Chapter 1

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 tidewater dog, strong ofmuscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, andbecause steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanteddogs, 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, halfhiddenamong the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool verandah that ran around its four sides. The house was approached bygravelled driveways which wound about through widespreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were oneven 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 arbours, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumpingplant 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 livedobscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless — strange creatures thatrarely 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 fearfulpromises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.