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The Call of the Wild
Chapter 9. The Sounding of the Call
Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John Thornton.
This allowed his master to pay off certain debts.
Then, Thornton journeyed with his partners into the East to find a fabled lost mine.
The history of that mine was as old as the history of the country.
Many men had looked for it, few had found it, and more than a few had never returned from the search.
This lost mine was full of tragedy and mystery.
No one knew who the first man was.
The oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him.
From the beginning there had been an old, broken cabin.
Dying men had sworn to it, and to the mine which it marked.
They proved their stories with gold nuggets that were unlike any known kind of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had taken treasure from this place, and the dead were dead.
So John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail.
They wanted to succeed where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed.
They sledded 70 miles up the Yukon, turned into the Stewart River, passed Mayo and McQuestion, and continued until Stewart became a stream.
It wound through the high peaks that marked the backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature, he wasn't afraid of the wild.
With a handful of salt and a rifle, he could go into the wilderness and travel wherever he pleased, as long as he pleased.
He wasn't in a hurry, Like an Indian, he hunted his dinner during the day's travel.
And if he didn't find it, like the Indian, he kept on traveling, sure that sooner or later he'd find food.
So on this great journey into the East, meat was the main food.
Ammunition and tools were the main load on the sled.
And the time schedule was drawn from the endless future.
To Buck it was a huge delight, this hunting, fishing, and endless wandering through strange places.
For weeks at a time they'd travel steadily, day after day.
And for weeks on end they'd camp, here and there.
The dogs rested while the men burned holes through frozen mud and gravel.
They washed countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire.
Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted wildly, all depending on how much game there was and how lucky they were at hunting.
Summer came, and dogs and men packed their loads on their backs.
They rafted across blue mountain lakes, they went down or up unknown rivers in thin boats cut from the standing forest.
The months came and went, changing the landscape with each passing season.
Back and forth they traveled through the unknown vastness, where no men lived, and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin was real.
They crossed mountain passes in summer snowstorms.
They shivered under the midnight sun on bare mountains between the tree line and the eternal snows.
They dropped into summer valleys full of swarming gnats and flies.
In the shadows of glaciers, they picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and beautiful as any the Southland could offer.
In the fall of the year, they entered a strange lake country, sad and silent.
Wild birds had been there, but now there was no life or sign of life.
Only the blowing of cold winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the sad rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
And through another winter they wandered on the worn-out trails of men who had gone before.
Once, they came upon a path cut through the forest, an ancient path.
The Lost Cabin seemed very near, but the path began nowhere and ended nowhere.
It stayed a mystery, just like the man who made it and the reason he made it.
Another time they found the old wreckage of a hunting lodge.
Among the pieces of rotted blankets, John Thornton found a long-barreled flint-lock gun.
He knew it was a Hudson Bay Company gun from the early days in the Northwest.
In those days, such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat.
And that was all, there was no clue about the man who had built the lodge and left the gun among the blankets.
Spring came once more, At the end of all their wandering, they didn't find the Lost Cabin.
Instead, they found a shallow gold deposit in a broad valley.
The gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing pan.
They didn't look any further, Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean gold dust and nuggets.
They worked every day, the gold was packed in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag.
It was piled like firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge.
They worked like giants, days flashing one after another like dreams as they piled up the treasure.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, except pull in meat now and again that Thornton killed.
Buck spent long hours sitting by the fire.
The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more often, now that there was little work to do.
And often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered.
The main thing about this other world seemed to be fear.
When he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly.
He woke up many times with a start.
At those times, he'd look fearfully into the darkness and throw more wood on the fire.
When they walked by the sea beach where the hairy man gathered and ate shellfish, he looked everywhere for hidden danger.
His legs were ready to run like the wind at the first sign of danger.
Through the forest they crept silently, Buck at the hairy man's heels.
They were both alert and watchful, ears twitching and moving, noses shaking.
The man heard and smelled as well as Buck.
The hairy man could jump up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground.
He swung by his arms from branch to branch, sometimes a dozen feet apart.
He let go and caught hold, never falling, never missing his grip.
In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground.
And Buck had memories of nights spent watching beneath trees where the hairy man slept, holding on tightly as he slept.
And closely connected to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest.
It filled him with a great restlessness and strange desires.
It made him feel a vague, sweet gladness.
He was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he didn't know what.
Sometimes he followed the call into the forest, looking for it as if it were a real thing.
He barked softly or defiantly, depending on his mood.
He'd push his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew.
He'd snort with joy at the rich earth smells.
Or he'd crouch for hours, as if hiding, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees.
His eyes and ears were wide open to everything that moved and made sounds around him.
Maybe, lying like that, he hoped to surprise this call he couldn't understand.
But he didn't know why he did these things.
He felt forced to do them, and he didn't think about them at all.
Irresistible urges took hold of him, he'd be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day.
Suddenly his head would lift and his ears would stand up, listening carefully.
He'd jump to his feet and dash away, on and on, for hours, through the forest paths and across the open spaces where the grass bunched.
He loved to run down dry watercourses.
He loved to creep and spy on the bird life in the woods.
For a whole day at a time, he'd lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down.
But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights.
He listened to the quiet, sleepy sounds of the forest.
He read signs and sounds like a man reads a book.
And he looked for the mysterious something that called him.
It called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
One night he jumped up from sleep with a start.
His eyes were eager, his nose shaking and smelling.
His fur stood up in waves, From the forest came the call, or one note of it, for the call had many notes.
It was clear and definite like never before.
It was a long howl, like yet unlike any noise made by a husky dog.
And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound he had heard before.
He jumped through the sleeping camp and in quick silence dashed through the woods.
As he got closer to the cry, he went more slowly, with caution in every movement.
He came to an open place among the trees.
Looking out, he saw a long, thin timber wolf.
It sat on its back legs, with its nose pointed to the sky.
Buck had made no noise, yet the wolf stopped howling and tried to sense his presence.
Buck walked into the open, half crouching.
His body was gathered tightly together, his tail was straight and stiff.
His feet fell with unusual care, Every movement showed both threat and friendliness.
It was the threatening truce that marks the meeting of wild animals that hunt.
But the wolf ran away at the sight of him.
Buck followed with wild leaps, in a frenzy to catch him.
He ran the wolf into a blind channel in the bed of the creek.
A pile of logs blocked the way.
The wolf turned around, spinning on his back legs like Joe and all cornered husky dogs.
He snarled and his fur stood up.
He snapped his teeth together in a fast, continuous series of bites.
Buck didn't attack, Instead, he circled around him and blocked him with friendly approaches.
The wolf was suspicious and afraid, Buck was three times his weight, and his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.
Watching his chance, the wolf darted away, and the chase started again.
Time and again he was cornered, and the same thing happened.
But he was in poor condition, or Buck couldn't have caught him so easily.
He'd run until Buck's head was even with his side.
Then he'd turn around and face Buck, only to dash away again at the first chance.
But in the end, Buck's persistence was rewarded.
The wolf saw that no harm was meant.
Finally, they sniffed noses, then they became friendly.
They played around in the nervous, half-shy way that fierce animals show their gentleness.
After some time, the wolf started off at an easy run.
It was clear he was going somewhere.
He made it clear to Buck that he should come.
They ran side by side through dark twilight, up the creek bed into the gorge where it began, and across the bare divide.
On the opposite slope of the watershed, they came down into a level country.
There were great stretches of forest and many streams.
Through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour.
The sun rose higher and the day grew warmer.
Buck was wildly happy, he knew he was finally answering the call.
He was running by the side of his wild brother toward the place from where the call surely came.
Old memories were coming to him fast.
He was stirred by them as he had once been stirred by the real things of which they were the shadows.
He had done this before, somewhere in that other, dimly remembered world.
And he was doing it again, now, running free in the open.
The unpacked earth was under his feet, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink.
And stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton, he sat down.
The wolf started on toward the place from where the call surely came.
Then he returned to Buck, sniffing noses and making actions as if to encourage him.
But Buck turned around and started slowly back the way they had come.
For most of an hour, the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly.
Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled, it was a sad howl.
As Buck kept steadily on his way, he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp.
He jumped on him in a frenzy of love.
He knocked him over, climbed on him, licked his face, and bit his hand.
"Playing the general fool," as John Thornton called it, while he shook Buck back and forth and cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights, Buck never left camp.
He never let Thornton out of his sight.
He followed him around at his work.
He watched him while he ate, he saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning.
But after two days, the call in the forest began to sound more strongly than ever, Buck's restlessness came back.
He was haunted by memories of the wild brother, the smiling land beyond the divide, and running side by side through the forest.
Once again he started wandering in the woods.
But the wild brother didn't come again.
And though he listened through long watches, the sad howl was never heard.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a time.
And once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went down into the land of timber and streams.
There he wandered for a week, looking in vain for fresh signs of the wild brother.
He killed his meat as he traveled, and he traveled with the long, easy run that never seems to tire.
He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into the sea.
By this stream, he killed a large black bear.
The bear had been blinded by mosquitoes while also fishing.
It raged through the forest, helpless and terrible.
Even so, it was a hard fight.
It stirred up the last hidden parts of Buck's wildness.
And two days later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverines fighting over the spoil, he scattered them like chaff.
Those that fled left two behind who would fight no more.
The desire for blood became stronger than ever before.
He was a killer, a creature that hunted.
He lived on the things that lived, alone, by his own strength and skill.
He survived successfully in a hostile world where only the strong survived.
Because of all this, he became filled with a great pride in himself.
This pride spread like a disease through his whole body.
It showed itself in all his movements.
It was clear in the play of every muscle.
It spoke plainly, like speech, in the way he carried himself.
And it made his glorious furry coat even more glorious.
Except for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, he could have been mistaken for a giant wolf.
He also had a splash of white hair down the middle of his chest.
He was larger than the largest of the breed.
From his St. Bernard father, he had inherited size and weight.
But it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight.
His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, except that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf.
And his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.
His cleverness was wolf cleverness, wild cleverness.
His intelligence was shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence.
And all this, plus an experience gained in the hardest of schools, made him as dangerous a creature as any that roamed the wild.
He was a meat-eating animal living on a straight meat diet.
He was in full bloom, at the high point of his life, overflowing with energy and strength.
When Thornton passed a loving hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand.
Each hair released its stored-up electricity at the touch.
Every part, brain and body, nerve and muscle, was tuned to the finest pitch.
And between all the parts there was a perfect balance.
To sights and sounds and events that needed action, he responded with lightning speed.
As quickly as a husky dog could jump to defend or attack, he could jump twice as fast.
He saw the movement or heard the sound, and responded in less time than another dog needed just to see or hear.
He saw, decided, and responded in the same instant.
In fact, the three actions of seeing, deciding, and responding happened one after another.
But the time between them was so tiny that they seemed to happen at the same time.
His muscles were full of life, and they snapped into action sharply, like steel springs.
Life flowed through him in a wonderful flood, glad and wild.
It seemed that it would burst him apart in pure joy and pour out generously over the world.
"There was never such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as the partners watched Buck marching out of camp.
"When he was made, the mold was broken," said Pete.
"By jingo! I think so myself," Hans said.
They saw him marching out of camp.
But they didn't see the instant and terrible change that took place as soon as he was inside the secret forest.
He no longer marched, At once he became a creature of the wild.
He moved along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow that appeared and disappeared among the shadows.
He knew how to use every cover.
He could crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake he could leap and strike.
He could take a ptarmigan from its nest.
He could kill a rabbit as it slept.
He could snap in midair the little chipmunks that fled a second too late for the trees.
Fish in open pools weren't too quick for him.
Nor were beavers, fixing their dams, too careful.
He killed to eat, not for fun.
But he preferred to eat what he killed himself.
So a hidden humor ran through his actions.
He delighted in sneaking up on squirrels and, when he almost had them, letting them flee chattering in terror to the treetops.