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The Call of the Wild
Chapter 1. Into the Primitive
"Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain. Again from its brumal sleep Wakens the ferine strain."
Buck didn't read the newspapers.
If he had, he would know trouble was coming for every strong, warm-haired dog near the water from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Because men searching the Arctic had found gold, and steamship and transport companies spread the news, thousands rushed into the Northland.
These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles for work and furry coats to protect them from the cold.
Buck lived at a big house in the sunny Santa Clara Valley, it was called Judge Miller's place.
It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which you could see the wide cool porch that ran around all four sides.
The house was reached by gravel driveways that wound through wide lawns and under the crossing branches of tall poplars.
At the back, things were even bigger than at the front.
There were large stables where a dozen grooms and boys worked and rows of servants' cottages covered with vines.
There were an endless line of outbuildings, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.
There was the artesian well pump and the cement tank where Judge Miller's boys took morning swims and cooled in the afternoon.
And over this great property Buck ruled.
He was born here, and he had lived here for the four years of his life.
It was true, there were other dogs.
There had to be other dogs on such a large place, but they didn't matter.
They came and went, Some lived in the crowded kennels.
Others stayed hidden in the house, like Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless.
These strange creatures rarely put their noses outside or set foot on the ground.
There were the fox terriers, at least twenty of them.
They barked fearful threats at Toots and Ysabel.
The dogs looked out the windows at them.
The housemaids protected them with brooms and mops.
But Buck was neither a house-dog nor a kennel-dog.
The whole place was his, he jumped into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's sons.
He walked with Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on long evening or early morning trips.
On winter nights he lay at the Judge's feet in front of the roaring library fire.
He carried the Judge's grandsons on his back.
He rolled them in the grass, he guarded their steps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard.
He even went beyond, where the paddocks and berry patches were, Among the terriers he walked proudly.
And he completely ignored Toots and Ysabel, because he was king, king over everything that crawled, walked, or flew on Judge Miller's place, including humans.
His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's constant companion, and Buck seemed likely to follow in his father's path.
He wasn't as big, he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds, because his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog.
Still, one hundred and forty pounds, plus the dignity that comes from good living and general respect, let him carry himself in a truly royal way.
During the four years since his puppyhood, he had lived the life of a satisfied aristocrat.
He had a fine pride in himself, and was even a little self-important, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their isolated situation.
But he had saved himself by not becoming a spoiled house-dog.
Hunting and similar outdoor activities had kept off the fat and hardened his muscles.
And for him, as for people who love cold baths, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.
This was the kind of dog Buck was in fall 1897, when the Klondike strike drew men worldwide into the frozen North.
But Buck didn't read the newspapers, and he didn't know that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was a bad person to know.
Manuel had one main sin, he loved to play Chinese lottery.
Also, in his gambling, he had one main weakness, faith in a system, and this made his ruin certain.
Because playing a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener's helper don't cover the needs of a wife and many children.
On the memorable night of Manuel's betrayal, the Judge was at a Raisin Growers' Association meeting and the boys organized an athletic club.
No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck thought was just a walk.
And except for one man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station called College Park.
This man talked with Manuel, and money passed between them.
"You might wrap up the goods before you deliver him,"
The stranger said roughly, and Manuel doubled a piece of strong rope around Buck's neck under the collar.
"Twist it, and you'll choke him plenty," said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a quick yes.
Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity.
Of course, it was an unusual thing to do.
But he had learned to trust men he knew, and to believe they had wisdom greater than his own.
But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled a warning.
He had only shown his displeasure, in his pride believing that to show it was enough to command.
But to his surprise, the rope tightened around his neck, cutting off his breath.
In sudden anger he leaped at the man, who grabbed his throat and, with a twist, threw him onto his back.
Then the rope tightened without mercy, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his great chest breathing uselessly.
Never in all his life had he been so badly treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry.
But his strength faded, his eyes became glassy.
And he knew nothing when the train was signaled and the two men threw him into the baggage car.
The next thing he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue hurt and that he was being shaken along in some kind of vehicle.
The loud scream of a locomotive at a crossing told him where he was.
He had traveled too often with the Judge not to know the feeling of riding in a baggage car.
He opened his eyes, and into them came the wild anger of a kidnapped king.
The man jumped for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him.
His jaws closed on the hand, and they didn't let go until his senses were choked out of him again.
"Yes, he has fits," the man said, hiding his injured hand from the baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of the struggle.
"I'm taking him up for the boss to 'Frisco. A good dog doctor there thinks he can cure him."
About that night's ride, the man spoke most clearly for himself, in a little shed behind a saloon on the San Francisco waterfront.
"All I get is fifty for it," he complained, "and I wouldn't do it again for a thousand, cold cash."
His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg was torn from knee to ankle.
"How much did the other guy get?" the saloon-keeper asked.
"A hundred," was the reply.
"I wouldn't take a cent less, so help me."
"That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated, "and he's worth it, or I'm a fool."
The kidnapper unwrapped the bloody bandages and looked at his torn hand.
"If I don't get rabies, "
"It'll be because you were born to hang," laughed the saloon-keeper.
"Here, give me a hand before you leave," he added.
Dazed, suffering terrible pain from throat and tongue, with his life half choked out of him, Buck tried to face his tormentors.
But they threw him down and choked him again and again, until they succeeded in filing the heavy brass collar off his neck.
Then the rope was removed, and he was thrown into a cage-like crate.
There he lay for the rest of the weary night, nursing his anger and wounded pride.
He couldn't understand what it all meant.
What did they want with him, these strange men?
Why were they keeping him locked up in this narrow crate?
He didn't know why, but he felt weighed down by a vague sense of coming disaster.
Several times during the night he jumped to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or at least the boys.
But each time it was the fat face of the saloon-keeper looking in at him by the weak light of a tallow candle.
And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat turned into a savage growl.
But the saloon-keeper left him alone, and in the morning four men entered and picked up the crate.
More tormentors, Buck decided, because they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and dirty.
And he raged at them through the bars.
They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he quickly attacked with his teeth until he realized that was what they wanted.
So he lay down angrily and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon.
Then he, and the crate he was trapped in, began a journey through many hands.
Clerks in the express office took charge of him.
He was carted about in another wagon.
A truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, onto a ferry steamer.
He was trucked off the steamer into a big railway depot, and finally he was placed in an express car.
For two days and nights this express car was pulled along behind screaming locomotives.
And for two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank.
In his anger, he had met the first approaches of the express messengers with growls, and they had responded by teasing him.
When he threw himself against the bars, shaking and foaming, they laughed at him and mocked him.
They growled and barked like horrible dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed.
It was all very silly, he knew.
But that made it even more insulting to his dignity, and his anger grew and grew.
He didn't mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him terrible suffering and raised his anger to a fever pitch.
Being high-strung and sensitive, the bad treatment had thrown him into a fever fed by the swelling of his dry throat and tongue.
He was glad about one thing, the rope was off his neck.
That had given them an unfair advantage.
But now that it was off, he'd show them.
They'd never get another rope around his neck, he was determined about that.
For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank.
During that time of suffering he built up a store of anger that meant trouble for whoever first crossed him.
His eyes turned bloodshot, and he changed into a raging devil.
He was so changed that the Judge himself wouldn't have recognized him.
And the express messengers breathed with relief when they unloaded him from the train at Seattle.
Four men carefully carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard.
A strong man, with a red sweater that hung loosely at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.
That was the man, Buck guessed, the next tormentor, and he threw himself savagely against the bars.
The man smiled grimly and brought a hatchet and a club.
"You're not going to take him out now?" the driver asked.
"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate to pry it open.
The four men who had carried it in scattered instantly, and from safe spots on top of the wall, they prepared to watch the show.
Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, pushing and wrestling with it.
The hatchet fell on the outside, Wherever it landed, he was there on the inside, snarling and growling.
He was furiously eager to get out.
The man in the red sweater was calmly determined to get him out.
"Now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when he had made an opening big enough for Buck's body to pass through.
At the same time, he dropped the hatchet and moved the club to his right hand.
And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he gathered himself for the jump, hair standing up, mouth foaming, a mad shine in his bloodshot eyes.
Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds of fury, filled with the trapped passion of two days and nights.
In mid-air, as his jaws neared the man, a shock stopped his body and snapped his teeth together painfully.
He turned over, hitting the ground on his back and side.
He had never been struck by a club in his life, and he didn't understand.
With a snarl that was part bark and more scream, he was on his feet again and launched into the air.
And again the shock came, and he was crushed to the ground.
This time he knew it was the club, but his madness knew no caution.
A dozen times he charged, and as often the club stopped the charge and smashed him down.
After a particularly hard blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush.
He staggered weakly around, blood flowing from his nose, mouth, and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and spotted with bloody slobber.
Then the man stepped forward and deliberately gave him a terrible blow on the nose.
All the pain he had suffered was nothing compared to the sharp agony of this.
With a roar that was almost like a lion in its fierceness, he threw himself at the man again.
But the man, moving the club from right to left, calmly caught him by the lower jaw, at the same time pulling downward and backward.
Buck made 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, throwing himself forward with one final furious charge.
The man struck the clever blow he had purposely held back for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down, knocked completely senseless.
"He's no slouch at dog-breaking, that's what I say," one of the men on the wall shouted enthusiastically.
"I'd rather break wild horses any day, and twice on Sundays," was the driver's reply, as he climbed onto 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 said to himself, quoting from the saloon-keeper's letter that had announced the arrival of the crate and its contents.
"Well, Buck, my boy,"
He went on in a friendly voice, "We've had our little fight."
"You've learned your place, and I know mine."
"Be a good dog and everything will go well, be a bad dog and I'll beat the life out of you, understand"?
As he spoke, he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly beaten.
Though Buck's hair involuntarily stood up at the touch of the hand, he endured it without protest.
When the man brought water, he drank eagerly and later ate a meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man's hand.
He was beaten, he knew that, but he wasn't broken.
He saw, once and for all, that he had no chance against a man with a club.
He had learned the lesson, and in all his later life he never forgot it.
That club was a revelation, it was his introduction to the rule of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway.
The facts of life took on a fiercer look.
And while he faced that look without fear, he faced it with all the hidden cleverness of his nature awakened.
As the days went by, other dogs came in crates and on ropes, some calm, others raging and roaring like he had.
And one by one, he watched them pass under the control of the man in the red sweater.
Again and again, as he watched 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 necessarily won over.
Of this last, Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that crawled to the man, wagged their tails, and licked his hand.
He also saw one dog that would neither give in nor obey, and it was finally killed in the fight for control.
Now and then men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, in a coaxing way, and in all kinds of manners to the man in the red sweater.
And at such times, when money passed between them, the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them.
Buck wondered where they went, because they never came back.
But the fear of the future was strong on him, and he was glad each time when he wasn't chosen.
Yet his time came in the form of a small, thin man who spoke broken English and strange, rough exclamations Buck couldn't understand.
"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes fell on Buck.
"That one damn bully dog! Eh? How much?"
"Three hundred, and a bargain at that," was the quick reply of the man in the red sweater.
"And seeing it's government money, you've got no complaint coming, eh, Perrault?"
Perrault grinned, pleased with the sale, fingers still closed around the money.
Considering that the price of dogs had been pushed sky-high by the unusual demand, it wasn't an unfair sum for such a fine animal.
The Canadian Government wouldn't lose, and its messages wouldn't travel any slower.
Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at Buck, he knew that he was one in a thousand, "One in ten thousand," he thought to himself.
Buck saw money pass between them, and wasn't surprised when Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland.
And he were led away by the small, thin man.
That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater.
And as Curly and he looked at the disappearing 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 dark-skinned, but Francois was a French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as dark.
They were a new kind of men to Buck, and he would see many more of them.
He felt no love for them, but he grew to respect them honestly.
He quickly learned that Perrault and Francois were fair, calm in giving justice, and too wise about dogs to be fooled.
In the space between 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.
He had later gone with a Geological Survey into the Barrens.
He was friendly in a tricky way, smiling while planning a trick, as when he stole from Buck's food at the first meal.
As Buck jumped to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip sang through the air, hitting the guilty dog first.
And nothing remained for Buck but to take back the bone.
That was fair of Francois, he decided, and the half-breed began to rise in Buck's opinion.
The other dog made no friendly moves, nor did he receive any.
Also, he didn't try to steal from the newcomers, he was a gloomy, bad-tempered fellow.
And he showed Curly clearly that all he wanted was to be left alone, and further, that there would be trouble if he weren't left alone.
He was called "Dave." He ate and slept, or yawned in between.
He took interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte Sound.
The ship rolled, pitched, and jumped like a possessed thing.
When Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, Dave raised his head, looked bored, yawned, and went back to sleep.
Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless beat of the propeller.
Though one day was much like another, Buck could tell the weather was steadily getting colder.
At last, one morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was filled with an atmosphere of excitement.
He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change was coming.
Francois leashed them and brought them on deck.
At the first step onto the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy thing very like mud.
He jumped back with a snort, More of this white stuff was falling through the air.
He shook himself, but more of it fell on him.
He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue.
It bit like fire, and the next moment it was gone.
This puzzled him, he tried it again, with the same result.
The onlookers laughed loudly, and he felt ashamed, he didn't know why, because it was his first snow.