The Call of the Wild

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 him.

wide-spread­ing lawns

John Thorn­ton was dead. The last tie was bro­ken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him

They had died so eas­ily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it not for their ar­rows and spears and clubs. Thence­for­ward he would be un­afraid of them ex­cept when they bore in their hands their ar­rows, spears, and clubs

They were slack in all things, with­out or­der or dis­ci­pline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morn­ing to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fash­ion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were oc­cu­pied in stop­ping and re­ar­rang­ing 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 mak­ing more than half the dis­tance used by the men as a ba­sis in their dog-food com­pu­ta­tion

It marked, fur­ther, the de­cay or go­ing to pieces of his moral na­ture, a vain thing and a hand­i­cap in the ruth­less strug­gle for ex­is­tence.

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.

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.

“All I get is fifty for it,” he grum­bled; “an’ I wouldn’t do it over for a thou­sand, cold cash.”

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.