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1The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to
2standing for long periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and Buck found more time in which
3to get water for himself and in which to rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes fixed upon
4the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was coming over the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the
5land. As the moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in. Forest and stream and air seemed
6palpitant with their presence. The news of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by some other
7and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knew that the land was somehow different; that through it strange
8things were afoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had finished the business in hand. At last, at
9the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down. For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and
10sleeping, turn and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face toward camp and John Thornton. He
11broke into the long easy lope, and went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading straight home
12through strange country with a certitude of direction that put man and his magnetic needle to shame. As he held on he
13became more and more conscious of the new stir in the land. There was life abroad in it different from the life which
14had been there throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him in some subtle, mysterious way. The
15birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times he stopped and drew
16in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, reading a message which made him leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed
17with a sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity already happened; and as he crossed the last watershed and
18dropped down into the valley toward camp, he proceeded with greater caution. Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail
19that sent his neck hair rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton. Buck hurried on, swiftly
20and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story--all but the end.
21His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the life on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked
22the pregnant silence of the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw,--a sleek
23gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood
24itself. As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose was jerked suddenly to the side as though
25a positive force had gripped and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig. He was lying on his
26side, dead where he had dragged himself, an arrow protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body. A hundred
27yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thornton had bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a
28death-struggle, directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. From the camp came the faint sound
29of many voices, rising and falling in a sing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found Hans,
30lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At the same instant Buck peered out where the spruce-bough
31lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept
32over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in his life
33he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his
34head. The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce-bough lodge when they heard a fearful roaring and saw
35rushing upon them an animal the like of which they had never seen before. It was Buck, a live hurricane of fury, hurling
36himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. He sprang at the foremost man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), ripping the
37throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a fountain of blood. He did not pause to worry the victim, but ripped in
38passing, with the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. There was no withstanding him. He plunged about in
39their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the arrows they discharged
40at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were his movements, and so closely were the Indians tangled together, that they
41shot one another with the arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest
42of another hunter with such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood out beyond. Then a panic
43seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit. And
44truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and dragging them down like deer as they raced through the
45trees. It was a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the country, and it was not till a week
46later that the last of the survivors gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for Buck, wearying
47of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first
48moment of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented every detail of it
49down to the edge of a deep pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool
50itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton;
51for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no trace led away. All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed
52restlessly about the camp. Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of the living, he
53knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached
54and ached, and which food could not fill. At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he
55forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride greater than any he had yet
56experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. He
57sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match
58at all, were it not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they
59bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the
60sky, lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the
61pool, Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats had made, He stood
62up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As
63the moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world which
64persisted in his memory. He walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call, the many-noted call,
65sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was
66dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.
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