The Sound of the Call
When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John Thornton, hemade it possible for his master to pay off certain debts and to journey withhis partners into the East after a fabled lost mine, the history of which wasas 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 lostmine was steeped in tragedy and shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the firstman. The oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him. From the beginningthere had been an ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, andto the mine the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggetsthat 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 otherdogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve where men and dogs asgood as themselves had failed. They sledded seventy miles up the Yukon, swungto the left into the Stewart River, passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, andheld on until the Stewart itself became a streamlet, threading the upstandingpeaks which marked the backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the wild. Witha handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the wilderness and farewherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Being in no haste, Indianfashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of the day’s travel; and ifhe failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on travelling, secure in theknowledge that sooner or later he would come to it. So, on this great journeyinto the East, straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and toolsprincipally made up the load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon thelimitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinitewandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold onsteadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here andthere, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen muck andgravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimesthey went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to theabundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and menpacked on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended orascended unknown rivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest.
The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the unchartedvastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin weretrue. They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnightsun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, droppedinto summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows ofglaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southlandcould boast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sadand silent, where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor signof life—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 of men whohad gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the forest, anancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path began nowhereand ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the man who made it and thereason he made it remained mystery. Another time they chanced upon thetime-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blanketsJohn Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson BayCompany gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth itsheight in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all—no hint as to theman who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among theblankets.
Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they found, notthe Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where the gold showedlike yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan. They sought nofarther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean dustand 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 thespruce-bough lodge. Like giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels of dayslike dreams as they heaped the treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now and againthat Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The visionof the short-legged hairy man came to him more frequently, now that there waslittle work to be done; and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with himin that other world which he remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the hairyman sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, Bucksaw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which timeshe would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire.Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shellfish andate them as he gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hiddendanger 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 movingand nostrils 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 on theground, 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, heseemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground; and Buck had memoriesof nights of vigil spent beneath trees wherein the hairy man roosted, holdingon tightly as he slept.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding inthe depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest and strangedesires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware ofwild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued thecall 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 hisnose 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 ifin concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed andwide-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 notknow why he 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, dozing lazily inthe 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 andon, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where theniggerheads bunched. He loved to run down dry watercourses, and to creep andspy upon the bird life in the woods. For a day at a time he would lie in theunderbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up anddown. But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summermidnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, readingsigns and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterioussomething that called—called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for himto come.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils quivering andscenting, 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 asnever before,—a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made byhusky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound heard before. Hesprang 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 everymovement, 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 hispresence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body gathered compactlytogether, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted care. Everymovement advertised commingled threatening and overture of friendliness. It wasthe menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild beasts that prey. But thewolf fled at sight of him. He followed, with wild leapings, in a frenzy toovertake. He ran him into a blind channel, in the bed of the creek where atimber jam barred the way. The wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legsafter the fashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling andbristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous and rapid succession ofsnaps.
Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in with friendlyadvances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made three of him inweight, while his head barely reached Buck’s shoulder. Watching hischance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time and again he wascornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor condition, or Buckcould not so easily have overtaken him. He would run till Buck’s head waseven with his flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to dash away againat 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 they becamefriendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way with which fiercebeasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the wolf started off atan easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was going somewhere. He made itclear to Buck that he was to come, and they ran side by side through the sombretwilight, straight up the creek bed, into the gorge from which it issued, andacross the bleak divide where it took its rise.
On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level countrywhere were great stretches of forest and many streams, and through these greatstretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the daygrowing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was at last answering thecall, running by the side of his wood brother toward the place from where thecall surely came. Old memories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirringto 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 rememberedworld, 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, Buck remembered JohnThornton. He sat down. The wolf started on toward the place from where the callsurely came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and making actions as thoughto 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, whiningsoftly. Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was amournful howl, and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint andfainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprang upon himin a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him, licking hisface, biting his hand—“playing the general tom-fool,” as JohnThornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forth and cursedhim lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of hissight. He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate, saw himinto his blankets at night and out of them in the morning. But after two daysthe call in the forest began to sound more imperiously than ever. Buck’srestlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by recollections of the wildbrother, and of the smiling land beyond the divide and the run side by sidethrough the wide forest stretches. Once again he took to wandering in thewoods, but the wild brother came no more; and though he listened through longvigils, the mournful howl was never raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a time; andonce he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went down into the landof timber and streams. There he wandered for a week, seeking vainly for freshsign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he travelled and travelling withthe long, easy lope that seems never to tire. He fished for salmon in a broadstream that emptied somewhere into the sea, and by this stream he killed alarge black bear, blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and ragingthrough the forest helpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and itaroused 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 thespoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind whowould quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a thingthat preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of hisown strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment whereonly the strong survived. Because of all this he became possessed of a greatpride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physicalbeing. It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play ofevery muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and madehis glorious furry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown onhis muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ranmidmost 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 hadinherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shapeto that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that it waslarger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was thewolf head on a massive scale.
His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherdintelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an experiencegained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as anythat roamed the wild. A carnivorous animal living on a straight meat diet, hewas in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor andvirility. When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping andcrackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at thecontact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to themost exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibriumor adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required action, heresponded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could leap todefend from attack or to attack, he could leap twice as quickly. He saw themovement, or heard sound, and responded in less time than another dog requiredto compass the mere seeing or hearing. He perceived and determined andresponded in the same instant. In point of fact the three actions ofperceiving, determining, and responding were sequential; but so infinitesimalwere the intervals of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. Hismuscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, likesteel 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 forthgenerously 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 the secrecyof 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 anddisappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take advantage of every cover, tocrawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake to leap and strike. He couldtake a ptarmigan from its nest, kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid airthe little chipmunks fleeing a second too late for the trees. Fish, in openpools, were not too quick for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, toowary. He killed to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what hekilled himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was hisdelight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to let themgo, 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 stronglyfor larger and more formidable quarry, and he came upon it one day on thedivide at the head of the creek. A band of twenty moose had crossed over fromthe land of streams and timber, and chief among them was a great bull. He wasin a savage temper, and, standing over six feet from the ground, was asformidable an antagonist as even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bulltossed his great palmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracingseven feet within the tips. His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitterlight, 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 instinct whichcame from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck proceeded to cutthe bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He would bark and danceabout in front of the bull, just out of reach of the great antlers and of theterrible 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 bedriven into paroxysms of rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreatedcraftily, luring him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he wasthus separated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would chargeback 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, thesnake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongspeculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as heclung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the youngbulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the woundedbull mad with helpless rage. For half a day this continued. Buck multipliedhimself, attacking from all sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind ofmenace, cutting out his victim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearingout the patience of creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than thatof creatures preying.
As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest (thedarkness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long), the youngbulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the aid of their besetleader. The down-coming winter was harrying them on to the lower levels, and itseemed 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 wasthreatened. The life of only one member was demanded, which was a remoterinterest 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 he hadmastered—as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. Hecould not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless fanged terror thatwould not let him go. Three hundredweight more than half a ton he weighed; hehad lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end hefaced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond hisgreat 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 or theshoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull opportunityto slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams they crossed.Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of flight. At such timesBuck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily at his heels, satisfied withthe way the game was played, lying down when the moose stood still, attackinghim fiercely when he strove to eat or drink.
The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shamblingtrot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long periods, with nose tothe ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in whichto get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting withred lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buckthat a change was coming over the face of things. He could feel a new stir inthe land. As the moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life werecoming in. Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. Thenews of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by someother and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knew that the landwas 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 aday and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn and turnabout. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp andJohn 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 strangecountry with a certitude of direction that put man and his magnetic needle toshame.
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 therethroughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him in somesubtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered aboutit, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times he stopped and drew in thefresh morning air in great sniffs, reading a message which made him leap onwith greater speed. He was oppressed with a sense of calamity happening, if itwere not calamity already happened; and as he crossed the last watershed anddropped 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 ripplingand bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton. Buck hurried on,swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense, alert to themultitudinous details which told a story—all but the end. His nose gavehim a varying description of the passage of the life on the heels of which hewas travelling. He remarked the pregnant silence of the forest. The bird lifehad flitted. The squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw,—a sleek grayfellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, awoody excrescence upon the wood itself.
As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose wasjerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had gripped and pulledit. He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig. He was lying on hisside, dead where he had dragged himself, an arrow protruding, head andfeathers, from either side of his body.
A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thornton hadbought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle, directly onthe trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. From the camp came thefaint sound of many voices, rising and falling in a sing-song chant. Bellyingforward 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 outwhere the spruce-bough lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straightup on his neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. Hedid 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 theyheard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal the like of whichthey had never seen before. It was Buck, a live hurricane of fury, hurlinghimself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the foremost man (it wasthe chief of the Yeehats), ripping the throat wide open till the rent jugularspouted a fountain of blood. He did not pause to worry the victim, but rippedin passing, with the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. Therewas no withstanding him. He plunged about in their very midst, tearing,rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the arrowsthey discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were his movements, andso closely were the Indians tangled together, that they shot one another withthe arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear at Buck in mid air, drove itthrough the chest of another hunter with such force that the point brokethrough the skin of the back and stood out beyond. Then a panic seized theYeehats, and they fled in terror to the woods, proclaiming as they fled theadvent of the Evil Spirit.
And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and dragging themdown like deer as they raced through the trees. It was a fateful day for theYeehats. They scattered far and wide over the country, and it was not till aweek later that the last of the survivors gathered together in a lower valleyand counted their losses. As for Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned tothe desolated camp. He found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets inthe first moment of surprise. Thornton’s desperate struggle wasfresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to theedge 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 sluiceboxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton; forBuck 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, asa cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of theliving, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void inhim, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which foodcould not fill, At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of theYeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a greatpride in himself,—a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He hadkilled man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the lawof club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. Itwas harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were itnot for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraidof 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, lightingthe 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 newlife 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 bya chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the moments passed the yelps grew closerand louder. Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world whichpersisted in his memory. He walked to the centre of the open space andlistened. It was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly andcompellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. JohnThornton was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longerbound him.
Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks of themigrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land ofstreams and timber and invaded Buck’s valley. Into the clearing where themoonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the centre of theclearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their coming. They wereawed, so still and large he stood, and a moment’s pause fell, till theboldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flash Buck struck, breaking theneck. Then he stood, without movement, as before, the stricken wolf rolling inagony behind him. Three others tried it in sharp succession; and one after theother 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 the prey.Buck’s marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead. Pivotingon his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere at once,presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly did he whirl andguard from side to side. But to prevent them from getting behind him, he wasforced back, down past the pool and into the creek bed, till he brought upagainst a high gravel bank. He worked along to a right angle in the bank whichthe 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 drewback discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the white fangsshowing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down with heads raisedand ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet, watching him; and stillothers were lapping water from the pool. One wolf, long and lean and gray,advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner, and Buck recognized the wild brotherwith whom he had run for a night and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buckwhined, they touched noses.
Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhed his lipsinto the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him, Whereupon the oldwolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke out the long wolf howl. Theothers sat down and howled. And now the call came to Buck in unmistakableaccents. He, too, sat down and howled. This over, he came out of his angle andthe pack crowded around him, sniffing in half-friendly, half-savage manner. Theleaders lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolvesswung in behind, yelping in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by side withthe wild brother, yelping as he ran.
And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when theYeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were seen withsplashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white centring downthe chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tell of a Ghost Dog thatruns at the head of the pack. They are afraid of this Ghost Dog, for it hascunning greater than they, stealing from their camps in fierce winters, robbingtheir 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 slashedcruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow greater than theprints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow the movement of themoose, there is a certain valley which they never enter. And women there arewho become sad when the word goes over the fire of how the Evil Spirit came toselect that valley for an abiding-place.
In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which theYeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yetunlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling timber land andcomes down into an open space among the trees. Here a yellow stream flows fromrotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with long grasses growingthrough it and vegetable mould overrunning it and hiding its yellow from thesun; and here he muses for a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere hedeparts.
But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the wolvesfollow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head ofthe pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping giganticabove his fellows, his great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the youngerworld, which is the song of the pack.