"Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain; Again
from its brumal
sleep Wakens the ferine strain."
Buck did not read
the
newspapers, or
he
would have
known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide- water dog, strong of muscle and with
warm, long
hair,
from Puget Sound to
San Diego. Because men, groping in
the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal,
and because steamship and transportation companies were boom-
ing the find, thousands of
men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the
dogs
they
wanted were
heavy dogs, with
strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats
to protect them from the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the
sun-kissed Santa
Clara
Valley.
Judge Miller's place, it was
called.
It stood back from the road, half hidden among the
trees,
through which
glimpses could
be caught of
the wide cool
veranda that ran around its
four sides. The house was approached by gravelled driveways
which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of
tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and
boys
held
forth,
rows
of vine-clad servants' cottages, an
endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the
big
cement tank
where Judge
Miller's
boys
took
their
morning plunge and kept cool in the
hot afternoon.
And over this great
demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here
he had lived the four years of
his life. It was
true,
there
were
other
dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast
a place,
but
they
did
not count. They came and went, resided in
the populous kennels,
or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after
the
fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,—strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors
or set foot to ground. On
the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a
score of them
at
least,
who
yelped fearful
promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by
a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.
But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.
He
plunged into
the swimming tank or went
hunting with the Judge's
sons;
he
escorted Mollie
and
Alice,
the Judge's
daughters, on long twilight or
early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the
Judge's
grand- sons on his back, or rolled them in the grass,
and
guarded their
footsteps through wild adventures down to
the fountain in
the stable
yard,
and even beyond, where the
paddocks were,
and
the
berry
patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ig- nored, for
he
was
king,—king over
all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller's place,
humans included.
His father, Elmo, a huge
St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable companion,
and Buck
bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large,—he weighed
only one hundred and
forty pounds,—for his mother, Shep, had been
a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hun-
dred and
forty
pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes
of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion.
During the
four
years
since
his
puppyhood he had lived
the life
of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle
egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation.
But he had saved himself by
not becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting
and kindred outdoor
delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tub- bing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.
And this was the manner of
dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the Klondike strike dragged men from
all the world into the frozen
North. But
Buck
did not
read
the newspapers,
and he
did not
know
that
Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers,
was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel had one
besetting sin. He loved to play
Chinese lottery.
Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system;
and
this made his damnation certain. For to play
a system
requires money, while the wages
of a gardener's helper do
not lap over the
needs of a wife and numerous
progeny.
The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the boys were busy organizing an
athletic club,
on the memorable night
of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and
Buck
go
off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a
stroll. And with the
excep- tion of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park.
This
man talked with Manuel,
and money chinked between
them.
"You might wrap up the goods
before
you
deliver 'm," the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel
doubled a piece of stout
rope
around Buck's neck under the collar.
"Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee,"
said
Manuel, and
the
stranger grunted a
ready affirmative.
Buck had accepted the
rope
with
quiet
dignity. To be sure,
it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew,
and to give them credit for a wisdom that
outreached his own. But when the ends of the
rope
were
placed in
the
stranger's hands, he growled men- acingly. He had
merely intimated his displeasure, in
his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the
rope
tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In
quick rage he sprang at
the man, who met him halfway, grappled him
close by the throat, and with a deft twist
threw him over on his back. Then
the rope tightened merci- lessly, while Buck struggled in
a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and
his
great
chest
panting futilely.
Never
in all his
life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life
had he been so
angry. But his strength ebbed,
his
eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.
The next he knew, he was
dimly
aware that
his tongue was hurting and that
he was being
jolted along in some
kind
of a conveyance. The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a
crossing told
him
where he was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know
the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his
eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man
sprang for his throat, but Buck was
too
quick
for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses
were choked out of him once more.
"Yep, has
fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the bag-
gageman, who
had
been attracted by the sounds of
struggle. "I'm takin'
'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that he can cure 'm."
Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke
most
eloquently for him- self, in a little
shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco
water front.
"All I get is fifty
for
it," he grumbled; "an' I wouldn't do it over for a thousand, cold cash."
His hand was wrapped in
a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee
to ankle.
"How much
did the other
mug get?" the saloon-keeper demanded. "A hundred," was the reply. "Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me." "That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated; "and
he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead."
The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked
at his lacer- ated hand. "If I don't get the
hydrophoby—"
"It'll be because you was born to hang," laughed the saloon-
keeper. "Here, lend me a hand before
you pull your freight," he added.
Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life half
throttled out
of him, Buck attempted to
face his tormentors. But
he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing
the heavy brass collar
from off his neck. Then the rope was removed, and he was flung into
a cagelike crate.
There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and
wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they want with him,
these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know
why,
but
he
felt
op- pressed by
the vague sense of impending calamity.
Several times during the night he sprang to
his feet when the
shed
door
rattled open,
expect- ing to see the Judge, or the boys at least.
But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper
that peered in at him by the sickly
light of a tal- low candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in
Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl.
But the saloon-keeper let
him
alone,
and
in
the
morning four
men entered and picked up the
crate.
More
tormentors, Buck
decided, for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and
he
stormed and
raged at them through the bars. They only laughed and
poked sticks at
him, which he promptly assailed
with his teeth till he realized that that was
what
they
wanted. Whereupon he
lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon. Then
he, and the
crate
in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through
many hands. Clerks in the ex- press office took charge
of him; he was carted
about
in another wagon;
a truck carried him,
with
an assortment of boxes and
parcels,
upon a ferry steamer; he
was trucked off
the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally
he was deposited in an express car.
For two days
and
nights this express car was
dragged along
at the tail of shrieking locomotives; and for two
days
and
nights Buck neither ate nor drank. In
his anger he had met
the first advances of the express mes-
sengers with growls, and they
had
retaliated by teasing him. When he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms
and
crowed. It was all
very
silly,
he knew;
but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger
waxed and
waxed. He did
not
mind the
hunger so much, but the lack
of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the
ill treatment had flung him into a
fever,
which
was
fed
by
the
inflammation of
his
parched and swollen throat and tongue.
He was glad
for one thing: the rope
was
off his neck. That had given
them an unfair advantage;
but now that
it was off, he would show them. They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was resolved. For
two days and nights he
neither ate nor drank, and during those
two
days
and
nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him.
His
eyes
turned blood-
shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was he that
the
Judge
himself
would not
have
recognized him;
and
the express
messengers breathed with relief when they
bundled him
off the train at Seattle.
Four men gingerly
carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high- walled back yard. A stout man, with a red
sweater that
sagged gener-
ously
at the neck, came out and signed the
book for the driver. That was the man, Buck
divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself sav- agely
against the
bars.
The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.
"You ain't going
to take him out now?" the driver asked.
"Sure," the man replied, driving
the hatchet into the crate for a pry. There
was
an
instantaneous scattering of the four men who had car-
ried it in, and
from
safe perches on
top the wall
they
prepared to watch the performance.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging and
wrestling with
it. Wherever the
hatchet fell on the outside, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling, as
furiously anxious to
get out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.
"Now, you
red-eyed devil,"
he said, when he
had made an
opening sufficient for the passage of Buck's
body.
At the same time he dropped the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil,
as he drew himself
together for
the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a
mad glitter in his blood-shot eyes. Straight at
the man he launched his
one hundred and forty
pounds of fury, surcharged
with the pent
passion of
two days and nights.
In mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the
man,
he received a
shock that checked
his body and brought his teeth together with an agonizing clip. He whirled over,
fetching
the ground on
his back and side.
He had never
been
struck
by a club
in his life,
and did not understand. With a snarl that was
part
bark
and
more
scream
he was again on his
feet and launched into
the
air.
And
again
the shock came and he was
brought crushingly to the ground. This
time
he
was
aware that
it was the club, but
his madness knew no caution. A
dozen
times he charged, and
as of- ten the club broke
the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to
rush. He staggered limply
about, the blood
flowing
from nose
and
mouth
and ears, his beautiful coat
sprayed and
flecked
with bloody slaver. Then the man advanced and
deliberately dealt
him
a frightful
blow on the nose. All the pain he had
endured was as nothing compared
with the exquisite agony of this. With
a roar that was almost lionlike in its ferocity,
he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the
club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downward
and backward. Buck described a
complete circle in the
air,
and
half
of another, then
crashed to the ground on his head and
chest.
For the last
time
he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow
he had purposely withheld for so long, and
Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked
utterly senseless.
"He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's
wot I say," one of the men on the wall cried enthusiastically.
"Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the reply
of the driver, as he
climbed on the wagon and started the horses.
Buck's senses
came
back to him,
but
not his strength. He lay where he had fallen, and from there
he watched the man in the red sweater.
" 'Answers to the name
of Buck,'
" the man soliloquized, quoting
from the saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of the crate
and
contents. "Well, Buck, my
boy,"
he
went on in a genial
voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at that. You've learned your place, and I know
mine.
Be a good
dog
and
all
'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll
whale the stuffin' outa you.
Understand?"
As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had
so mercilessly poun- ded,
and
though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled
at touch of the hand, he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he drank eagerly, and later
bolted
a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man's
hand.
He was beaten (he
knew
that);
but
he
was
not
broken. He
saw,
once
for all,
that
he
stood no
chance against a man with a club. He had
learned the lesson, and in all his after life
he never forgot it. That club
was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met
the introduction halfway.
The facts of life took on a fiercer as- pect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he
faced it with all
the lat- ent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days
went
by, other dogs came, in crates and at the ends of ropes,
some
docilely,
and
some
raging and
roaring as he had
come; and, one and
all, he watched them
pass
un- der the dominion of
the man in the
red sweater. Again
and
again,
as he looked
at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man
with
a club was a lawgiver, a master to
be obeyed, though not ne- cessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was
never
guilty,
though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their
tails,
and licked his
hand.
Also he saw one dog, that would neither
conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.
Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheed- lingly, and in all kinds
of fashions to the man
in the red
sweater. And
at such times that money passed between them
the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. Buck
wondered where they went,
for they never came back; but the fear of the
future was
strong upon him, and he was glad each time when
he was not selected.
Yet his time came, in the
end,
in the form of a little weazened man
who spat broken English and many strange and
uncouth exclamations which Buck could not
understand.
"Sacredam!"
he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam bully
dog! Eh? How moch?"
"Three hundred, and
a present at
that," was the prompt reply
of the man
in the red sweater. "And
seem' it's government money, you ain't got no kick coming, eh,
Perrault?"
Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs
had
been boomed skyward
by the unwonted demand, it
was not an unfair sum
for so fine an animal. The Canadian Government
would be no loser,
nor
would its despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck he knew
that
he was
one in a thousand— "One in ten t'ousand," he
commented mentally.
Buck saw money
pass
between them,
and
was
not
surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away
by
the little weazened man. That was
the
last
he
saw
of the man in the red
sweater, and as Curly
and
he looked at receding Seattle from the
deck of the Narwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken
below
by
Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois. Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Fran- cois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind of
men to Buck (of which he was destined to
see many more), and while he developed no affection for
them,
he
none
the
less
grew
honestly to respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and
Francois
were
fair men, calm
and impartial in
administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.
In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other dogs.
One
of them was a big, snow-white fellow
from
Spitzbergen who had been
brought away by a whaling captain,
and who had later accom-
panied a Geological
Survey into
the Barrens. He was
friendly,
in
a treacherous sort of way,
smiling
into
one's
face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, for instance, when he
stole from Buck's
food at the first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to
Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair
of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began
his rise in Buck's
estimation.
The other dog made no
advances, nor received any; also, he did not at- tempt to steal from the
newcomers. He
was
a gloomy, morose fellow, and he showed Curly
plainly that
all he desired was to be left alone,
and further, that there would be trouble if
he were not left alone. "Dave" he was called,
and
he ate and
slept,
or yawned between times,
and
took
in- terest in nothing, not
even when the
Narwhal crossed
Queen Charlotte Sound and
rolled
and
pitched and
bucked like a thing possessed. When
Buck and Curly grew
excited,
half
wild
with
fear,
he raised his head as though annoyed, favored
them with an incurious glance,
yawned, and went to sleep again.
Day and night
the
ship
throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like
another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather was steadily
growing
colder. At last,
one
morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of
excitement. He felt
it, as did the other
dogs,
and
knew
that
a change was at hand. Francois
leashed them
and
brought them
on
deck.
At
the first step upon the cold surface,
Buck's
feet
sank
into
a white mushy
something very like mud. He sprang back with
a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the
air. He shook himself, but more
of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It
bit like fire, and
the next instant was
gone.
This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers
laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he
knew not
why, for it was his first snow.
