The Sounding of the CallWhen Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for JohnThornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts andto journey with his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine, thehistory of which was as old as the history of the country. Many menhad sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who hadnever returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedyand shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldesttradition stopped before it got back to him. From the beginning therehad been an ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it,and to the mine the site of which it marked, clinching their testimonywith nuggets that were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.
But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead weredead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half adozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achievewhere men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sleddedseventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewartitself became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which markedthe backbone of the continent.
John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of thewild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into thewilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased.
Being in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course ofthe day's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept ontravelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come toit. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the bill offare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the sled, andthe time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.
To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, andindefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time theywould hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end theywould camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holesthrough frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt bythe heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes theyfeasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortuneof hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their 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 and forth they twisted throughthe uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had beenif the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summerblizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains betweenthe timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amidswarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers pickedstrawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland couldboast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sadand silent, where wild- fowl had been, but where then there was no life norsign of life-- only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice insheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trailsof men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazedthrough the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near.
But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remainedmystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remainedmystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage ofa hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thorntonfound a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson BayCompany gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun wasworth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all--no hint asto the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gunamong the blankets.
Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering theyfound, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley wherethe 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. Thegold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piledlike so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giantsthey toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as theyheaped the treasure up.
There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meatnow and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musingby the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him morefrequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinkingby the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered.
The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When hewatched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees andhands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many startsand awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into thedarkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by thebeach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell- fish and ate them as hegathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger andwith legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Throughthe forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and theywere alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving andnostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck.
The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast ason the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes adozen feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing hisgrip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on theground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath treeswherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call stillsounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrestand strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, andhe was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what.
Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though itwere a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood mightdictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into theblack soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earthsmells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behindfungus- covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to allthat moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that hehoped to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did notknow why he did these various things. He was impelled to do them,and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp,dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would liftand his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feetand dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles andacross the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved torun down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in thewoods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where hecould watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. Butespecially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights,listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signsand sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterioussomething that called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrilsquivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From theforest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted),distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike,any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way,as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and inswift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cryhe went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to anopen place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches,with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.
He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried tosense his presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, bodygathered compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling withunwonted care. Every movement advertised commingled threateningand 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 a frenzy to overtake. He ran himinto a blind channel, in the bed of the creek where a timber jam barredthe way. The wolf whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after thefashion of Joe and of all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling,clipping his teeth together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.
Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in withfriendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck madethree of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.
Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed.
Time and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he wasin poor condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. Hewould run till Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirlaround at bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.
But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, findingthat no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then theybecame friendly, and played about in the nervous, half- coy way withwhich fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this thewolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he wasgoing somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, andthey ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creekbed, into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak dividewhere it took its rise.
On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a levelcountry where were great stretches of forest and many streams, andthrough these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sunrising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. Heknew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his woodbrother toward the place from where the call surely came. Oldmemories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as ofold he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He haddone this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly rememberedworld, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, theunpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buckremembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started ontoward the place from where the call surely came, then returned to him,sniffing noses and making actions as though to encourage him. ButBuck turned about and started slowly on the back track. For the betterpart of an hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Thenhe sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was a mournfulhowl, and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint andfainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp andsprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scramblingupon him, licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom-fool," as John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck backand forth and cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thorntonout of his sight. He followed him about at his work, watched himwhile he ate, saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in themorning. But after two days the call in the forest began to sound moreimperiously than ever. Buck's restlessness came back on him, and hewas haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling landbeyond the divide and the run side by side through the wide foreststretches. Once again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wildbrother came no more; and though he listened through long vigils, themournful howl was never raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at atime; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and wentdown into the land of timber and streams. There he wandered for aweek, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meatas he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems neverto tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhereinto the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded bythe mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the foresthelpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused thelast latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days later, when hereturned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over thespoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behindwho would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was akiller, a thing that preyed, living on the things t............