On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the day growing warmer.Buck was wildly glad.He knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood brother toward the place from where the call surely came.Old memories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows.He had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck remembered John Thornton.He sat down.The wolf started on toward the place from where the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffing noses and making actions as though to encourage him.But Buck turned about and started slowly on the back track.For the better part of an hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly.Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and howled.It was a mournful howl, and as Buck held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in the distance.
John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprang upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him, licking his face, biting his hand--"playing the general tom-fool," as John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forth and cursed him lovingly.
For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of his sight.He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate, saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning.But after two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiously than ever.Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond the divide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches.Once again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came no more; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl was never raised.
He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went down into the land of timber and streams.There he wandered for a week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he traveled and traveling with the long, easy lope that seems never to tire.He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest helpless and terrible.Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity.And two days later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverines quarreling over the spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind who would quarrel no more.
The blood-longing became stronger than ever before.He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.Because of all this he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being.It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat if anything more glorious.But for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed.From his St.Bernard father he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight.
His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.
His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St.Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as any that roamed the wild.A carnivorous animal, living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, over-spilling with vigor and virility.When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact.Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fiber, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment.To sights and sounds and events which required action, he responded with lighting-like rapidity.
Quickly as a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap twice as quickly.He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or hearing.
He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant.In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals of time between them that they appeared simultaneous.His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs.Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and put forth generously over the world.
"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as the partners watched Buck marching out of camp.
"When he was made, the mold was broke," said Pete.
"Py Jingo! I think so mineself," Hans affirmed.
