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chapter i.into the primitive "old longings nomadic leap,chafing at custom's chain; again from its brumal sleepwakens the ferine strain." buck did not read the newspapers, or hewould 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 arcticdarkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportationcompanies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the northland.

these men wanted dogs, and the dogs theywanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats toprotect them from the frost. buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissedsanta clara valley. judge miller's place, it was called. it stood back from the road, half hiddenamong the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool verandathat ran around its four sides. the house was approached by gravelleddriveways which wound about through wide- spreading lawns and under the interlacingboughs of tall poplars. at the rear things were on even a morespacious scale than at the front.

there were great stables, where a dozengrooms and boys held forth, rows of vine- clad servants' cottages, an endless andorderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berrypatches. then there was the pumping plant for theartesian well, and the big cement tank where judge miller's boys took theirmorning 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, therecould not but be other dogs on so vast a

place, but they did not count. they came and went, resided in the populouskennels, 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 toground. on the other hand, there were the foxterriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at toots and ysabellooking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armedwith brooms and mops. but buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog.

the whole realm was his. he plunged into the swimming tank or wenthunting with the judge's sons; he escorted mollie and alice, the judge's daughters, onlong twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the judge's feet before the roaring library fire; he carriedthe judge's grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded theirfootsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and theberry patches. among the terriers he stalked imperiously,and toots and ysabel he utterly ignored,

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, hadbeen the judge's inseparable companion, and buck bid fair to follow in the way of hisfather. he was not so large,--he weighed only onehundred and forty pounds,--for his mother, shep, had been a scotch shepherd dog. nevertheless, one hundred 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 puppyhoodhe 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 theirinsular situation. but he had saved himself by not becoming amere pampered house-dog. hunting and kindred outdoor delights hadkept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing races,the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver. and this was the manner of dog buck was inthe fall of 1897, when the klondike strike dragged men from all the world into thefrozen north.

but buck did not read the newspapers, andhe did not know that manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirableacquaintance. 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 madehis damnation certain. for to play a system requires money, whilethe wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerousprogeny. the judge was at a meeting of the raisingrowers' association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on thememorable night of manuel's treachery.

no one saw him and buck go off through theorchard on what buck imagined was merely a stroll. and with the exception 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 youdeliver 'm," the stranger said gruffly, and manuel doubled a piece of stout rope aroundbuck'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 thatoutreached his own. but when the ends of the rope were placedin the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly. he had merely intimated his displeasure, inhis 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 methim halfway, grappled him close by the

throat, and with a deft twist threw himover on his back. then the rope tightened mercilessly, whilebuck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his greatchest panting futilely. never in all his life had he been so vilelytreated, 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 thebaggage car. the next he knew, he was dimly aware thathis tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted along in some kind of aconveyance.

the hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistlinga crossing told him where he was. he had travelled too often with the judgenot to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. he opened his eyes, and into them came theunbridled anger of a kidnapped king. the man sprang for his throat, but buck wastoo quick for him. his jaws closed on the hand, nor did theyrelax till his senses were choked out of him once more. "yep, has fits," the man said, hiding hismangled hand from the baggageman, 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 cancure 'm." concerning that night's ride, the man spokemost eloquently for himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the san franciscowater 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 bloodyhandkerchief, 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," thesaloon-keeper calculated; "and he's worth it, or i'm a squarehead." the kidnapper undid the bloody wrappingsand looked at his lacerated 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 yourfreight," he added. dazed, suffering intolerable pain fromthroat and tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, buck attempted toface his tormentors. but he was thrown down and chokedrepeatedly, 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 wearynight, 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 thisnarrow crate? he did not know why, but he felt oppressedby the vague sense of impending calamity. several times during the night he sprang tohis feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the judge, or the boys atleast.

but each time it was the bulging face ofthe saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle. and each time the joyful bark that trembledin buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl. but the saloon-keeper let him alone, and inthe morning four men entered and picked up the crate. more tormentors, buck decided, for theywere evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at themthrough the bars. they only laughed and poked sticks at him,which he promptly assailed with his teeth

till he realized that that was what theywanted. whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowedthe crate to be lifted into a wagon. then he, and the crate in which he wasimprisoned, began a passage through many hands. clerks in the express office took charge ofhim; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried him, with an assortment ofboxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he was depositedin an express car. for two days and nights this express carwas dragged along at the tail of shrieking

locomotives; and for two days and nightsbuck neither ate nor drank. in his anger he had met the first advancesof the express messengers 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 detestabledogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. it was all very silly, he knew; buttherefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed.

he did not mind the hunger so much, but thelack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. for that matter, high-strung and finelysensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by theinflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue. he was glad for one thing: the rope was offhis neck. that had given them an unfair advantage;but now that it was off, he would show them. they would never get another rope aroundhis neck.

upon that he was resolved. for two days and nights he neither ate nordrank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wraththat boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. his eyes turned blood-shot, and he wasmetamorphosed into a raging fiend. so changed was he that the judge himselfwould not have recognized him; and the express messengers breathed with reliefwhen they bundled him off the train at seattle. four men gingerly carried the crate fromthe wagon into a small, high-walled back

yard. a stout man, with a red sweater that saggedgenerously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver. that was the man, buck divined, the nexttormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars.the man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club. "you ain't going to take him out now?" thedriver asked. "sure," the man replied, driving thehatchet into the crate for a pry. there was an instantaneous scattering ofthe four men who had carried it in, and

from safe perches on top the wall theyprepared 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 outas the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out. "now, you red-eyed devil," he said, when hehad 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 hedrew himself together for the spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter inhis blood-shot eyes. straight at the man he launched his onehundred and forty pounds of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of twodays and nights. in mid air, just as his jaws were about toclose on the man, he received a shock that checked his body and brought his teethtogether with an agonizing clip. he whirled over, fetching the ground on hisback and side. he had never been struck by a club in hislife, and did not understand. with a snarl that was part bark and morescream 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 theclub, but his madness knew no caution. a dozen times he charged, and as often theclub broke the charge and smashed him down. after a particularly fierce blow, hecrawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. he staggered limply about, the bloodflowing from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked withbloody slaver. then the man advanced and deliberatelydealt him a frightful blow on the nose. all the pain he had endured was as nothingcompared with the exquisite agony of this.

with a roar that was almost lionlike in itsferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. but the man, shifting the club from rightto left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same time wrenching downwardand backward. buck described a complete circle in theair, 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 hadpurposely withheld for so long, and buck crumpled up and went down, knocked utterlysenseless. "he's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's woti say," one of the men on the wall cried

enthusiastically. "druther break cayuses any day, and twiceon sundays," was the reply of the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started thehorses. buck's senses came back to him, but not hisstrength. he lay where he had fallen, and from therehe watched the man in the red sweater. "'answers to the name of buck,'" the mansoliloquized, quoting from the saloon- keeper's letter which had announced theconsignment of the crate and contents. "well, buck, my boy," he went on in agenial voice, "we've had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is tolet it go at that.

you've learned your place, and i know mine. be a good dog and all 'll go well and thegoose hang high. be a bad dog, and i'll whale the stuffin'outa you. understand?" as he spoke he fearlessly patted the headhe had so mercilessly pounded, and though buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touchof the hand, he endured it without protest. when the man brought him water he drankeagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk, from the man'shand. he was beaten (he knew that); but he wasnot broken.

he saw, once for all, that he stood nochance against a man with a club. he had learned the lesson, and in all hisafter life he never forgot it. that club was a revelation. it was his introduction to the reign ofprimitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. the facts of life took on a fiercer aspect;and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of hisnature aroused. as the days went by, other dogs came, incrates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as hehad come; and, one and all, he watched them

pass under the dominion of the man in thered sweater. again and again, as he looked at eachbrutal performance, the lesson was driven home to buck: a man with a club was alawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. of this last buck was never guilty, thoughhe did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked hishand. also he saw one dog, that would neitherconciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery. now and again men came, strangers, whotalked excitedly, wheedlingly, and in all

kinds of fashions to the man in the redsweater. and at such times that money passed betweenthem the strangers took one or more of the dogs away with them. buck wondered where they went, for theynever came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was glad eachtime when he was not selected. yet his time came, in the end, in the formof a little weazened man who spat broken english and many strange and uncouthexclamations which buck could not understand. "sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes litupon buck.

"dat one dam bully dog!eh? how moch?" "three hundred, and a present at that," wasthe 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, itwas 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 atbuck he knew that he was one in a thousand-

-"one in ten t'ousand," he commentedmentally. buck saw money pass between them, and wasnot surprised when curly, a good-natured newfoundland, and he were led away by thelittle weazened man. that was the last he saw of the man in thered sweater, and as curly and he looked at receding seattle from the deck of thenarwhal, it was the last he saw of the warm southland. curly and he were taken below by perraultand turned over to a black-faced giant called francois. perrault was a french-canadian, andswarthy; but francois was a french-canadian

half-breed, and twice as swarthy. they were a new kind of men to buck (ofwhich he was destined to see many more), and while he developed no affection forthem, he none the less grew honestly to respect them. he speedily learned that perrault andfrancois were fair men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise inthe way of dogs to be fooled by dogs. in the 'tween-decks of the narwhal, buckand curly joined two other dogs. one of them was a big, snow-white fellowfrom spitzbergen who had been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had lateraccompanied a geological survey into the

barrens. he was friendly, in a treacherous sort ofway, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some underhand trick, as, forinstance, when he stole from buck's food at the first meal. as buck sprang to punish him, the lash offrancois's whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothingremained to buck but to recover the bone. that was fair of francois, he decided, andthe half-breed began his rise in buck's estimation. the other dog made no advances, norreceived any; also, he did not attempt to

steal from the newcomers. he was a gloomy, morose fellow, and heshowed curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and further, thatthere would be trouble if he were not left alone. "dave" he was called, and he ate and slept,or yawned between times, and took interest in nothing, not even when the narwhalcrossed queen charlotte sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thingpossessed. when buck and curly grew excited, half wildwith fear, he raised his head as though annoyed, favored them with an incuriousglance, yawned, and went to sleep again.

day and night the ship throbbed to thetireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like another, it wasapparent to buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. at last, one morning, the propeller wasquiet, 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 ondeck. 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 someup on his tongue. it bit like fire, and the next instant wasgone. 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 washis first snow. >

chapter ii.the law of club and fang buck's first day on the dyea beach was likea nightmare. every hour was filled with shock andsurprise. he had been suddenly jerked from the heartof civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.no lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. here was neither peace, nor rest, nor amoment's safety. all was confusion and action, and everymoment life and limb were in peril. there was imperative need to be constantlyalert; for these dogs and men were not town

dogs and men.they were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang. he had never seen dogs fight as thesewolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught him an unforgetablelesson. it is true, it was a vicarious experience,else he would not have lived to profit by it.curly was the victim. they were camped near the log store, whereshe, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf,though not half so large as she. there was no warning, only a leap in like aflash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out

equally swift, and curly's face was rippedopen from eye to jaw. it was the wolf manner of fighting, tostrike and leap away; but there was more to it than this. thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot andsurrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. buck did not comprehend that silentintentness, nor the eager way with which they were licking their chops.curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again and leaped aside. he met her next rush with his chest, in apeculiar fashion that tumbled her off her

feet.she never regained them, this was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. they closed in upon her, snarling andyelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath the bristling mass ofbodies. so sudden was it, and so unexpected, thatbuck was taken aback. he saw spitz run out his scarlet tongue ina way he had of laughing; and he saw francois, swinging an axe, spring into themess of dogs. three men with clubs were helping him toscatter them. it did not take long.

two minutes from the time curly went down,the last of her assailants were clubbed off. but she lay there limp and lifeless in thebloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breedstanding over her and cursing horribly. the scene often came back to buck totrouble him in his sleep. so that was the way.no fair play. once down, that was the end of you. well, he would see to it that he never wentdown. spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again,and from that moment buck hated him with a

bitter and deathless hatred. before he had recovered from the shockcaused by the tragic passing of curly, he received another shock.francois fastened upon him an arrangement of straps and buckles. it was a harness, such as he had seen thegrooms put on the horses at home. and as he had seen horses work, so he wasset to work, hauling francois on a sled to the forest that fringed the valley, andreturning with a load of firewood. though his dignity was sorely hurt by thusbeing made a draught animal, he was too wise to rebel.he buckled down with a will and did his

best, though it was all new and strange. francois was stern, demanding instantobedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience; while dave,who was an experienced wheeler, nipped buck's hind quarters whenever he was inerror. spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,and while he could not always get at buck, he growled sharp reproof now and again, orcunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk buck into the way he should go. buck learned easily, and under the combinedtuition of his two mates and francois made remarkable progress.

ere they returned to camp he knew enough tostop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush," to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clearof the wheeler when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels. "t'ree vair' good dogs," francois toldperrault. "dat buck, heem pool lak hell.i tich heem queek as anyt'ing." by afternoon, perrault, who was in a hurryto be on the trail with his despatches, returned with two more dogs."billee" and "joe" he called them, two brothers, and true huskies both. sons of the one mother though they were,they were as different as day and night.

billee's one fault was his excessive goodnature, while joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetualsnarl and a malignant eye. buck received them in comradely fashion,dave ignored them, while spitz proceeded to thrash first one and then the other. billee wagged his tail appeasingly, turnedto run when he saw that appeasement was of no avail, and cried (still appeasingly)when spitz's sharp teeth scored his flank. but no matter how spitz circled, joewhirled around on his heels to face him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lipswrithing and snarling, jaws clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes

diabolically gleaming--the incarnation ofbelligerent fear. so terrible was his appearance that spitzwas forced to forego disciplining him; but to cover his own discomfiture he turnedupon the inoffensive and wailing billee and drove him to the confines of the camp. by evening perrault secured another dog, anold husky, long and lean and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye whichflashed a warning of prowess that commanded respect. he was called sol-leks, which means theangry one. like dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing,expected nothing; and when he marched

slowly and deliberately into their midst,even spitz left him alone. he had one peculiarity which buck wasunlucky enough to discover. he did not like to be approached on hisblind side. of this offence buck was unwittinglyguilty, and the first knowledge he had of his indiscretion was when sol-leks whirledupon him and slashed his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down. forever after buck avoided his blind side,and to the last of their comradeship had no more trouble. his only apparent ambition, like dave's,was to be left alone; though, as buck was

afterward to learn, each of them possessedone other and even more vital ambition. that night buck faced the great problem ofsleeping. the tent, illumined by a candle, glowedwarmly in the midst of the white plain; and when he, as a matter of course, entered it,both perrault and francois bombarded him with curses and cooking utensils, till he recovered from his consternation and fledignominiously into the outer cold. a chill wind was blowing that nipped himsharply and bit with especial venom into his wounded shoulder. he lay down on the snow and attempted tosleep, but the frost soon drove him

shivering to his feet. miserable and disconsolate, he wanderedabout among the many tents, only to find that one place was as cold as another. here and there savage dogs rushed upon him,but he bristled his neck-hair and snarled (for he was learning fast), and they lethim go his way unmolested. finally an idea came to him. he would return and see how his own team-mates were making out. to his astonishment, they had disappeared. again he wandered about through the greatcamp, looking for them, and again he

returned.were they in the tent? no, that could not be, else he would nothave been driven out. then where could they possibly be? with drooping tail and shivering body, veryforlorn indeed, he aimlessly circled the tent.suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore legs and he sank down. something wriggled under his feet.he sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown.but a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate.

a whiff of warm air ascended to hisnostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay billee. he whined placatingly, squirmed andwriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribefor peace, to lick buck's face with his warm wet tongue. another lesson.so that was the way they did it, eh? buck confidently selected a spot, and withmuch fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a hole for himself. in a trice the heat from his body filledthe confined space and he was asleep.

the day had been long and arduous, and heslept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with baddreams. nor did he open his eyes till roused by thenoises of the waking camp. at first he did not know where he was.it had snowed during the night and he was completely buried. the snow walls pressed him on every side,and a great surge of fear swept through him--the fear of the wild thing for thetrap. it was a token that he was harking backthrough his own life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, anunduly civilized dog, and of his own

experience knew no trap and so could not ofhimself fear it. the muscles of his whole body contractedspasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders stood on end, andwith a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into the blinding day, the snow flyingabout him in a flashing cloud. ere he landed on his feet, he saw the whitecamp spread out before him and knew where he was and remembered all that had passedfrom the time he went for a stroll with manuel to the hole he had dug for himselfthe night before. a shout from francois hailed hisappearance. "wot i say?" the dog-driver cried toperrault.

"dat buck for sure learn queek asanyt'ing." perrault nodded gravely. as courier for the canadian government,bearing important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he wasparticularly gladdened by the possession of buck. three more huskies were added to the teaminside an hour, making a total of nine, and before another quarter of an hour hadpassed they were in harness and swinging up the trail toward the dyea canon. buck was glad to be gone, and though thework was hard he found he did not

particularly despise it. he was surprised at the eagerness whichanimated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still moresurprising was the change wrought in dave and sol-leks. they were new dogs, utterly transformed bythe harness. all passiveness and unconcern had droppedfrom them. they were alert and active, anxious thatthe work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by delay orconfusion, retarded that work. the toil of the traces seemed the supremeexpression of their being, and all that

they lived for and the only thing in whichthey took delight. dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling infront of him was buck, then came sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead,single file, to the leader, which position was filled by spitz. buck had been purposely placed between daveand sol-leks so that he might receive instruction. apt scholar that he was, they were equallyapt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing their teachingwith their sharp teeth. dave was fair and very wise.

he never nipped buck without cause, and henever failed to nip him when he stood in need of it. as francois's whip backed him up, buckfound it to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. once, during a brief halt, when he gottangled in the traces and delayed the start, both dave and solleks flew at himand administered a sound trouncing. the resulting tangle was even worse, butbuck took good care to keep the traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done,so well had he mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him.

francois's whip snapped less frequently,and perrault even honored buck by lifting up his feet and carefully examining them. it was a hard day's run, up the canon,through sheep camp, past the scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdriftshundreds of feet deep, and over the great chilcoot divide, which stands between the salt water and the fresh and guardsforbiddingly the sad and lonely north. they made good time down the chain of lakeswhich fills the craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled intothe huge camp at the head of lake bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were

building boats against the break-up of theice in the spring. buck made his hole in the snow and sleptthe sleep of the exhausted just, but all too early was routed out in the colddarkness and harnessed with his mates to the sled. that day they made forty miles, the trailbeing packed; but the next day, and for many days to follow, they broke their owntrail, worked harder, and made poorer time. as a rule, perrault travelled ahead of theteam, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them. francois, guiding the sled at the gee-pole,sometimes exchanged places with him, but

not often. perrault was in a hurry, and he pridedhimself on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fallice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at all. day after day, for days unending, bucktoiled in the traces. always, they broke camp in the dark, andthe first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled offbehind them. and always they pitched camp after dark,eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow.buck was ravenous.

the pound and a half of sun-dried salmon,which was his ration for each day, seemed to go nowhere.he never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs. yet the other dogs, because they weighedless and were born to the life, received a pound only of the fish and managed to keepin good condition. he swiftly lost the fastidiousness whichhad characterized his old life. a dainty eater, he found that his mates,finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished ration. there was no defending it.while he was fighting off two or three, it

was disappearing down the throats of theothers. to remedy this, he ate as fast as they;and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was not above taking what did not belong tohim. he watched and learned. when he saw pike, one of the new dogs, aclever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when perrault's back wasturned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the wholechunk. a great uproar was raised, but he wasunsuspected; while dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught,was punished for buck's misdeed.

this first theft marked buck as fit tosurvive in the hostile northland environment. it marked his adaptability, his capacity toadjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift andterrible death. it marked, further, the decay or going topieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle forexistence. it was all well enough in the southland,under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personalfeelings; but in the northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such

things into account was a fool, and in sofar as he observed them he would fail to prosper.not that buck reasoned it out. he was fit, that was all, and unconsciouslyhe accommodated himself to the new mode of life.all his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. but the club of the man in the red sweaterhad beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. civilized, he could have died for a moralconsideration, say the defence of judge miller's riding-whip; but the completenessof his decivilization was now evidenced by

his ability to flee from the defence of amoral consideration and so save his hide. he did not steal for joy of it, but becauseof the clamor of his stomach. he did not rob openly, but stole secretlyand cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. in short, the things he did were donebecause it was easier to do them than not to do them.his development (or retrogression) was rapid. his muscles became hard as iron, and hegrew callous to all ordinary pain. he achieved an internal as well as externaleconomy.

he could eat anything, no matter howloathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted thelast least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest andstoutest of tissues. sight and scent became remarkably keen,while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintestsound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. he learned to bite the ice out with histeeth when it collected between his toes; and when he was thirsty and there was athick scum of ice over the water hole, he

would break it by rearing and striking itwith stiff fore legs. his most conspicuous trait was an abilityto scent the wind and forecast it a night in advance. no matter how breathless the air when hedug his nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward,sheltered and snug. and not only did he learn by experience,but instincts long dead became alive again. the domesticated generations fell from him. in vague ways he remembered back to theyouth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primevalforest and killed their meat as they ran it

down. it was no task for him to learn to fightwith cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. in this manner had fought forgottenancestors. they quickened the old life within him, andthe old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. they came to him without effort ordiscovery, as though they had been his always. and when, on the still cold nights, hepointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, deadand dust, pointing nose at star and howling

down through the centuries and through him. and his cadences were their cadences, thecadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, andthe cold, and dark. thus, as token of what a puppet thing lifeis, the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again; and he camebecause men had found a yellow metal in the north, and because manuel was a gardener's helper whose wages did not lap over theneeds of his wife and divers small copies of himself. chapter iii.the dominant primordial beast

the dominant primordial beast was strong inbuck, and under the fierce conditions of trail life it grew and grew.yet it was a secret growth. his newborn cunning gave him poise andcontrol. he was too busy adjusting himself to thenew life to feel at ease, and not only did he not pick fights, but he avoided themwhenever possible. a certain deliberateness characterized hisattitude. he was not prone to rashness andprecipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and spitz he betrayed noimpatience, shunned all offensive acts. on the other hand, possibly because hedivined in buck a dangerous rival, spitz

never lost an opportunity of showing histeeth. he even went out of his way to bully buck,striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one orthe other. early in the trip this might have takenplace had it not been for an unwonted accident. at the end of this day they made a bleakand miserable camp on the shore of lake le barge. driving snow, a wind that cut like a white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping place.they could hardly have fared worse.

at their backs rose a perpendicular wall ofrock, and perrault and francois were compelled to make their fire and spreadtheir sleeping robes on the ice of the lake itself. the tent they had discarded at dyea inorder to travel light. a few sticks of driftwood furnished themwith a fire that thawed down through the ice and left them to eat supper in thedark. close in under the sheltering rock buckmade his nest. so snug and warm was it, that he was loathto leave it when francois distributed the fish which he had first thawed over thefire.

but when buck finished his ration andreturned, he found his nest occupied. a warning snarl told him that thetrespasser was spitz. till now buck had avoided trouble with hisenemy, but this was too much. the beast in him roared. he sprang upon spitz with a fury whichsurprised them both, and spitz particularly, for his whole experience withbuck had gone to teach him that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own only because of his greatweight and size. francois was surprised, too, when they shotout in a tangle from the disrupted nest and

he divined the cause of the trouble. "a-a-ah!" he cried to buck."gif it to heem, by gar! gif it to heem, the dirty t'eef!"spitz was equally willing. he was crying with sheer rage and eagernessas he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. buck was no less eager, and no lesscautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for the advantage. but it was then that the unexpectedhappened, the thing which projected their struggle for supremacy far into the future,past many a weary mile of trail and toil.

an oath from perrault, the resoundingimpact of a club upon a bony frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breakingforth of pandemonium. the camp was suddenly discovered to bealive with skulking furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of them, whohad scented the camp from some indian village. they had crept in while buck and spitz werefighting, and when the two men sprang among them with stout clubs they showed theirteeth and fought back. they were crazed by the smell of the food. perrault found one with head buried in thegrub-box.

his club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs,and the grub-box was capsized on the ground. on the instant a score of the famishedbrutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon.the clubs fell upon them unheeded. they yelped and howled under the rain ofblows, but struggled none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured. in the meantime the astonished team-dogshad burst out of their nests only to be set upon by the fierce invaders.never had buck seen such dogs. it seemed as though their bones would burstthrough their skins.

they were mere skeletons, draped loosely indraggled hides, with blazing eyes and slavered fangs. but the hunger-madness made themterrifying, irresistible. there was no opposing them.the team-dogs were swept back against the cliff at the first onset. buck was beset by three huskies, and in atrice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed.the din was frightful. billee was crying as usual. dave and sol-leks, dripping blood from ascore of wounds, were fighting bravely side

by side.joe was snapping like a demon. once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of ahusky, and he crunched down through the bone. pike, the malingerer, leaped upon thecrippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, buck got afrothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sankthrough the jugular. the warm taste of it in his mouth goadedhim to greater fierceness. he flung himself upon another, and at thesame time felt teeth sink into his own throat.it was spitz, treacherously attacking from

the side. perrault and francois, having cleaned outtheir part of the camp, hurried to save their sled-dogs. the wild wave of famished beasts rolledback before them, and buck shook himself free.but it was only for a moment. the two men were compelled to run back tosave the grub, upon which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. billee, terrified into bravery, sprangthrough the savage circle and fled away over the ice.pike and dub followed on his heels, with

the rest of the team behind. as buck drew himself together to springafter them, out of the tail of his eye he saw spitz rush upon him with the evidentintention of overthrowing him. once off his feet and under that mass ofhuskies, there was no hope for him. but he braced himself to the shock ofspitz's charge, then joined the flight out on the lake. later, the nine team-dogs gathered togetherand sought shelter in the forest. though unpursued, they were in a sorryplight. there was not one who was not wounded infour or five places, while some were

wounded grievously. dub was badly injured in a hind leg; dolly,the last husky added to the team at dyea, had a badly torn throat; joe had lost aneye; while billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons, criedand whimpered throughout the night. at daybreak they limped warily back tocamp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers. fully half their grub supply was gone.the huskies had chewed through the sled lashings and canvas coverings.in fact, nothing, no matter how remotely eatable, had escaped them.

they had eaten a pair of perrault's moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two feet of lash from theend of francois's whip. he broke from a mournful contemplation ofit to look over his wounded dogs. "ah, my frien's," he said softly, "mebbe itmek you mad dog, dose many bites. mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! wot you t'ink, eh, perrault?"the courier shook his head dubiously. with four hundred miles of trail stillbetween him and dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break out among his dogs. two hours of cursing and exertion got theharnesses into shape, and the wound-

stiffened team was under way, strugglingpainfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered, and for that matter, the hardest between them anddawson. the thirty mile river was wide open. its wild water defied the frost, and it wasin the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held at all.six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty terrible miles. and terrible they were, for every foot ofthem was accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man.

a dozen times, perrault, nosing the waybroke through the ice bridges, being saved by the long pole he carried, which he soheld that it fell each time across the hole made by his body. but a cold snap was on, the thermometerregistering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was compelled for verylife to build a fire and dry his garments. nothing daunted him. it was because nothing daunted him that hehad been chosen for government courier. he took all manner of risks, resolutelythrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from dim dawn todark.

he skirted the frowning shores on rim icethat bent and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt. once, the sled broke through, with dave andbuck, and they were half-frozen and all but drowned by the time they were dragged out.the usual fire was necessary to save them. they were coated solidly with ice, and thetwo men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close thatthey were singed by the flames. at another time spitz went through,dragging the whole team after him up to buck, who strained backward with all hisstrength, his fore paws on the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping allaround.

but behind him was dave, likewise strainingbackward, and behind the sled was francois, pulling till his tendons cracked. again, the rim ice broke away before andbehind, and there was no escape except up the cliff. perrault scaled it by a miracle, whilefrancois prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and thelast bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted, one by one, to thecliff crest. francois came up last, after the sled andload. then came the search for a place todescend, which descent was ultimately made

by the aid of the rope, and night foundthem back on the river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit. by the time they made the hootalinqua andgood ice, buck was played out. the rest of the dogs were in likecondition; but perrault, to make up lost time, pushed them late and early. the first day they covered thirty-fivemiles to the big salmon; the next day thirty-five more to the little salmon; thethird day forty miles, which brought them well up toward the five fingers. buck's feet were not so compact and hard asthe feet of the huskies.

his had softened during the manygenerations since the day his last wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller orriver man. all day long he limped in agony, and camponce made, lay down like a dead dog. hungry as he was, he would not move toreceive his ration of fish, which francois had to bring to him. also, the dog-driver rubbed buck's feet forhalf an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own moccasins tomake four moccasins for buck. this was a great relief, and buck causedeven the weazened face of perrault to twist itself into a grin one morning, whenfrancois forgot the moccasins and buck lay

on his back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused tobudge without them. later his feet grew hard to the trail, andthe worn-out foot-gear was thrown away. at the pelly one morning, as they wereharnessing up, dolly, who had never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenlymad. she announced her condition by a long,heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog bristling with fear, then sprang straightfor buck. he had never seen a dog go mad, nor did hehave any reason to fear madness; yet he knew that here was horror, and fled awayfrom it in a panic.

straight away he raced, with dolly, pantingand frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror,nor could he leave her, so great was her madness. he plunged through the wooded breast of theisland, flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice toanother island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river, and indesperation started to cross it. and all the time, though he did not look,he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. francois called to him a quarter of a mileaway and he doubled back, still one leap

ahead, gasping painfully for air andputting all his faith in that francois would save him. the dog-driver held the axe poised in hishand, and as buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad dolly's head.buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath, helpless. this was spitz's opportunity.he sprang upon buck, and twice his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and rippedand tore the flesh to the bone. then francois's lash descended, and buckhad the satisfaction of watching spitz receive the worst whipping as yetadministered to any of the teams.

"one devil, dat spitz," remarked perrault. "some dam day heem keel dat buck.""dat buck two devils," was francois's rejoinder."all de tam i watch dat buck i know for sure. lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lakhell an' den heem chew dat spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow.sure. i know." from then on it was war between them.spitz, as lead-dog and acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatenedby this strange southland dog.

and strange buck was to him, for of themany southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and on trail.they were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and starvation. buck was the exception.he alone endured and prospered, matching the husky in strength, savagery, andcunning. then he was a masterful dog, and what madehim dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked allblind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery. he was preeminently cunning, and could bidehis time with a patience that was nothing

less than primitive.it was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. buck wanted it. he wanted it because it was his nature,because he had been gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of thetrail and trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which lures them to die joyfully in the harness,and breaks their hearts if they are cut out of the harness. this was the pride of dave as wheel-dog, ofsol-leks as he pulled with all his

strength; the pride that laid hold of themat break of camp, transforming them from sour and sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride thatspurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night, letting them fallback into gloomy unrest and uncontent. this was the pride that bore up spitz andmade him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered and shirked in the traces or hid away atharness-up time in the morning. likewise it was this pride that made himfear buck as a possible lead-dog. and this was buck's pride, too.he openly threatened the other's leadership.

he came between him and the shirks heshould have punished. and he did it deliberately. one night there was a heavy snowfall, andin the morning pike, the malingerer, did not appear.he was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow. francois called him and sought him in vain.spitz was wild with wrath. he raged through the camp, smelling anddigging in every likely place, snarling so frightfully that pike heard and shivered inhis hiding-place. but when he was at last unearthed, andspitz flew at him to punish him, buck flew,

with equal rage, in between. so unexpected was it, and so shrewdlymanaged, that spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. pike, who had been trembling abjectly, tookheart at this open mutiny, and sprang upon his overthrown leader.buck, to whom fair play was a forgotten code, likewise sprang upon spitz. but francois, chuckling at the incidentwhile unswerving in the administration of justice, brought his lash down upon buckwith all his might. this failed to drive buck from hisprostrate rival, and the butt of the whip

was brought into play. half-stunned by the blow, buck was knockedbackward and the lash laid upon him again and again, while spitz soundly punished themany times offending pike. in the days that followed, as dawson grewcloser and closer, buck still continued to interfere between spitz and the culprits;but he did it craftily, when francois was not around, with the covert mutiny of buck, a general insubordination sprang up andincreased. dave and sol-leks were unaffected, but therest of the team went from bad to worse. things no longer went right.

there was continual bickering and jangling.trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was buck. he kept francois busy, for the dog-driverwas in constant apprehension of the life- and-death struggle between the two which heknew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling and strife among the other dogsturned him out of his sleeping robe, fearful that buck and spitz were at it. but the opportunity did not present itself,and they pulled into dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still tocome.

here were many men, and countless dogs, andbuck found them all at work. it seemed the ordained order of things thatdogs should work. all day they swung up and down the mainstreet in long teams, and in the night their jingling bells still went by. they hauled cabin logs and firewood,freighted up to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the santaclara valley. here and there buck met southland dogs, butin the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve,at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a

weird and eerie chant, in which it wasbuck's delight to join. with the aurora borealis flaming coldlyoverhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen underits pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulatetravail of existence. it was an old song, old as the breeditself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. it was invested with the woe of unnumberedgenerations, this plaint by which buck was

so strangely stirred. when he moaned and sobbed, it was with thepain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mysteryof the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. and that he should be stirred by it markedthe completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to theraw beginnings of life in the howling ages. seven days from the time they pulled intodawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the barracks to the yukon trail, and pulledfor dyea and salt water. perrault was carrying despatches ifanything more urgent than those he had

brought in; also, the travel pride hadgripped him, and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. several things favored him in this.the week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim.the trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers. and further, the police had arranged in twoor three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was travelling light. they made sixty mile, which is a fifty-milerun, on the first day; and the second day saw them booming up the yukon well on theirway to pelly.

but such splendid running was achieved notwithout great trouble and vexation on the part of francois.the insidious revolt led by buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team. it no longer was as one dog leaping in thetraces. the encouragement buck gave the rebels ledthem into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. no more was spitz a leader greatly to befeared. the old awe departed, and they grew equalto challenging his authority. pike robbed him of half a fish one night,and gulped it down under the protection of another night dub and joe fought spitz andmade him forego the punishment they

deserved. and even billee, the good-natured, was lessgood-natured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former days.buck never came near spitz without snarling and bristling menacingly. in fact, his conduct approached that of abully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before spitz's very nose. the breaking down of discipline likewiseaffected the dogs in their relations with one another. they quarrelled and bickered more than everamong themselves, till at times the camp

was a howling bedlam. dave and sol-leks alone were unaltered,though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling. francois swore strange barbarous oaths, andstamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair.his lash was always singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail. directly his back was turned they were atit again. he backed up spitz with his whip, whilebuck backed up the remainder of the team. francois knew he was behind all thetrouble, and buck knew he knew; but buck

was too clever ever again to be caught red-handed. he worked faithfully in the harness, forthe toil had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly toprecipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces. at the mouth of the tahkeena, one nightafter supper, dub turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed.in a second the whole team was in full cry. a hundred yards away was a camp of thenorthwest police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. the rabbit sped down the river, turned offinto a small creek, up the frozen bed of

which it held steadily. it ran lightly on the surface of the snow,while the dogs ploughed through by main strength.buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. he lay down low to the race, whiningeagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan whitemoonlight. and leap by leap, like some pale frostwraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead. all that stirring of old instincts which atstated periods drives men out from the

sounding cities to forest and plain to killthings by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill-- all this was buck's, only it was infinitelymore intimate. he was ranging at the head of the pack,running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and washhis muzzle to the eyes in warm blood. there is an ecstasy that marks the summitof life, and beyond which life cannot rise. and such is the paradox of living, thisecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness thatone is alive. this ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living,comes to the artist, caught up and out of

himself in a sheet of flame; it comes tothe soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before himthrough the moonlight. he was sounding the deeps of his nature,and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb oftime. he was mastered by the sheer surging oflife, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, andsinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant,

expressing itself in movement, flyingexultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move. but spitz, cold and calculating even in hissupreme moods, left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek madea long bend around. buck did not know of this, and as herounded the bend, the frost wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he sawanother and larger frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediatepath of the rabbit. it was spitz. the rabbit could not turn, and as the whiteteeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked

as loudly as a stricken man may shriek. at sound of this, the cry of life plungingdown from life's apex in the grip of death, the fall pack at buck's heels raised ahell's chorus of delight. buck did not cry out. he did not check himself, but drove in uponspitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat.they rolled over and over in the powdery snow. spitz gained his feet almost as though hehad not been overthrown, slashing buck down the shoulder and leaping clear.

twice his teeth clipped together, like thesteel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lipsthat writhed and snarled. in a flash buck knew it. the time had come.it was to the death. as they circled about, snarling, ears laidback, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scene came to buck with a sense offamiliarity. he seemed to remember it all,--the whitewoods, and earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle.over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm.

there was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowlyand lingering in the frosty air. they had made short work of the snowshoerabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in anexpectant circle. they, too, were silent, their eyes onlygleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward.to buck it was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. it was as though it had always been, thewonted way of things. spitz was a practised fighter.

from spitzbergen through the arctic, andacross canada and the barrens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs andachieved to mastery over them. bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. in passion to rend and destroy, he neverforgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. he never rushed till he was prepared toreceive a rush; never attacked till he had first defended that attack.in vain buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog. wherever his fangs struck for the softerflesh, they were countered by the fangs of

spitz. fang clashed fang, and lips were cut andbleeding, but buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard.then he warmed up and enveloped spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every timespitz slashed him and got away. then buck took to rushing, as though forthe throat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in from the side, he woulddrive his shoulder at the shoulder of spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him.

but instead, buck's shoulder was slasheddown each time as spitz leaped lightly away.spitz was untouched, while buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. the fight was growing desperate.and all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dogwent down. as buck grew winded, spitz took to rushing,and he kept him staggering for footing. once buck went over, and the whole circleof sixty dogs started up; but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the circlesank down again and waited. but buck possessed a quality that made forgreatness--imagination.

he fought by instinct, but he could fightby head as well. he rushed, as though attempting the oldshoulder trick, but at the last instant swept low to the snow and in.his teeth closed on spitz's left fore leg. there was a crunch of breaking bone, andthe white dog faced him on three legs. thrice he tried to knock him over, thenrepeated the trick and broke the right fore leg. despite the pain and helplessness, spitzstruggled madly to keep up. he saw the silent circle, with gleamingeyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in upon him as hehad seen similar circles close in upon

beaten antagonists in the past. only this time he was the one who wasbeaten. there was no hope for him.buck was inexorable. mercy was a thing reserved for gentlerclimes. he manoeuvred for the final rush.the circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on his flanks. he could see them, beyond spitz and toeither side, half crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him.a pause seemed to fall. every animal was motionless as thoughturned to stone.

only spitz quivered and bristled as hestaggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten offimpending death. then buck sprang in and out; but while hewas in, shoulder had at last squarely met shoulder. the dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as spitz disappeared from view. buck stood and looked on, the successfulchampion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good. chapter iv.who has won to mastership

"eh? wot i say?i spik true w'en i say dat buck two devils." this was francois's speech next morningwhen he discovered spitz missing and buck covered with wounds.he drew him to the fire and by its light pointed them out. "dat spitz fight lak hell," said perrault,as he surveyed the gaping rips and cuts. "an' dat buck fight lak two hells," wasfrancois's answer. "an' now we make good time. no more spitz, no more trouble, sure."while perrault packed the camp outfit and

loaded the sled, the dog-driver proceededto harness the dogs. buck trotted up to the place spitz wouldhave occupied as leader; but francois, not noticing him, brought sol-leks to thecoveted position. in his judgment, sol-leks was the bestlead-dog left. buck sprang upon sol-leks in a fury,driving him back and standing in his place. "eh? eh?" francois cried, slapping his thighsgleefully. "look at dat buck.heem keel dat spitz, heem t'ink to take de job."

"go 'way, chook!" he cried, but buckrefused to budge. he took buck by the scruff of the neck, andthough the dog growled threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced sol-leks. the old dog did not like it, and showedplainly that he was afraid of buck. francois was obdurate, but when he turnedhis back buck again displaced sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go. francois was angry."now, by gar, i feex you!" he cried, coming back with a heavy club in his hand. buck remembered the man in the red sweater,and retreated slowly; nor did he attempt to

charge in when sol-leks was once morebrought forward. but he circled just beyond the range of theclub, snarling with bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club soas to dodge it if thrown by francois, for he was become wise in the way of clubs. the driver went about his work, and hecalled to buck when he was ready to put him in his old place in front of dave.buck retreated two or three steps. francois followed him up, whereupon heagain retreated. after some time of this, francois threwdown the club, thinking that buck feared a thrashing.

but buck was in open revolt.he wanted, not to escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership.it was his by right. he had earned it, and he would not becontent with less. perrault took a hand.between them they ran him about for the better part of an hour. they threw clubs at him.he dodged. they cursed him, and his fathers andmothers before him, and all his seed to come after him down to the remotestgeneration, and every hair on his body and drop of blood in his veins; and he answered

curse with snarl and kept out of theirreach. he did not try to run away, but retreatedaround and around the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, hewould come in and be good. francois sat down and scratched his head. perrault looked at his watch and swore.time was flying, and they should have been on the trail an hour gone.francois scratched his head again. he shook it and grinned sheepishly at thecourier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign that they were beaten.then francois went up to where sol-leks stood and called to buck.

buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept hisdistance. francois unfastened sol-leks's traces andput him back in his old place. the team stood harnessed to the sled in anunbroken line, ready for the trail. there was no place for buck save at thefront. once more francois called, and once morebuck laughed and kept away. "t'row down de club," perrault commanded. francois complied, whereupon buck trottedin, laughing triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the team. his traces were fastened, the sled brokenout, and with both men running they dashed

out on to the river trail. highly as the dog-driver had forevaluedbuck, with his two devils, he found, while the day was yet young, that he hadundervalued. at a bound buck took up the duties ofleadership; and where judgment was required, and quick thinking and quickacting, he showed himself the superior even of spitz, of whom francois had never seenan equal. but it was in giving the law and making hismates live up to it, that buck excelled. dave and sol-leks did not mind the changein leadership. it was none of their business.their business was to toil, and toil

mightily, in the traces. so long as that were not interfered with,they did not care what happened. billee, the good-natured, could lead forall they cared, so long as he kept order. the rest of the team, however, had grownunruly during the last days of spitz, and their surprise was great now that buckproceeded to lick them into shape. pike, who pulled at buck's heels, and whonever put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he wascompelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than everbefore in his life.

the first night in camp, joe, the sour one,was punished roundly--a thing that spitz had never succeeded in doing. buck simply smothered him by virtue ofsuperior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine formercy. the general tone of the team picked upimmediately. it recovered its old-time solidarity, andonce more the dogs leaped as one dog in the traces. at the rink rapids two native huskies, teekand koona, were added; and the celerity with which buck broke them in took awayfrancois's breath.

"nevaire such a dog as dat buck!" he cried. "no, nevaire!heem worth one t'ousan' dollair, by gar! eh? wot you say, perrault?"and perrault nodded. he was ahead of the record then, andgaining day by day. the trail was in excellent condition, wellpacked and hard, and there was no new- fallen snow with which to contend. it was not too cold.the temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained there the whole trip. the men rode and ran by turn, and the dogswere kept on the jump, with but infrequent

stoppages. the thirty mile river was comparativelycoated with ice, and they covered in one day going out what had taken them ten dayscoming in. in one run they made a sixty-mile dash fromthe foot of lake le barge to the white horse rapids. across marsh, tagish, and bennett (seventymiles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run towed behindthe sled at the end of a rope. and on the last night of the second weekthey topped white pass and dropped down the sea slope with the lights of skaguay and ofthe shipping at their feet.

it was a record run. each day for fourteen days they hadaveraged forty miles. for three days perrault and francois threwchests up and down the main street of skaguay and were deluged with invitationsto drink, while the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-bustersand mushers. then three or four western bad men aspiredto clean out the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and publicinterest turned to other idols. next came official orders. francois called buck to him, threw his armsaround him, wept over him.

and that was the last of francois andperrault. like other men, they passed out of buck'slife for good. a scotch half-breed took charge of him andhis mates, and in company with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over theweary trail to dawson. it was no light running now, nor recordtime, but heavy toil each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the shadow of the pole. buck did not like it, but he bore up wellto the work, taking pride in it after the manner of dave and sol-leks, and seeingthat his mates, whether they prided in it

or not, did their fair share. it was a monotonous life, operating withmachine-like regularity. one day was very like another. at a certain time each morning the cooksturned out, fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. then, while some broke camp, othersharnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before the darkness fellwhich gave warning of dawn. at night, camp was made. some pitched the flies, others cut firewoodand pine boughs for the beds, and still

others carried water or ice for the cooks.also, the dogs were fed. to them, this was the one feature of theday, though it was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or sowith the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. there were fierce fighters among them, butthree battles with the fiercest brought buck to mastery, so that when he bristledand showed his teeth they got out of his way. best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie nearthe fire, hind legs crouched under him, fore legs stretched out in front, headraised, and eyes blinking dreamily at the

flames. sometimes he thought of judge miller's bighouse in the sun-kissed santa clara valley, and of the cement swimming-tank, andysabel, the mexican hairless, and toots, the japanese pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death ofcurly, the great fight with spitz, and the good things he had eaten or would like toeat. he was not homesick. the sunland was very dim and distant, andsuch memories had no power over him. far more potent were the memories of hisheredity that gave things he had never seen

before a seeming familiarity; the instincts(which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him,quickened and become alive again. sometimes as he crouched there, blinkingdreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as hecrouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cookbefore him. this other man was shorter of leg andlonger of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded andswelling. the hair of this man was long and matted,and his head slanted back under it from the

eyes. he uttered strange sounds, and seemed verymuch afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand,which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to theend. he was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. in some places, across the chest andshoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost athick fur. he did not stand erect, but with trunkinclined forward from the hips, on legs

that bent at the knees. about his body there was a peculiarspringiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who livedin perpetual fear of things seen and unseen. at other times this hairy man squatted bythe fire with head between his legs and slept. on such occasions his elbows were on hisknees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. and beyond that fire, in the circlingdarkness, buck could see many gleaming

coals, two by two, always two by two, whichhe knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. and he could hear the crashing of theirbodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night. and dreaming there by the yukon bank, withlazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world wouldmake the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low andsuppressedly, or growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him, "hey, youbuck, wake up!"

whereupon the other world would vanish andthe real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as thoughhe had been asleep. it was a hard trip, with the mail behindthem, and the heavy work wore them down. they were short of weight and in poorcondition when they made dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest atleast. but in two days' time they dropped down theyukon bank from the barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. the dogs were tired, the drivers grumbling,and to make matters worse, it snowed every day.

this meant a soft trail, greater frictionon the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through itall, and did their best for the animals. each night the dogs were attended to first. they ate before the drivers ate, and no mansought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of the dogs he drove.still, their strength went down. since the beginning of the winter they hadtravelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds the whole weary distance; andeighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the toughest. buck stood it, keeping his mates up totheir work and maintaining discipline,

though he, too, was very tired.billee cried and whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. joe was sourer than ever, and sol-leks wasunapproachable, blind side or other side. but it was dave who suffered most of all.something had gone wrong with him. he became more morose and irritable, andwhen camp was pitched at once made his nest, where his driver fed him. once out of the harness and down, he didnot get on his feet again till harness-up time in the morning. sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by asudden stoppage of the sled, or by

straining to start it, he would cry outwith pain. the driver examined him, but could findnothing. all the drivers became interested in hiscase. they talked it over at meal-time, and overtheir last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a consultation. he was brought from his nest to the fireand was pressed and prodded till he cried out many times. something was wrong inside, but they couldlocate no broken bones, could not make it out.

by the time cassiar bar was reached, he wasso weak that he was falling repeatedly in the traces. the scotch half-breed called a halt andtook him out of the team, making the next dog, sol-leks, fast to the sled.his intention was to rest dave, letting him run free behind the sled. sick as he was, dave resented being takenout, grunting and growling while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when he saw sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. for the pride of trace and trail was his,and, sick unto death, he could not bear

that another dog should do his work. when the sled started, he floundered in thesoft snow alongside the beaten trail, attacking sol-leks with his teeth, rushingagainst him and trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving to leap inside his traces and getbetween him and the sled, and all the while whining and yelping and crying with griefand pain. the half-breed tried to drive him away withthe whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not theheart to strike harder. dave refused to run quietly on the trailbehind the sled, where the going was easy,

but continued to flounder alongside in thesoft snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. then he fell, and lay where he fell,howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by. with the last remnant of his strength hemanaged to stagger along behind till the train made another stop, when he flounderedpast the sleds to his own, where he stood alongside sol-leks. his driver lingered a moment to get a lightfor his pipe from the man behind. then he returned and started his dogs.

they swung out on the trail with remarkablelack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise.the driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. he called his comrades to witness thesight. dave had bitten through both of sol-leks'straces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his proper place. he pleaded with his eyes to remain there.the driver was perplexed. his comrades talked of how a dog couldbreak its heart through being denied the work that killed it, and recalled instancesthey had known, where dogs, too old for the

toil, or injured, had died because theywere cut out of the traces. also, they held it a mercy, since dave wasto die anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. so he was harnessed in again, and proudlyhe pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite ofhis inward hurt. several times he fell down and was draggedin the traces, and once the sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one ofhis hind legs. but he held out till camp was reached, whenhis driver made a place for him by the fire.morning found him too weak to travel.

at harness-up time he tried to crawl to hisdriver. by convulsive efforts he got on his feet,staggered, and fell. then he wormed his way forward slowlytoward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. he would advance his fore legs and drag uphis body with a sort of hitching movement, when he would advance his fore legs andhitch ahead again for a few more inches. his strength left him, and the last hismates saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. but they could hear him mournfully howlingtill they passed out of sight behind a belt

of river timber.here the train was halted. the scotch half-breed slowly retraced hissteps to the camp they had left. the men ceased talking.a revolver-shot rang out. the man came back hurriedly. the whips snapped, the bells tinkledmerrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but buck knew, and every dog knew, what hadtaken place behind the belt of river trees. chapter v.the toil of trace and trail thirty days from the time it left dawson,the salt water mail, with buck and his mates at the fore, arrived at skaguay.they were in a wretched state, worn out and

worn down. buck's one hundred and forty pounds haddwindled to one hundred and fifteen. the rest of his mates, though lighter dogs,had relatively lost more weight than he. pike, the malingerer, who, in his lifetimeof deceit, had often successfully feigned a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest.sol-leks was limping, and dub was suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade. they were all terribly footsore.no spring or rebound was left in them. their feet fell heavily on the trail,jarring their bodies and doubling the fatigue of a day's travel.

there was nothing the matter with themexcept that they were dead tired. it was not the dead-tiredness that comesthrough brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours; but itwas the dead-tiredness that comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage ofmonths of toil. there was no power of recuperation left, noreserve strength to call upon. it had been all used, the last least bit ofit. every muscle, every fibre, every cell, wastired, dead tired. and there was reason for it. in less than five months they had travelledtwenty-five hundred miles, during the last

eighteen hundred of which they had had butfive days' rest. when they arrived at skaguay they wereapparently on their last legs. they could barely keep the traces taut, andon the down grades just managed to keep out of the way of the sled. "mush on, poor sore feets," the driverencouraged them as they tottered down the main street of skaguay."dis is de las'. den we get one long res'. eh? for sure.one bully long res'." the drivers confidently expected a longstopover.

themselves, they had covered twelve hundredmiles with two days' rest, and in the nature of reason and common justice theydeserved an interval of loafing. but so many were the men who had rushedinto the klondike, and so many were the sweethearts, wives, and kin that had notrushed in, that the congested mail was taking on alpine proportions; also, therewere official orders. fresh batches of hudson bay dogs were totake the places of those worthless for the trail. the worthless ones were to be got rid of,and, since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be sold.

three days passed, by which time buck andhis mates found how really tired and weak they were. then, on the morning of the fourth day, twomen from the states came along and bought them, harness and all, for a song.the men addressed each other as "hal" and "charles." charles was a middle-aged, lightish-coloredman, with weak and watery eyes and a mustache that twisted fiercely andvigorously up, giving the lie to the limply drooping lip it concealed. hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty,with a big colt's revolver and a hunting-

knife strapped about him on a belt thatfairly bristled with cartridges. this belt was the most salient thing abouthim. it advertised his callowness--a callownesssheer and unutterable. both men were manifestly out of place, andwhy such as they should adventure the north is part of the mystery of things thatpasses understanding. buck heard the chaffering, saw the moneypass between the man and the government agent, and knew that the scotch half-breedand the mail-train drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of perrault and francois and the others who had gonebefore.

when driven with his mates to the newowners' camp, buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent half stretched,dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a woman. "mercedes" the men called her.she was charles's wife and hal's sister--a nice family party. buck watched them apprehensively as theyproceeded to take down the tent and load the sled.there was a great deal of effort about their manner, but no businesslike method. the tent was rolled into an awkward bundlethree times as large as it should have

been.the tin dishes were packed away unwashed. mercedes continually fluttered in the wayof her men and kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. when they put a clothes-sack on the frontof the sled, she suggested it should go on the back; and when they had put it on theback, and covered it over with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which could abide nowhere else butin that very sack, and they unloaded again. three men from a neighboring tent came outand looked on, grinning and winking at one another.

"you've got a right smart load as it is,"said one of them; "and it's not me should tell you your business, but i wouldn't totethat tent along if i was you." "undreamed of!" cried mercedes, throwing upher hands in dainty dismay. "however in the world could i managewithout a tent?" "it's springtime, and you won't get anymore cold weather," the man replied. she shook her head decidedly, and charlesand hal put the last odds and ends on top the mountainous load. "think it'll ride?" one of the men asked."why shouldn't it?" charles demanded rather shortly."oh, that's all right, that's all right,"

the man hastened meekly to say. "i was just a-wonderin', that is all.it seemed a mite top-heavy." charles turned his back and drew thelashings down as well as he could, which was not in the least well. "an' of course the dogs can hike along allday with that contraption behind them," affirmed a second of the men. "certainly," said hal, with freezingpoliteness, taking hold of the gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip fromthe other. "mush!" he shouted.

"mush on there!"the dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few moments, thenrelaxed. they were unable to move the sled. "the lazy brutes, i'll show them," hecried, preparing to lash out at them with the whip. but mercedes interfered, crying, "oh, hal,you mustn't," as she caught hold of the whip and wrenched it from him."the poor dears! now you must promise you won't be harshwith them for the rest of the trip, or i won't go a step."

"precious lot you know about dogs," herbrother sneered; "and i wish you'd leave me alone.they're lazy, i tell you, and you've got to whip them to get anything out of them. that's their way.you ask any one. ask one of those men." mercedes looked at them imploringly, untoldrepugnance at sight of pain written in her pretty face."they're weak as water, if you want to know," came the reply from one of the men. "plum tuckered out, that's what's thematter.

they need a rest." "rest be blanked," said hal, with hisbeardless lips; and mercedes said, "oh!" in pain and sorrow at the oath.but she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defence of her brother. "never mind that man," she said pointedly."you're driving our dogs, and you do what you think best with them."again hal's whip fell upon the dogs. they threw themselves against the breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it, and put forth all theirstrength. the sled held as though it were an anchor.

after two efforts, they stood still,panting. the whip was whistling savagely, when oncemore mercedes interfered. she dropped on her knees before buck, withtears in her eyes, and put her arms around his neck. "you poor, poor dears," she criedsympathetically, "why don't you pull hard?- -then you wouldn't be whipped." buck did not like her, but he was feelingtoo miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day's miserable work. one of the onlookers, who had beenclenching his teeth to suppress hot speech,

now spoke up:-- "it's not that i care a whoop what becomesof you, but for the dogs' sakes i just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lotby breaking out that sled. the runners are froze fast. throw your weight against the gee-pole,right and left, and break it out." a third time the attempt was made, but thistime, following the advice, hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to thesnow. the overloaded and unwieldy sled forgedahead, buck and his mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows.a hundred yards ahead the path turned and

sloped steeply into the main street. it would have required an experienced manto keep the top-heavy sled upright, and hal was not such a man. as they swung on the turn the sled wentover, spilling half its load through the loose lashings.the dogs never stopped. the lightened sled bounded on its sidebehind them. they were angry because of the illtreatment they had received and the unjust load. buck was raging.he broke into a run, the team following his

lead.hal cried "whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. he tripped and was pulled off his feet. the capsized sled ground over him, and thedogs dashed on up the street, adding to the gayety of skaguay as they scattered theremainder of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare. kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs andgathered up the scattered belongings. also, they gave advice. half the load and twice the dogs, if theyever expected to reach dawson, was what was

said. hal and his sister and brother-in-lawlistened unwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit. canned goods were turned out that made menlaugh, for canned goods on the long trail is a thing to dream about."blankets for a hotel" quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. "half as many is too much; get rid of them.throw away that tent, and all those dishes,--who's going to wash them, anyway?good lord, do you think you're travelling on a pullman?"

and so it went, the inexorable eliminationof the superfluous. mercedes cried when her clothes-bags weredumped on the ground and article after article was thrown out. she cried in general, and she cried inparticular over each discarded thing. she clasped hands about knees, rocking backand forth broken-heartedly. she averred she would not go an inch, notfor a dozen charleses. she appealed to everybody and toeverything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even articles ofapparel that were imperative necessaries. and in her zeal, when she had finished withher own, she attacked the belongings of her

men and went through them like a tornado.this accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a formidable bulk. charles and hal went out in the evening andbought six outside dogs. these, added to the six of the originalteam, and teek and koona, the huskies obtained at the rink rapids on the recordtrip, brought the team up to fourteen. but the outside dogs, though practicallybroken in since their landing, did not amount to much. three were short-haired pointers, one was anewfoundland, and the other two were mongrels of indeterminate breed.they did not seem to know anything, these

newcomers. buck and his comrades looked upon them withdisgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what not to do, he couldnot teach them what to do. they did not take kindly to trace andtrail. with the exception of the two mongrels,they were bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in whichthey found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. the two mongrels were without spirit atall; bones were the only things breakable about them.

with the newcomers hopeless and forlorn,and the old team worn out by twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, theoutlook was anything but bright. the two men, however, were quite cheerful. and they were proud, too.they were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. they had seen other sleds depart over thepass for dawson, or come in from dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so manyas fourteen dogs. in the nature of arctic travel there was areason why fourteen dogs should not drag one sled, and that was that one sled couldnot carry the food for fourteen dogs.

but charles and hal did not know this. they had worked the trip out with a pencil,so much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days, q.e.d. mercedes looked over their shoulders andnodded comprehensively, it was all so very simple.late next morning buck led the long team up the street. there was nothing lively about it, no snapor go in him and his fellows. they were starting dead weary. four times he had covered the distancebetween salt water and dawson, and the

knowledge that, jaded and tired, he wasfacing the same trail once more, made him bitter. his heart was not in the work, nor was theheart of any dog. the outsides were timid and frightened, theinsides without confidence in their masters. buck felt vaguely that there was nodepending upon these two men and the woman. they did not know how to do anything, andas the days went by it became apparent that they could not learn. they were slack in all things, withoutorder or discipline.

it took them half the night to pitch aslovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded infashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping andrearranging the load. some days they did not make ten miles.on other days they were unable to get started at all. and on no day did they succeed in makingmore than half the distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation.it was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. but they hastened it by overfeeding,bringing the day nearer when underfeeding

would commence. the outside dogs, whose digestions had notbeen trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites. and when, in addition to this, the worn-outhuskies pulled weakly, hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small.he doubled it. and to cap it all, when mercedes, withtears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him intogiving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. but it was not food that buck and thehuskies needed, but rest.

and though they were making poor time, theheavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely. then came the underfeeding. hal awoke one day to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further, that for love ormoney no additional dog-food was to be obtained. so he cut down even the orthodox ration andtried to increase the day's travel. his sister and brother-in-law seconded him;but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence.

it was a simple matter to give the dogsless food; but it was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their owninability to get under way earlier in the morning prevented them from travellinglonger hours. not only did they not know how to workdogs, but they did not know how to work themselves. the first to go was dub.poor blundering thief that he was, always getting caught and punished, he had nonethe less been a faithful worker. his wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated andunrested, went from bad to worse, till finally hal shot him with the big colt'srevolver.

it is a saying of the country that anoutside dog starves to death on the ration of the husky, so the six outside dogs underbuck could do no less than die on half the ration of the husky. the newfoundland went first, followed bythe three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging more grittily on to life,but going in the end. by this time all the amenities andgentlenesses of the southland had fallen away from the three people. shorn of its glamour and romance, arctictravel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood.

mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs,being too occupied with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with herhusband and brother. to quarrel was the one thing they werenever too weary to do. their irritability arose out of theirmisery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. the wonderful patience of the trail whichcomes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, didnot come to these two men and the woman. they had no inkling of such a patience. they were stiff and in pain; their musclesached, their bones ached, their very hearts

ached; and because of this they becamesharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning and last atnight. charles and hal wrangled whenever mercedesgave them a chance. it was the cherished belief of each that hedid more than his share of the work, and neither forbore to speak this belief atevery opportunity. sometimes mercedes sided with her husband,sometimes with her brother. the result was a beautiful and unendingfamily quarrel. starting from a dispute as to which shouldchop a few sticks for the fire (a dispute which concerned only charles and hal),presently would be lugged in the rest of

the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands of miles away,and some of them dead. that hal's views on art, or the sort ofsociety plays his mother's brother wrote, should have anything to do with thechopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in thatdirection as in the direction of charles's political prejudices. and that charles's sister's tale-bearingtongue should be relevant to the building of a yukon fire, was apparent only tomercedes, who disburdened herself of

copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a few other traitsunpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family.in the meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs unfed. mercedes nursed a special grievance--thegrievance of sex. she was pretty and soft, and had beenchivalrously treated all her days. but the present treatment by her husbandand brother was everything save chivalrous. it was her custom to be helpless.they complained. upon which impeachment of what to her washer most essential sex-prerogative, she

made their lives unendurable. she no longer considered the dogs, andbecause she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. she was pretty and soft, but she weighedone hundred and twenty pounds--a lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak andstarving animals. she rode for days, till they fell in thetraces and the sled stood still. charles and hal begged her to get off andwalk, pleaded with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned heaven with arecital of their brutality. on one occasion they took her off the sledby main strength.

they never did it again.she let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat down on the trail. they went on their way, but she did notmove. after they had travelled three miles theyunloaded the sled, came back for her, and by main strength put her on the sled again. in the excess of their own misery they werecallous to the suffering of their animals. hal's theory, which he practised on others,was that one must get hardened. he had started out preaching it to hissister and brother-in-law. failing there, he hammered it into the dogswith a club.

at the five fingers the dog-food gave out,and a toothless old squaw offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide forthe colt's revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at hal's hip. a poor substitute for food was this hide,just as it had been stripped from the starved horses of the cattlemen six monthsback. in its frozen state it was more like stripsof galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin andinnutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating andindigestible. and through it all buck staggered along atthe head of the team as in a nightmare.

he pulled when he could; when he could nolonger pull, he fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him tohis feet again. all the stiffness and gloss had gone out ofhis beautiful furry coat. the hair hung down, limp and draggled, ormatted with dried blood where hal's club had bruised him. his muscles had wasted away to knottystrings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so that each rib and everybone in his frame were outlined cleanly through the loose hide that was wrinkled infolds of emptiness. it was heartbreaking, only buck's heart wasunbreakable.

the man in the red sweater had proved that. as it was with buck, so was it with hismates. they were perambulating skeletons.there were seven all together, including in their very great misery they had becomeinsensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club. the pain of the beating was dull anddistant, just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull anddistant. they were not half living, or quarterliving. they were simply so many bags of bones inwhich sparks of life fluttered faintly.

when a halt was made, they dropped down inthe traces like dead dogs, and the spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. and when the club or whip fell upon them,the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to their feet and staggered on.there came a day when billee, the good- natured, fell and could not rise. hal had traded off his revolver, so he tookthe axe and knocked billee on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcassout of the harness and dragged it to one side. buck saw, and his mates saw, and they knewthat this thing was very close to them.

on the next day koona went, and but five ofthem remained: joe, too far gone to be malignant; pike, crippled and limping, onlyhalf conscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace andtrail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with which to pull; teek,who had not travelled so far that winter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and buck, still atthe head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or striving to enforceit, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trail by the loom of it and bythe dim feel of his feet.

it was beautiful spring weather, butneither dogs nor humans were aware of it. each day the sun rose earlier and setlater. it was dawn by three in the morning, andtwilight lingered till nine at night. the whole long day was a blaze of sunshine. the ghostly winter silence had given way tothe great spring murmur of awakening life. this murmur arose from all the land,fraught with the joy of living. it came from the things that lived andmoved again, things which had been as dead and which had not moved during the longmonths of frost. the sap was rising in the pines.

the willows and aspens were bursting out inyoung buds. shrubs and vines were putting on freshgarbs of green. crickets sang in the nights, and in thedays all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into the sun.partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the forest. squirrels were chattering, birds singing,and overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges thatsplit the air. from every hill slope came the trickle ofrunning water, the music of unseen fountains.all things were thawing, bending, snapping.

the yukon was straining to break loose theice that bound it down. it ate away from beneath; the sun ate fromabove. air-holes formed, fissures sprang andspread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into the river. and amid all this bursting, rending,throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighingbreezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies. with the dogs falling, mercedes weeping andriding, hal swearing innocuously, and charles's eyes wistfully watering, theystaggered into john thornton's camp at the

mouth of white river. when they halted, the dogs dropped down asthough they had all been struck dead. mercedes dried her eyes and looked at johnthornton. charles sat down on a log to rest. he sat down very slowly and painstakinglywhat of his great stiffness. hal did the talking. john thornton was whittling the lasttouches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. he whittled and listened, gave monosyllabicreplies, and, when it was asked, terse

advice. he knew the breed, and he gave his advicein the certainty that it would not be followed. "they told us up above that the bottom wasdropping out of the trail and that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," halsaid in response to thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. "they told us we couldn't make white river,and here we are." this last with a sneering ring of triumphin it. "and they told you true," john thorntonanswered.

"the bottom's likely to drop out at anymoment. only fools, with the blind luck of fools,could have made it. i tell you straight, i wouldn't risk mycarcass on that ice for all the gold in alaska." "that's because you're not a fool, isuppose," said hal. "all the same, we'll go on to dawson."he uncoiled his whip. "get up there, buck! hi!get up there! mush on!"thornton went on whittling.

it was idle, he knew, to get between a fooland his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the scheme ofthings. but the team did not get up at the command. it had long since passed into the stagewhere blows were required to rouse it. the whip flashed out, here and there, onits merciless errands. john thornton compressed his lips. sol-leks was the first to crawl to hisfeet. teek followed.joe came next, yelping with pain. pike made painful efforts.

twice he fell over, when half up, and onthe third attempt managed to rise. buck made no effort.he lay quietly where he had fallen. the lash bit into him again and again, buthe neither whined nor struggled. several times thornton started, as thoughto speak, but changed his mind. a moisture came into his eyes, and, as thewhipping continued, he arose and walked irresolutely up and down. this was the first time buck had failed, initself a sufficient reason to drive hal into a rage.he exchanged the whip for the customary club.

buck refused to move under the rain ofheavier blows which now fell upon him. like his mates, he was barely able to getup, but, unlike them, he had made up his mind not to get up. he had a vague feeling of impending doom.this had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and it had notdeparted from him. what of the thin and rotten ice he had feltunder his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at hand, out thereahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive him. he refused to stir.so greatly had he suffered, and so far gone

was he, that the blows did not hurt much. and as they continued to fall upon him, thespark of life within flickered and went down.it was nearly out. he felt strangely numb. as though from a great distance, he wasaware that he was being beaten. the last sensations of pain left him. he no longer felt anything, though veryfaintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body.but it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.

and then, suddenly, without warning,uttering a cry that was inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, johnthornton sprang upon the man who wielded the club. hal was hurled backward, as though struckby a falling tree. mercedes screamed. charles looked on wistfully, wiped hiswatery eyes, but did not get up because of his stiffness. john thornton stood over buck, strugglingto control himself, too convulsed with rage to speak.

"if you strike that dog again, i'll killyou," he at last managed to say in a choking voice."it's my dog," hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came back. "get out of my way, or i'll fix you.i'm going to dawson." thornton stood between him and buck, andevinced no intention of getting out of the hal drew his long hunting-knife.mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment ofhysteria. thornton rapped hal's knuckles with theaxe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground.he rapped his knuckles again as he tried to

pick it up. then he stooped, picked it up himself, andwith two strokes cut buck's traces. hal had no fight left in him. besides, his hands were full with hissister, or his arms, rather; while buck was too near dead to be of further use inhauling the sled. a few minutes later they pulled out fromthe bank and down the river. buck heard them go and raised his head tosee, pike was leading, sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were joe and teek. they were limping and staggering.mercedes was riding the loaded sled.

hal guided at the gee-pole, and charlesstumbled along in the rear. as buck watched them, thornton knelt besidehim and with rough, kindly hands searched for broken bones. by the time his search had disclosednothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the sled was aquarter of a mile away. dog and man watched it crawling along overthe ice. suddenly, they saw its back end drop down,as into a rut, and the gee-pole, with hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. mercedes's scream came to their ears.they saw charles turn and make one step to

run back, and then a whole section of icegive way and dogs and humans disappear. a yawning hole was all that was to be seen. the bottom had dropped out of the trail.john thornton and buck looked at each other."you poor devil," said john thornton, and buck licked his hand. chapter vi.for the love of a man when john thornton froze his feet in theprevious december his partners had made him comfortable and left him to get well, goingon themselves up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for dawson.

he was still limping slightly at the timehe rescued buck, but with the continued warm weather even the slight limp left him. and here, lying by the river bank throughthe long spring days, watching the running water, listening lazily to the songs ofbirds and the hum of nature, buck slowly won back his strength. a rest comes very good after one hastravelled three thousand miles, and it must be confessed that buck waxed lazy as hiswounds healed, his muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. for that matter, they were all loafing,--buck, john thornton, and skeet and nig,--

waiting for the raft to come that was tocarry them down to dawson. skeet was a little irish setter who earlymade friends with buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her firstadvances. she had the doctor trait which some dogspossess; and as a mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed buck'swounds. regularly, each morning after he hadfinished his breakfast, she performed her self-appointed task, till he came to lookfor her ministrations as much as he did for thornton's. nig, equally friendly, though lessdemonstrative, was a huge black dog, half

bloodhound and half deerhound, with eyesthat laughed and a boundless good nature. to buck's surprise these dogs manifested nojealousy toward him. they seemed to share the kindliness andlargeness of john thornton. as buck grew stronger they enticed him intoall sorts of ridiculous games, in which thornton himself could not forbear to join;and in this fashion buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. love, genuine passionate love, was his forthe first time. this he had never experienced at judgemiller's down in the sun-kissed santa clara valley.

with the judge's sons, hunting andtramping, it had been a working partnership; with the judge's grandsons, asort of pompous guardianship; and with the judge himself, a stately and dignifiedfriendship. but love that was feverish and burning,that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken john thornton to arouse. this man had saved his life, which wassomething; but, further, he was the ideal master. other men saw to the welfare of their dogsfrom a sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his asif they were his own children, because he

could not help it. and he saw further.he never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a longtalk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his delight as theirs. he had a way of taking buck's head roughlybetween his hands, and resting his own head upon buck's, of shaking him back and forth,the while calling him ill names that to buck were love names. buck knew no greater joy than that roughembrace and the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemedthat his heart would be shaken out of his

body so great was its ecstasy. and when, released, he sprang to his feet,his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and inthat fashion remained without movement, john thornton would reverently exclaim,"god! you can all but speak!" buck had a trick of love expression thatwas akin to hurt. he would often seize thornton's hand in hismouth and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some timeafterward. and as buck understood the oaths to be lovewords, so the man understood this feigned bite for a caress.for the most part, however, buck's love was

expressed in adoration. while he went wild with happiness whenthornton touched him or spoke to him, he did not seek these tokens. unlike skeet, who was wont to shove hernose under thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or nig, who would stalkup and rest his great head on thornton's knee, buck was content to adore at adistance. he would lie by the hour, eager, alert, atthornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, followingwith keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or change offeature.

or, as chance might have it, he would liefarther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the occasionalmovements of his body. and often, such was the communion in whichthey lived, the strength of buck's gaze would draw john thornton's head around, andhe would return the gaze, without speech, his heart shining out of his eyes as buck'sheart shone out. for a long time after his rescue, buck didnot like thornton to get out of his sight. from the moment he left the tent to when heentered it again, buck would follow at his heels. his transient masters since he had comeinto the northland had bred in him a fear

that no master could be permanent. he was afraid that thornton would pass outof his life as perrault and francois and the scotch half-breed had passed out.even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. at such times he would shake off sleep andcreep through the chill to the flap of the tent, where he would stand and listen tothe sound of his master's breathing. but in spite of this great love he borejohn thornton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain ofthe primitive, which the northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active.

faithfulness and devotion, things born offire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. he was a thing of the wild, come in fromthe wild to sit by john thornton's fire, rather than a dog of the soft southlandstamped with the marks of generations of civilization. because of his very great love, he couldnot steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitatean instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection. his face and body were scored by the teethof many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as

ever and more shrewdly. skeet and nig were too good-natured forquarrelling,--besides, they belonged to john thornton; but the strange dog, nomatter what the breed or valor, swiftly acknowledged buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life with a terribleantagonist. and buck was merciless. he had learned well the law of club andfang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on theway to death. he had lessoned from spitz, and from thechief fighting dogs of the police and mail,

and knew there was no middle course.he must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life.it was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was thelaw; and this mandate, down out of the depths of time, he obeyed.he was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. he linked the past with the present, andthe eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayedas the tides and seasons swayed.

he sat by john thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of allmanner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for thewater he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him thesounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he laydown, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of hisdreams. so peremptorily did these shades beckonhim, that each day mankind and the claims

of mankind slipped farther from him. deep in the forest a call was sounding, andas often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he feltcompelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, heknew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call soundingimperiously, deep in the forest. but as often as he gained the soft unbrokenearth and the green shade, the love for john thornton drew him back to the fireagain. thornton alone held him.

the rest of mankind was as nothing.chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all, and from atoo demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. when thornton's partners, hans and pete,arrived on the long-expected raft, buck refused to notice them till he learned theywere close to thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though hefavored them by accepting. they were of the same large type asthornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly; and erethey swung the raft into the big eddy by

the saw-mill at dawson, they understood buck and his ways, and did not insist uponan intimacy such as obtained with skeet and nig.for thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. he, alone among men, could put a pack uponbuck's back in the summer travelling. nothing was too great for buck to do, whenthornton commanded. one day (they had grub-staked themselvesfrom the proceeds of the raft and left dawson for the head-waters of the tanana)the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down,to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below.

john thornton was sitting near the edge,buck at his shoulder. a thoughtless whim seized thornton, and hedrew the attention of hans and pete to the experiment he had in mind."jump, buck!" he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. the next instant he was grappling with buckon the extreme edge, while hans and pete were dragging them back into safety."it's uncanny," pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech. thornton shook his head."no, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too.do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."

"i'm not hankering to be the man that layshands on you while he's around," pete announced conclusively, nodding his headtoward buck. "py jingo!" was hans's contribution. "not mineself either."it was at circle city, ere the year was out, that pete's apprehensions wererealized. "black" burton, a man evil-tempered andmalicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when thorntonstepped good-naturedly between. buck, as was his custom, was lying in acorner, head on paws, watching his master's every action.burton struck out, without warning,

straight from the shoulder. thornton was sent spinning, and savedhimself from falling only by clutching the rail of the bar. those who were looking on heard what wasneither bark nor yelp, but a something which is best described as a roar, and theysaw buck's body rise up in the air as he left the floor for burton's throat. the man saved his life by instinctivelythrowing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the floor with buck on top ofhim. buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of thearm and drove in again for the throat.

this time the man succeeded only in partlyblocking, and his throat was torn open. then the crowd was upon buck, and he wasdriven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growlingfuriously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile clubs. a "miners' meeting," called on the spot,decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and buck was discharged. but his reputation was made, and from thatday his name spread through every camp in alaska. later on, in the fall of the year, he savedjohn thornton's life in quite another

the three partners were lining a long andnarrow poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the forty-mile creek. hans and pete moved along the bank,snubbing with a thin manila rope from tree to tree, while thornton remained in theboat, helping its descent by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. buck, on the bank, worried and anxious,kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his master. at a particularly bad spot, where a ledgeof barely submerged rocks jutted out into the river, hans cast off the rope, and,while thornton poled the boat out into the

stream, ran down the bank with the end in his hand to snub the boat when it hadcleared the ledge. this it did, and was flying down-stream ina current as swift as a mill-race, when hans checked it with the rope and checkedtoo suddenly. the boat flirted over and snubbed in to thebank bottom up, while thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream towardthe worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live. buck had sprung in on the instant; and atthe end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled thornton.

when he felt him grasp his tail, buckheaded for the bank, swimming with all his splendid strength.but the progress shoreward was slow; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid. from below came the fatal roaring where thewild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrustthrough like the teeth of an enormous comb. the suck of the water as it took thebeginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, and thornton knew that the shorewas impossible. he scraped furiously over a rock, bruisedacross a second, and struck a third with crushing force.

he clutched its slippery top with bothhands, releasing buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted: "go, buck!go!" buck could not hold his own, and swept ondown-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win back. when he heard thornton's command repeated,he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look,then turned obediently toward the bank. he swam powerfully and was dragged ashoreby pete and hans at the very point where swimming ceased to be possible anddestruction began. they knew that the time a man could clingto a slippery rock in the face of that

driving current was a matter of minutes,and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where thorntonwas hanging on. they attached the line with which they hadbeen snubbing the boat to buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it shouldneither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. he struck out boldly, but not straightenough into the stream. he discovered the mistake too late, whenthornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was beingcarried helplessly past. hans promptly snubbed with the rope, asthough buck were a boat.

the rope thus tightening on him in thesweep of the current, he was jerked under the surface, and under the surface heremained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled out. he was half drowned, and hans and petethrew themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and the water out of him.he staggered to his feet and fell down. the faint sound of thornton's voice came tothem, and though they could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was inhis extremity. his master's voice acted on buck like anelectric shock, he sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to thepoint of his previous departure.

again the rope was attached and he waslaunched, and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream.he had miscalculated once, but he would not be guilty of it a second time. hans paid out the rope, permitting noslack, while pete kept it clear of coils. buck held on till he was on a line straightabove thornton; then he turned, and with the speed of an express train headed downupon him. thornton saw him coming, and, as buckstruck him like a battering ram, with the whole force of the current behind him, hereached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy neck.

hans snubbed the rope around the tree, andbuck and thornton were jerked under the water. strangling, suffocating, sometimes oneuppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing againstrocks and snags, they veered in to the bank. thornton came to, belly downward and beingviolently propelled back and forth across a drift log by hans and pete. his first glance was for buck, over whoselimp and apparently lifeless body nig was setting up a howl, while skeet was lickingthe wet face and closed eyes.

thornton was himself bruised and battered,and he went carefully over buck's body, when he had been brought around, findingthree broken ribs. "that settles it," he announced. "we camp right here."and camp they did, till buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel. that winter, at dawson, buck performedanother exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notcheshigher on the totem-pole of alaskan fame. this exploit was particularly gratifying tothe three men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and wereenabled to make a long-desired trip into

the virgin east, where miners had not yetappeared. it was brought about by a conversation inthe eldorado saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. buck, because of his record, was the targetfor these men, and thornton was driven stoutly to defend him. at the end of half an hour one man statedthat his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off with it; asecond bragged six hundred for his dog; and a third, seven hundred. "pooh! pooh!" said john thornton; "buck canstart a thousand pounds."

"and break it out? and walk off with it fora hundred yards?" demanded matthewson, a bonanza king, he of the seven hundredvaunt. "and break it out, and walk off with it fora hundred yards," john thornton said coolly. "well," matthewson said, slowly anddeliberately, so that all could hear, "i've got a thousand dollars that says he can't.and there it is." so saying, he slammed a sack of gold dustof the size of a bologna sausage down upon the bar.nobody spoke. thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had beencalled.

he could feel a flush of warm bloodcreeping up his face. his tongue had tricked him. he did not know whether buck could start athousand pounds. half a ton!the enormousness of it appalled him. he had great faith in buck's strength andhad often thought him capable of starting such a load; but never, as now, had hefaced the possibility of it, the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent andwaiting. further, he had no thousand dollars; norhad hans or pete. "i've got a sled standing outside now, withtwenty fiftypound sacks of flour on it,"

matthewson went on with brutal directness;"so don't let that hinder you." thornton did not reply. he did not know what to say.he glanced from face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power ofthought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start it going again. the face of jim o'brien, a mastodon kingand old-time comrade, caught his eyes. it was as a cue to him, seeming to rousehim to do what he would never have dreamed of doing. "can you lend me a thousand?" he asked,almost in a whisper.

"sure," answered o'brien, thumping down aplethoric sack by the side of matthewson's. "though it's little faith i'm having, john,that the beast can do the trick." the eldorado emptied its occupants into thestreet to see the test. the tables were deserted, and the dealersand gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. several hundred men, furred and mittened,banked around the sled within easy distance. matthewson's sled, loaded with a thousandpounds of flour, had been standing for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold(it was sixty below zero) the runners had

frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. men offered odds of two to one that buckcould not budge the sled. a quibble arose concerning the phrase"break out." o'brien contended it was thornton'sprivilege to knock the runners loose, leaving buck to "break it out" from a deadstandstill. matthewson insisted that the phraseincluded breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow. a majority of the men who had witnessed themaking of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds went up to three to oneagainst buck.

there were no takers. not a man believed him capable of the feat. thornton had been hurried into the wager,heavy with doubt; and now that he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, withthe regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible thetask appeared. matthewson waxed jubilant."three to one!" he proclaimed. "i'll lay you another thousand at thatfigure, thornton. what d'ye say?" thornton's doubt was strong in his face,but his fighting spirit was aroused--the

fighting spirit that soars above odds,fails to recognize the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. he called hans and pete to him.their sacks were slim, and with his own the three partners could rake together only twohundred dollars. in the ebb of their fortunes, this sum wastheir total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against matthewson's sixhundred. the team of ten dogs was unhitched, andbuck, with his own harness, was put into he had caught the contagion of theexcitement, and he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for john thornton.murmurs of admiration at his splendid

appearance went up. he was in perfect condition, without anounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighedwere so many pounds of grit and virility. his furry coat shone with the sheen ofsilk. down the neck and across the shoulders, hismane, in repose as it was, half bristled and seemed to lift with every movement, asthough excess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. the great breast and heavy fore legs wereno more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the muscles showed in tightrolls underneath the skin.

men felt these muscles and proclaimed themhard as iron, and the odds went down to two to one."gad, sir! gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latestdynasty, a king of the skookum benches. "i offer you eight hundred for him, sir,before the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands." thornton shook his head and stepped tobuck's side. "you must stand off from him," matthewsonprotested. "free play and plenty of room." the crowd fell silent; only could be heardthe voices of the gamblers vainly offering

two to one. everybody acknowledged buck a magnificentanimal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their eyes forthem to loosen their pouch-strings. thornton knelt down by buck's side. he took his head in his two hands andrested cheek on cheek. he did not playfully shake him, as was hiswont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. "as you love me, buck.as you love me," was what he whispered. buck whined with suppressed eagerness.the crowd was watching curiously.

the affair was growing mysterious. it seemed like a conjuration.as thornton got to his feet, buck seized his mittened hand between his jaws,pressing in with his teeth and releasing slowly, half-reluctantly. it was the answer, in terms, not of speech,but of love. thornton stepped well back."now, buck," he said. buck tightened the traces, then slackedthem for a matter of several inches. it was the way he had learned."gee!" thornton's voice rang out, sharp in thetense silence.

buck swung to the right, ending themovement in a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his onehundred and fifty pounds. the load quivered, and from under therunners arose a crisp crackling. "haw!"thornton commanded. buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time tothe left. the crackling turned into a snapping, thesled pivoting and the runners slipping and grating several inches to the side. the sled was broken out.men were holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact."now, mush!"

thornton's command cracked out like apistol-shot. buck threw himself forward, tightening thetraces with a jarring lunge. his whole body was gathered compactlytogether in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like livethings under the silky fur. his great chest was low to the ground, hishead forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring thehard-packed snow in parallel grooves. the sled swayed and trembled, half-startedforward. one of his feet slipped, and one mangroaned aloud. then the sled lurched ahead in whatappeared a rapid succession of jerks,

though it never really came to a dead stopagain...half an inch...an inch... two inches... the jerks perceptibly diminished; as thesled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along. men gasped and began to breathe again,unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe.thornton was running behind, encouraging buck with short, cheery words. the distance had been measured off, and ashe neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer beganto grow and grow, which burst into a roar

as he passed the firewood and halted atcommand. every man was tearing himself loose, evenmatthewson. hats and mittens were flying in the air. men were shaking hands, it did not matterwith whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.but thornton fell on his knees beside buck. head was against head, and he was shakinghim back and forth. those who hurried up heard him cursingbuck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly. "gad, sir!gad, sir!" spluttered the skookum bench

king."i'll give you a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir--twelve hundred, sir." thornton rose to his feet.his eyes were wet. the tears were streaming frankly down hischeeks. "sir," he said to the skookum bench king,"no, sir. you can go to hell, sir.it's the best i can do for you, sir." buck seized thornton's hand in his teeth. thornton shook him back and forth.as though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectfuldistance; nor were they again indiscreet

enough to interrupt. chapter vii.the sounding of the call when buck earned sixteen hundred dollars infive minutes for john thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certaindebts and to journey with his partners into the east after a fabled lost mine, the history of which was as old as the historyof 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 lost mine was steeped in tragedy andshrouded in mystery.

no one knew of the first man.the oldest tradition stopped before it got back to him. from the beginning there had been anancient and ramshackle cabin. dying men had sworn to it, and to the minethe site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets that wereunlike any known grade of gold in the northland. but no living man had looted this treasurehouse, and the dead were dead; wherefore john thornton and pete and hans, with buckand half a dozen other dogs, faced into the east on an unknown trail to achieve where

men and dogs as good as themselves hadfailed. they sledded seventy miles up the yukon,swung to the left into the stewart river, passed the mayo and the mcquestion, andheld on until the stewart itself became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peakswhich marked the backbone of the continent. john thornton asked little of man ornature. he was unafraid of the wild. with a handful of salt and a rifle he couldplunge into the wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as hepleased. being in no haste, indian fashion, hehunted his dinner in the course of the

day's travel; and if he failed to find it,like the indian, he kept on travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner orlater he would come to it. so, on this great journey into the east,straight meat was the bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made upthe load on the sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future. to buck it was boundless delight, thishunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places. for weeks at a time they would hold onsteadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, thedogs loafing and the men burning holes

through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of thefire. sometimes they went hungry, sometimes theyfeasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune ofhunting. summer arrived, and dogs and men packed ontheir backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknownrivers in slender boats whipsawed from the standing forest. the months came and went, and back andforth they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet wheremen had been if the lost cabin were true.

they went across divides in summerblizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber lineand the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers pickedstrawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the southland could boast. in the fall of the year they penetrated aweird lake country, sad and silent, where wildfowl had been, but where then there wasno life nor sign of life--only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholyrippling of waves on lonely beaches.

and through another winter they wandered onthe obliterated trails of men who had gone before. once, they came upon a path blazed throughthe forest, an ancient path, and the lost cabin seemed very near. but the path began nowhere and endednowhere, and it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made itremained mystery. another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets johnthornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock. he knew it for a hudson bay company gun ofthe young days in the northwest, when such

a gun was worth its height in beaver skinspacked flat, and that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among theblankets. spring came on once more, and at the end ofall their wandering they found, not the lost cabin, but a shallow placer in a broadvalley where the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan. they sought no farther. each day they worked earned them thousandsof dollars in clean dust and 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 the spruce-boughlodge. like giants they toiled, days flashing onthe heels of days like dreams as they heaped the treasure up. there was nothing for the dogs to do, savethe hauling in of meat now and again that thornton killed, and buck spent long hoursmusing by the fire. the vision of the short-legged hairy mancame to him more frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often,blinking by the fire, buck wandered with him in that other world which heremembered.

the salient thing of this other worldseemed fear. when he watched the hairy man sleeping bythe fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, buck saw that he sleptrestlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling morewood upon the fire. did they walk by the beach of a sea, wherethe hairy man gathered shellfish and ate them as he gathered, it was with eyes thatroved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at itsfirst 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 moving and nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled askeenly as buck. the hairy man could spring up into thetrees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb tolimb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, nevermissing his grip. in fact, he seemed as much at home amongthe trees as on the ground; and buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneathtrees wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept. and closely akin to the visions of thehairy man was the call still sounding in

the depths of the forest.it filled him with a great unrest and strange desires. it caused him to feel a vague, sweetgladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew notwhat. sometimes he pursued the call into theforest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly ordefiantly, as the mood might dictate. he would thrust his nose into the cool woodmoss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fatearth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered

trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-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 not know why he did thesevarious 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 andlistening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours,

through the forest aisles and across theopen spaces where the niggerheads bunched. he loved to run down dry watercourses, andto creep and spy 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 dimtwilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of theforest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called--called, waking orsleeping, at all times, for him to come.

one night he sprang from sleep with astart, eager-eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrentwaves. from the forest came the call (or one noteof it, for the call was many noted), distinct and definite as never before,--along-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made by husky dog. and he knew it, in the old familiar way, asa sound heard before. he sprang through the sleeping camp and inswift silence dashed through the woods. as he drew closer to the cry he went moreslowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an open place among thetrees, and looking out saw, erect on

haunches, with nose pointed to the sky, along, lean, timber wolf. he had made no noise, yet it ceased fromits howling and tried to sense his presence. buck stalked into the open, half crouching,body gathered compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling withunwonted care. every movement advertised commingledthreatening and overture of friendliness. it was the menacing truce that marks themeeting of wild beasts that prey. but the wolf fled at sight of him. he followed, with wild leapings, in afrenzy to overtake.

he ran him into a blind channel, in the bedof the creek where a timber jam barred the the wolf whirled about, pivoting on hishind legs after the fashion of joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling andbristling, clipping his teeth together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps. buck did not attack, but circled him aboutand hedged him in with friendly advances. the wolf was suspicious and afraid; forbuck made three of him in weight, while his head barely reached buck's shoulder. watching his chance, he darted away, andthe chase was resumed. time and again he was cornered, and thething repeated, though he was in poor

condition, or buck could not so easily haveovertaken him. he would run till buck's head was even withhis flank, when he would whirl around at bay, only to dash away again at the firstopportunity. but in the end buck's pertinacity wasrewarded; for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noseswith him. then they became friendly, and played aboutin the nervous, half-coy way with which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. after some time of this the wolf startedoff at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was going somewhere.

he made it clear to buck that he was tocome, and they ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed,into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide where it took itsrise. on the opposite slope of the watershed theycame down into a level country where were great stretches of forest and many streams,and through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun risinghigher and the day growing warmer. buck was wildly glad. he knew he was at last answering the call,running by the side of his wood brother toward the place from where the call surelycame.

old memories were coming upon him fast, andhe was stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of which they werethe shadows. he had done this thing before, somewhere inthat other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free inthe open, the unpacked earth underfoot, 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 fromwhere the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and making actionsas though to encourage him.

but buck turned about and started slowly onthe back track. for the better part of an hour the wildbrother ran by his side, whining softly. then he sat down, pointed his nose upward,and howled. it was a mournful howl, and as buck heldsteadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in thedistance. john thornton was eating dinner when buckdashed into camp and sprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him,scrambling upon him, licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom- fool," as john thornton characterized it,the while he shook buck back and forth and

cursed him lovingly.for two days and nights buck never left camp, never let thornton out of his sight. he followed him about at his work, watchedhim while he ate, 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 imperiously than ever. buck's restlessness came back on him, andhe was haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond thedivide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches. once again he took to wandering in thewoods, but the wild brother came no more;

and though he listened through long vigils,the mournful howl was never raised. he began to sleep out at night, stayingaway from camp for days at a time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of thecreek and went down into the land of timber and streams. there he wandered for a week, seekingvainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he travelled andtravelling with the long, easy lope that seems never to tire. he fished for salmon in a broad stream thatemptied somewhere into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear,blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise

fishing, and raging through the foresthelpless 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 hiskill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the spoil, he scatteredthem like chaff; and those that fled left two behind who would quarrel no more. the blood-longing became stronger than everbefore. he was a killer, a thing that preyed,living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength andprowess, surviving triumphantly in a

hostile environment where only the strongsurvived. because of all this he became possessed ofa great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to hisphysical being. it advertised itself in all his movements,was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way hecarried himself, and made his glorious furry coat if anything more glorious. but for the stray brown on his muzzle andabove his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, hemight well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest ofthe breed.

from his st. bernard father he hadinherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to thatsize and weight. his muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, savethat it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, wasthe wolf head on a massive scale. his cunning was wolf cunning, and wildcunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and st. bernard intelligence;and all this, plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as any that roamedthe wild. a carnivorous animal living on a straightmeat diet, he was in full flower, at the

high tide of his life, overspilling withvigor and virility. when thornton passed a caressing hand alonghis back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pentmagnetism at the contact. every part, brain and body, nerve tissueand fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there wasa perfect equilibrium or adjustment. to sights and sounds and events whichrequired action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. quickly as a husky dog could leap to defendfrom attack or to attack, he could leap twice as quickly.

he saw the movement, or heard sound, andresponded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing orhearing. he perceived and determined and respondedin the same instant. in point of fact the three actions ofperceiving, determining, and responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal werethe intervals of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. his muscles were surcharged with vitality,and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs. life streamed through him in splendidflood, glad and rampant, until it seemed

that it would burst him asunder in sheerecstasy and pour forth generously over the world. "never was there such a dog," said johnthornton one day, as the partners 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 theydid not see the instant and terrible transformation which took place as soon ashe was within the secrecy of 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 everycover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a snake to leap and strike. he could take a ptarmigan from its nest,kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing a secondtoo late for the trees. fish, in open pools, were not too quick forhim; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary.he killed to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed himself.

so a lurking humor ran through his deeds,and it was his delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them,to let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops. as the fall of the year came on, the mooseappeared in greater abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lowerand less rigorous valleys. buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf; but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and hecame upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. a band of twenty moose had crossed overfrom the land of streams and timber, and

chief among them was a great bull. he was in a savage temper, and, standingover six feet from the ground, was as formidable an antagonist as even buck coulddesire. back and forth the bull tossed his greatpalmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feet within thetips. his small eyes burned with a vicious andbitter light, while he roared with fury at sight of buck. from the bull's side, just forward of theflank, protruded a feathered arrow-end, which accounted for his savageness.

guided by that instinct which came from theold hunting days of the primordial world, buck proceeded to cut the bull out from theherd. it was no slight task. he would bark and dance about in front ofthe bull, just out of reach of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofswhich could have stamped his life out with a single blow. unable to turn his back on the fangeddanger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage. at such moments he charged buck, whoretreated craftily, luring him on by a

simulated inability to escape. but when he was thus separated from hisfellows, two or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon buck and enable thewounded bull to rejoin the herd. there is a patience of the wild--dogged,tireless, persistent as life itself--that holds motionless for endless hours thespider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it huntsits living food; and it belonged to buck as he clung to the flank of the herd,retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-

grown calves, and driving the wounded bullmad with helpless rage. for half a day this continued. buck multiplied himself, attacking from allsides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his victim as fastas it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that ofcreatures preying. as the day wore along and the sun droppedto its bed in the northwest (the darkness had come back and the fall nights were sixhours long), the young bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the aidof their beset leader.

the down-coming winter was harrying them onto the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off this tirelesscreature that held them back. besides, it was not the life of the herd,or of the young bulls, that was threatened. the life of only one member was demanded,which was a remoter interest than their lives, and in the end they were content topay the toll. as twilight fell the old bull stood withlowered head, watching his mates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered,the bulls he had mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fadinglight. he could not follow, for before his noseleaped the merciless fanged terror that

would not let him go. three hundredweight more than half a ton heweighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the endhe faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond his greatknuckled knees. from then on, night and day, buck neverleft his prey, never gave it a moment's rest, never permitted it to browse theleaves of trees or the shoots of young birch and willow. nor did he give the wounded bullopportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams they crossed.often, in desperation, he burst into long

stretches of flight. at such times buck did not attempt to stayhim, but loped easily at his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played,lying down when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove toeat or drink. the great head drooped more and more underits tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. he took to standing for long periods, withnose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and buck found more time inwhich to get water for himself and in which to rest.

at such moments, panting with red lollingtongue and with eyes fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to buck that a change wascoming over the face of things. he could feel a new stir in the land. as the moose were coming into the land,other kinds of life were coming in. forest and stream and air seemed palpitantwith their presence. the news of it was borne in upon him, notby sight, or sound, or smell, but by some other and subtler sense. he heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knewthat the land was somehow different; that through it strange things were afoot andranging; and he resolved to investigate

after he had finished the business in hand. at last, at the end of the fourth day, hepulled the great moose down. for a day and a night he remained by thekill, eating and sleeping, turn and turn about. then, rested, refreshed and strong, heturned his face toward camp and john thornton. he broke into the long easy lope, and wenton, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home throughstrange country with a certitude of direction that put man and his magneticneedle to shame.

as he held on he became more and moreconscious of the new stir in the land. there was life abroad in it different fromthe life which had been there throughout the summer.no longer was this fact borne in upon him in some subtle, mysterious way. the birds talked of it, the squirrelschattered about it, 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 on withgreater speed. he was oppressed with a sense of calamityhappening, if it were not calamity already

happened; and as he crossed the lastwatershed and dropped down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with greatercaution. three miles away he came upon a fresh trailthat sent his neck hair rippling and bristling, it led straight toward camp andjohn thornton. buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily,every nerve straining and tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told astory--all but the end. his nose gave him a varying description ofthe passage of the life on the heels of which he was travelling.he remarked the pregnant silence of the forest.

the bird life had flitted.the squirrels were in hiding. one only he saw,--a sleek gray fellow,flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescenceupon the wood itself. as buck slid along with the obscureness ofa gliding shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly to the side as though a positiveforce had gripped and pulled it. he followed the new scent into a thicketand found nig. he was lying on his side, dead where he haddragged himself, an arrow protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body. a hundred yards farther on, buck came uponone of the sled-dogs thornton had bought in

dawson. this dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle, directly on the trail, and buck passed around him without stopping. from the camp came the faint sound of manyvoices, rising and falling in a sing-song chant. bellying forward to the edge of theclearing, he found hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. at the same instant buck peered out wherethe spruce-bough lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straight up on hisneck and shoulders.

a gust of overpowering rage swept over him. he did not know that he growled, but hegrowled aloud with a terrible ferocity. for the last time in his life he allowedpassion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for johnthornton that he lost his head. the yeehats were dancing about the wreckageof the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon theman animal the like of which they had never seen before. it was buck, a live hurricane of fury,hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy.

he sprang at the foremost man (it was thechief of the yeehats), ripping the throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted afountain of blood. he did not pause to worry the victim, butripped in passing, with the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man.there was 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 hismovements, and so closely were the indians tangled together, that they shot oneanother with the arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear at buck in mid air,

drove it through the chest of anotherhunter with such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood outbeyond. then a panic seized the yeehats, and theyfled in terror to the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the evil spirit. and truly buck was the fiend incarnate,raging at their heels and dragging them down like deer as they raced through thetrees. it was a fateful day for the yeehats. they scattered far and wide over thecountry, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors gatheredtogether in a lower valley and counted

their losses. as for buck, wearying of the pursuit, hereturned to the desolated camp. he found pete where he had been killed inhis blankets in the first moment of surprise. thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the earth, and buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of adeep pool. by the edge, head and fore feet in thewater, lay skeet, faithful to the last. the pool itself, muddy and discolored fromthe sluice boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained john thornton;for buck followed his trace into the water,

from which no trace led away. all day buck brooded by the pool or roamedrestlessly about the camp. death, as a cessation of movement, as apassing out and away from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew john thorntonwas dead. it left a great void in him, somewhat akinto hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, attimes, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the yeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was awareof a great pride in himself,--a pride greater than any he had yet experienced.

he had killed man, the noblest game of all,and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.he sniffed the bodies curiously. they had died so easily. it was harder to kill a husky dog thanthem. they were no match at all, were it not fortheir arrows and spears and clubs. thenceforward he would be unafraid of themexcept when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. night came on, and a full moon rose highover the trees into the sky, lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day.

and with the coming of the night, broodingand mourning by the pool, buck became alive to a stirring of the new life in the forestother than that which the yeehats had made, he stood up, listening and scenting. from far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp,followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps.as the moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. again buck knew them as things heard inthat other world which persisted in his memory.he walked to the centre of the open space and listened.

it was the call, the many-noted call,sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before.and as never before, he was ready to obey. john thornton was dead. the last tie was broken.man and the claims of man no longer bound hunting their living meat, as the yeehatswere hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at lastcrossed over from the land of streams and timber and invaded buck's valley. into the clearing where the moonlightstreamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the centre of the clearing stoodbuck, motionless as a statue, waiting their

coming. they were awed, so still and large hestood, and a moment's pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him.like a flash buck struck, breaking the neck. then he stood, without movement, as before,the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind three others tried it in sharp succession;and one after the other they drew back, streaming blood from slashed throats orshoulders. this was sufficient to fling the whole packforward, pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by its eagerness topull down the prey.

buck's marvellous quickness and agilitystood him in good stead. pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping andgashing, he was everywhere at once, presenting a front which was apparentlyunbroken so swiftly did he whirl and guard from side to side. but to prevent them from getting behindhim, he was forced 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 thebank which the men had made in the course of mining, and in this angle he came tobay, protected on three sides and with nothing to do but face the front.

and so well did he face it, that at the endof half an hour the wolves drew back discomfited. the tongues of all were out and lolling,the white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. some were lying down with heads raised andears pricked forward; others stood on their feet, watching him; and still others werelapping water from the pool. one wolf, long and lean and gray, advancedcautiously, in a friendly manner, and buck recognized the wild brother with whom hehad run for a night and a day. he was whining softly, and, as buck whined,they touched noses.

then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred,came forward. buck writhed his lips into the preliminaryof a snarl, but sniffed noses with him, whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointednose at the moon, and broke out the long wolf howl. the others sat down and howled.and now the call came to buck in unmistakable accents.he, too, sat down and howled. this over, he came out of his angle and thepack crowded around him, sniffing in half- friendly, half-savage manner.the leaders lifted the yelp of the pack and sprang away into the woods.

the wolves swung in behind, yelping inchorus. 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 the yeehatsnoted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were seen with splashes ofbrown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white centring down the chest. but more remarkable than this, the yeehatstell of a ghost dog that runs at the head of the pack. they are afraid of this ghost dog, for ithas cunning 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 thecamp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with throats slashedcruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow greater than the prints ofany wolf. each fall, when the yeehats follow themovement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never enter. and women there are who become sad when theword goes over the fire of how the evil

spirit came to select that valley for anabiding-place. in the summers there is one visitor,however, to that valley, of which the yeehats do not know.it is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like, and yet unlike, all other wolves. he crosses alone from the smiling timberland and comes down into an open space among the trees. here a yellow stream flows from rottedmoose-hide sacks and sinks into the ground, with long grasses growing through it andvegetable mould overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses

for a time, howling once, long andmournfully, ere he departs. but he is not always alone. when the long winter nights come on and thewolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the headof the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow ashe sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.