard fatherhe had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother whohad given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolfmuzzle, 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, plusan experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidablea creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorousanimal living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at thehigh tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility. WhenThornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping andcrackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetismat the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, waskeyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was aperfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events whichrequired action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly asa husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leaptwice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and respondedin less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing orhearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant.In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, andresponding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervalsof time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles weresurcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steelsprings. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant,until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy andpour forth generously over the world.
"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as thepartners 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 andterrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within thesecrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thingof the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadowthat appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to takeadvantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like asnake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, killa rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeinga second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quickfor him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killedto eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killedhimself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was hisdelight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, tolet them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.
As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in g
reaterabundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and lessrigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf;but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and hecame upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. A band oftwenty 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 antagonistas even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his greatpalmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feetwithin 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 featheredarrow-end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinctwhich came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buckproceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. Hewould bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reachof the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could havestamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back onthe fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms ofrage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luringhim on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thusseparated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls wouldcharge back upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.
There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as lifeitself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web,the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patiencebelongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and itbelonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retardingits march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with theirhalf-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage.For half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking fromall sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out hisvictim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience ofcreatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creaturespreying.
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 theaid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was harrying themon to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off thistireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not the life ofthe herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life of onlyone 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 hismates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls hehad mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fadinglight. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the mercilessfanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more thanhalf a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fightand struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creaturewhose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees.
From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it amoment's rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees orthe shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bullopportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streamsthey crossed. Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches offlight. At such times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easilyat his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played, lying downwhen the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove to eator drink.
The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, andthe shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for longperiods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; andBuck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which torest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyesfixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was comingover the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the land. As themoose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in.Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. The newsof it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but bysome other and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knewthat the land was somehow different; that through it strange things wereafoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had finishedthe 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, turnand turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his facetoward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, andwent on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, headingstraight home through strange country with a certitude of direction thatput man and his magnetic needle to shame.
As he held on he became more and more conscious of the new stir in theland. There was life abroad in it different from the life which had beenthere throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon himin some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrelschattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times hestopped and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, reading amessage which made him leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed witha sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity already happened;and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped down into the valleytoward camp, he proceeded with greater caution.
Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hairrippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton.Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining andtense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story--all butthe end. His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of thelife on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked the pregnantsilence of the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were inhiding. One only he saw,--a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a graydead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon thewood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nosewas jerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had grippedand 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 arrowprotruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body.
A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thorntonhad bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle,directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. Fromthe camp came the faint sound of many voices, rising and falling in asing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he foundHans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At thesame instant Buck peered out where the spruce-bough lodge had been andsaw 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 hegrowled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the lasttime in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and itwas because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.
The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce-bough lodgewhen they heard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them an animalthe like of which they had never seen before. It was Buck, a livehurricane of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. Hesprang at the foremost man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), rippingthe throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a fountain of blood.He did not pause to worry the victim, but ripped in passing, withthe next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. There wasno withstanding him. He plunged about in their very midst, tearing,rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied thearrows they discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were hismovements, and so closely were the Indians tangled together, that theyshot one another with the ar
rows; and one young hunter, hurling a spearat Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest of another hunter withsuch force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stoodout beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror tothe woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit.
And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels anddragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It wasa fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over thecountry, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivorsgathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As forBuck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. Hefound Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first momentof surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on theearth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deeppool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithfulto the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluiceboxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained JohnThornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which notrace 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 thelives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. Itleft a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void whichached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he pausedto 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 pridegreater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblestgame 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 harderto kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were itnot for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would beunafraid 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 comingof the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to astirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehatshad made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted afaint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As themoments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew themas things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. Hewalked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call,the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than everbefore. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton wasdead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer boundhim.
Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanksof the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from theland of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into the clearingwhere the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in thecentre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting theircoming. They were awed, so still and large he stood, and a moment'spause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flashBuck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood, without movement, asbefore, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him. Three otherstried 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, crowdedtogether, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down theprey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead.Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhereat once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly didhe whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent them from gettingbehind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creekbed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to aright 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 withnothing to do but face the front.
And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolvesdrew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, thewhite fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying downwith heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet,watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool. Onewolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner,and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for a nightand a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touchednoses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhedhis lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him,Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and brokeout the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And now the callcame to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. Thisover, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded around him, sniffingin half-friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of thepack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yelpingin 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 whenthe Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some wereseen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of whitecentring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tellof a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid ofthis Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing fromtheir 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 tothe camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found withthroats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snowgreater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats followthe movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they neverenter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes overthe fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for anabiding-place.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of whichthe Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like,and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smilingtimber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Herea yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks intothe ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mouldoverrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses fora time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and thewolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen runningat the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmeringborealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellowas he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.
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