The Call of the Wild
by Jack London
Contents
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 wasbrewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscleand with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, gropingin the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship andtransportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushinginto the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavydogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect themfrom the frost.
Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. JudgeMiller’s place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hiddenamong the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide coolveranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by gravelleddriveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under theinterlacing boughs 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, anendless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures,orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesianwell, 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 livedthe four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, There could notbut be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came andwent, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses ofthe house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexicanhairless,—strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set footto ground. On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them atleast, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of thewindows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms andmops.
But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his. Heplunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons; heescorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight orearly morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet beforethe roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back,or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wilda