The Call of the Wild
by Jack London

      Contents

I     Into the Primitive
II    The Law of Club and Fang
III   The Dominant Primordial Beast
IV    Who Has Won to Mastership
V     The Toil of Trace and Tail
VI    For the Love of a Man
VII   The Sounding of the Call

Chapter I

Into the Primitive

         "Old longings nomadic leap,
          Chafing at custom's chain;
          Again from its brumal sleep
          Wakens the ferine strain." 

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would 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 Arctic darkness, 
had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation 
companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing 
into the Northland.  These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they 
wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and 
furry coats to protect them from the frost. 

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.  
Judge Miller's place, it was called.  It stood back from the road, 
half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be 
caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides.  
The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about 
through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of 
tall poplars.  At the rear things were on even a more spacious 
scale than at the front.  There were great stables, where a dozen 
grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants' cottages, 
an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, 
green pastures, orchards, and berry patches.  Then there was the 
pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where 
Judge Miller's boys took their morning 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, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a 
place, but they did not count.  They came and went, resided in the 
populous kennels, 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 to ground. On the other hand, there were the fox 
terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at 
Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected 
by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops. 

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog.  The whole realm 
was his.  He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with 
the Judge's sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's 
daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry 
nights he lay at the Judge's feet before the roaring library fire; 
he carried the Judge's grandsons on his back, or rolled them in 
the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures 
down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where 
the paddocks were, and the berry 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, had been the Judge's 
inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of 
his father.  He was not so large,--he weighed only one hundred 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 puppyhood he 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 
their insular situation.  But he had saved himself by not becoming 
a mere pampered house-dog.  Hunting and kindred outdoor delights 
had kept 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 in the fall of 1897, when 
the Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen 
North.  But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know 
that Manuel, one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable 
acquaintance.  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 made his damnation certain.  
For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a 
gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous 
progeny. 

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and 
the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable 
night of Manuel's treachery.  No one saw him and Buck go off 
through the orchard 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 you deliver 'm," the stranger 
said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around 
Buck'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 that outreached his 
own.  But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's 
hands, he growled menacingly.  He had merely intimated his 
displeasure, in his 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 
met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft 
twist threw him over on his back.  Then the rope tightened 
mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling 
out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely.  Never in 
all his life had he been so vilely treated, 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 the baggage car. 

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting 
and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance.  
The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him 
where he was.  He had travelled too often with the Judge not to 
know the sensation of riding in a baggage car.  He opened his 
eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king.  
The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him.  
His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses 
were choked out of him once more. 

"Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled 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 can cure 'm." 

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for 
himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco 
water 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 bloody handkerchief, 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," the saloon-keeper calculated; 
"and he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead." 

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and 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 your freight," he 
added. 

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the 
life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his 
tormentors.  But he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, 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 weary night, 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 this narrow crate?  He did not know 
why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of impending 
calamity.  Several times during the night he sprang to his feet 
when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or 
the boys at least.  But each time it was the bulging face of the 
saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a 
tallow candle.  And each time the joyful bark that trembled in 
Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl. 

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men 
entered and picked up the crate.  More tormentors, Buck decided, 
for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he 
stormed and raged at them through the bars.  They only laughed and 
poked sticks at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth 
till he realized that that was what they wanted.  Whereupon he lay 
down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon.  
Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned, began a passage 
through many hands.  Clerks in the express office took charge of 
him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried him, 
with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he 
was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and