The Call of the Wild

For four years, Buck has lived on Judge Miller's estate in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, ruling as the absolute monarch over its lawns, orchards, and babbling brooks. He escorts the Judge on his walks, watches over the grandchildren whom he tumbles on the grass, and lies by the library fire at night, nose resting across his forepaws, blinking at the flames. His broad chest, his flanks hollowed beneath a thick coat, his straight, formidable legs, and his wide forehead starred with white—everything about him proclaims the thoroughbred aristocrat, son of the gigantic Newfoundland, Elmo, and the refined Scotch collie, Shep.

But men, digging in the dark earth of the Klondike, have found a yellow metal, and shipping companies have spread the news with massive advertising, and people are rushing North in droves, and they need dogs—large, robust dogs with strong muscles. One evening, the treacherous Manuel, a gardener's helper consumed by the Chinese lottery, softly calls to Buck, who follows him without suspicion. At the College Park station, a few gold coins change hands, and a rope is drawn tight around the dog's neck, half-strangling him; tossed into a baggage car, transferred from train to train, forty-eight hours without food or water, Buck arrives in San Francisco at a shady waterfront saloon, and then in a cramped, dark, high-walled enclosure where a short, stout man, his torso encased in a red wool sweater, awaits him with a hatchet and a heavy club.

The lesson is terrible. Ten times, twenty times, Buck hurls himself at the man, and ten times, twenty times, the club strikes his skull, bringing him down. Stunned, dazed, blood dripping from his nose, mouth, and ears, he endures a final blow to the snout. The man seizes his open jaws, shakes him, swings him, lifting him bodily from the ground, and smashes him headfirst against the floor. Buck lies motionless, knocked unconscious. When he comes to, the man brings him a bowl of fresh water and a piece of raw meat, feeding it to him chunk by chunk. Buck, defeated, has just learned the primitive law: he is powerless against a human being armed with a club.

A wiry, quick little man, spitting out a bizarre English peppered with unknown expressions, pays three hundred dollars and takes him away with Curly, an exceptionally good-natured Newfoundland. On the steamer Narwhal, Buck meets François, a swarthy-faced French-Canadian half-breed, and two other chain-mates: Spitz, a formidable snow-white dog with a friendly exterior but a deceitful nature, and Dave, a morose animal who thinks of nothing but eating, yawning, and sleeping. When the ship finally docks, Buck sinks his paws into a soft, white substance resembling cold, wet dust. He snaps at it in passing and is taken aback: this substance burns like fire and melts like water. He is seeing snow for the first time in his life.

Dyea Beach is a nightmare. Neither peace, nor rest, nor safety exists: everything is confusion, collision, and peril. Curly, true to her sociable nature, makes advances toward a wild, wolf-sized dog; a lightning-fast leap, a metallic snap of teeth, and Curly's face is ripped open from eye to jaw. On the third charge, the beast drives his chest into hers, knocking her off her feet. She cannot rise, and the pack closes in on her with shrieks of agony. Two minutes later, Curly lies lifeless on the trampled, blood-stained snow. Buck long remembers this scene: he understands that the law of the club is now compounded by the law of the fang.

They strap him into an arrangement of straps and buckles, and he pulls a sled. Dave, an experienced wheeler, nips his hindquarters at every mistake; Spitz, the lead dog, growls reprimands at him; François's whip enforces the rest. Buck learns quickly: stopping at "Ho!", starting at "Mush!", keeping clear of the sled on descents. Other dogs join the team—Billee, the good-natured one; Joe, the sour one; and Sol-leks, the one-eyed dog who brooks no approach from his blind side. At night, Buck must solve the great problem of sleep. Chased from the tent by a volley of oaths and cooking utensils, he wanders in the cold until he discovers Billee curled up in a ball beneath the snow, realizing he must dig a hole to sleep in. By morning, the night's snowfall has buried him; a sudden fear grips him, the panic of a wild beast caught in a trap, and with a ferocious howl, he bursts out into the daylight.

The trail is long, hard, and deadly. They cross the Canyon, Sheep Camp, and the Scales, scaling the Chilkoot Divide that jealously guards the bleak and desolate North, descend the chain of lakes, and halt at the Bennett camp, where thousands of gold-seekers are building boats in anticipation of the ice breakup. Buck loses his fastidiousness; hunger drives him to steal like the others. He learns to bite out the ice with his teeth, to scent the wind a night in advance, and to fight like the wolves his forgotten ancestors once battled. In the cold, still nights, when he points his nose at the stars and howls long and loud, it is his ancestors, now dust and ashes, howling down through the centuries in him.

Spitz feels his supremacy threatened. The hatred between the two dogs smolders underground until the night, on the shores of Lake Le Barge, when Buck finds his nest occupied by the white dog. He springs upon him with a fury that surprises Spitz. But a starving horde of sixty Native dogs invades the camp, swarming over the provisions, and the battle is postponed. Billee gets his ear shredded and chewed, Joe loses an eye, and half the rations vanish. Later, Buck foments a covert rebellion: he steps between Spitz and the dogs the leader wishes to punish, encourages insubordination, and undermines discipline. The final clash erupts on the night of the rabbit chase, when Spitz cuts across a bend to steal the prey. Buck hurls himself at him, shoulder to shoulder. The sixty wolf-dogs form a silent circle, their eyes gleaming, tongues hanging out. Spitz is an experienced fighter, his fury never blind, but Buck has imagination, a quality that can double one's strength. He feints at the shoulder and dives low: his teeth close on Spitz's right foreleg, and the bone crunches. Then the other leg. Spitz shudders, staggers, and howls as if to ward off death. Buck knocks him over with his shoulder, and the shrinking circle becomes a dark spot on the moon-silvered snow.

The next morning, Buck demands the lead position. François harnesses Sol-leks, but Buck drives him away; François arms himself with a club, and Buck retreats but refuses any other post. For an hour, the two men chase him, throwing clubs that he adeptly dodges. Finally, Perrault looks at his watch, cursing and swearing: François unhitches Sol-leks, and Buck trots over, tail wagging in triumph, and takes the lead position himself. Under his guidance, the team is transformed. Pike, who never pulled an ounce more than necessary, is so vehemently reprimanded that before the day is out, he is pulling harder than ever before. Sour Joe learns to respect his master. At the Rink Rapids, two native huskies are added and broken in in a flash. In fourteen days, they cover the distance from Dawson to Skagway, forty miles a day, breaking all records. Perrault and François strut down the main street for three days, showered with invitations to drink, while an admiring crowd surrounds the team.

Then come official orders. François calls Buck to his side and throws his arms around him, weeping: they are passing out of his life forever. A Scotch half-breed takes over the team for the mail service, facing the monotonous Dawson trail, heavy loads, and identical days. At night, lying by the fire, Buck sometimes thinks of Judge Miller's house, the cement swimming pool, the hairless Mexican dog, and Toots the Japanese pug; but more often he remembers the man in the red sweater, Curly's death, and the great fight with Spitz. Sometimes, motionless but awake, he feels he has sat by another fire in the dim past, beside a different man from the Scotch half-breed—a hairy man with long arms, uttering unintelligible sounds while peering anxiously into the darkness. These visions vanish at the half-breed's harsh voice, and Buck rises and yawns, pretending to have slept.

Dave, the morose wheeler, is stricken with an internal ailment that no one can diagnose. He howls with pain in the traces and falls several times. He is unhitched to let him rest, but he growls, throws himself at Sol-leks who has taken his place, gnaws at the traces, and drags himself to the front of the sled, his eyes pleading for permission to remain. He is reharnessed; he holds his own until camp, proud and broken. The next morning, he is too weak to walk. Through convulsive efforts, he struggles to his feet, staggers, falls with his hindquarters paralyzed, and tries to crawl toward his mates being harnessed. The convoy halts. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraces his steps. The men stop talking. A revolver shot rings out. The driver returns hurriedly. The whips crack, the bells jingle merrily, and the sleds glide over the snow: but Buck and the other dogs know what happened behind the river trees.

Thirty days later, the mail arrives in Skagway. The dogs are utterly drained, their foot-sore paws sinking heavily into the snow. Three days later, two American citizens named Hal and Charles buy the team for a song. With them is a disheveled-haired young woman, Hal's sister and Charles's wife, who answers to the name of Mercedes. Buck watches with apprehension as his new masters load the sled: the tent rolled into an awkward bundle, unwashed tin plates packed away, parcels piled into a towering catafalque. Mercedes refuses to leave her clothes behind, refuses to let the dogs be beaten, and then kneels before Buck in tears, throwing her arms around his neck. Fourteen dogs, including six green outsiders who know nothing, pull a monstrous load over an unfamiliar trail. Hal doubles the rations, the provisions dwindle, and then he cuts them; the dogs die one by one—Dub, the Newfoundland, the three pointers, the two mongrels, then good-natured Billee, and Koona. The five survivors are nothing more than walking skeletons, dead to the sting of the whip.

Spring sets in. The sap rises in the pines, buds burst, crickets sing at night, birds arrive from the South, and the Yukon gnaws at its icy prison. The pitiful procession drags itself, groaning, to John Thornton's camp at the mouth of the White River. Buck drops to the ground and refuses to get up. The whip lashes out, the club falls, but he does not move: his instinct senses impending disaster on the cracking, rotting ice he has trodden all day. John Thornton, eyes wet with tears, springs upon Hal, wrests the club from him, and with a choked voice threatens to kill him if he strikes the dog again. Hal draws his knife; Thornton knocks it from his hand with a sharp blow, picks up the blade, and severs Buck's traces. A few minutes later, the sled heads out onto the river. It has gone a quarter of a mile when the rear end drops, the gee-pole shoots into the air, Mercedes's scream echoes back, and dog and man vanish into a yawning, deep hole. John Thornton and Buck look at each other.

Thornton nurses Buck, who slowly regains his strength and flesh. A profound love is born between man and dog—a burning, adoring, almost mad love. Buck leaps into a chasm at Thornton's command (saved by a hair's breadth at the edge of the abyss), defends his master against a certain Burton in a barroom brawl by tearing at his throat, and plunges into the rapids to save him from drowning. One evening, in a Dawson saloon, a man named Matthewson wagers that Buck cannot break out a sled loaded with a thousand pounds, runners frozen, and pull it a hundred yards. Thornton hesitates, but accepts. Buck drops into the harness, his muscles drawn tight as steel cables, his claws biting into the hard-packed snow. At the command, he throws his whole weight forward; the runners crack, the sled shivers, inches forward one inch, then two, and does not stop. The crowd roars. Thornton, kneeling in the snow with his head against Buck's, shakes him back and forth, murmuring long, tender oaths.

With the sixteen hundred dollars won, Thornton, flanked by his partners Hans and Pete and a team of six dogs, sets off in search of a fabled lost mine—a mine from which no one has returned alive but which supposedly holds fabulous quantities of gold. They find it. In a broad, shallow valley, gold gleams at the bottom of the wash like yellow butter in a churn. While the men wash the gravel, Buck wanders into the forest. The call sounds, imperious, mysterious, ever stronger. He hunts a bull moose for four days, tracking it, isolating it from the herd, exhausting it, and finally pulling it down. He meets a lean timber wolf, plays with it, runs by its side for hours, then stops short and turns back: his love for Thornton always draws him back to camp.

But one day, after an absence longer than the rest, Buck returns to find silence. Thornton's dogs lie dead. Nig is stretched out by the fire, his body bristling with arrows. The Yeehats are dancing around Thornton's body. A terrible fury seizes Buck, sweeping aside all caution and reason. He hurls himself at the Indians, burying his fangs in the first one's throat, bounding upon a second, knocking down a third, and pursuing them through the trees. The Yeehats flee in howling terror from this fiend they can neither see nor strike. Buck returns to Thornton's body, sniffs it lingeringly, and remains there, motionless, until evening.

Then he hears a howl, coming from far away, from the forest, from the other side of the world. The wolf pack bursts into the clearing. The great lead wolf bounds at him; Buck snaps his neck with a single bite. The others attack, one by one, then in groups; he repels them all. Then they draw back and wait, and among them Buck recognizes the lean wolf he had run with. It whines softly; Buck touches its nose. Then an old, gaunt, battle-scarred wolf steps forward and whines in turn, and Buck whines with him. The others draw near, and together they point their noses at the stars and howl. Buck moves out, side by side with his wild brother, and the pack follows them into the forest. Each year, when the season returns, a great wolf with patches of brown descends alone into the valley where men found gold, standing for a time by the river with bowed head, before turning back to the high ground, howling.