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out beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to
the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit.

And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and
dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It was
a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the
country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors
gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for
Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He
found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment
of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the
earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down 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 itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice
boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John
Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no
trace led away.

All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the camp.
Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the
lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It
left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which
ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused
to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot 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 experienced. He had killed man, the noblest
game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.
He sniffed the bodies curiously. 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.

Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky,
lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming
of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a
stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats
had made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a
faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the
moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them
as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. 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.

Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks
of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the
land of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into the clearing
where the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the
centre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their
coming. They were awed, so still and large he stood, and a moment's
pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flash
Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood, without movement, as
before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him. Three others
tried it in sharp succession; and one after the other they drew back,
streaming blood from slashed throats or shoulders.

This was sufficient to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded
together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the
prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead.
Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere
at once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly did
he whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent them from getting
behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek
bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a
right angle in the bank which the men had made in the course of mining,
and in this angle he came to bay, protected on three sides and with
nothing to do but face the front.

And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolves
drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the
white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down
with heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet,
watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool. One
wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner,
and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for a night
and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touched
noses.

Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhed
his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him,
Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke
out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And now the call
came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. This
over, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded around him, sniffing
in half-friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the
pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yelping
in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by side with the wild brother,
yelping as he ran.

   *  *  *  *  *

And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when
the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were
seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white
centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tell
of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid of
this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing from
their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs,
and defying their bravest hunters.

Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to
the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow
greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow
the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never
enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over
the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an
abiding-place.

In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which
the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like,
and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling
timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here
a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into
the ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for
a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.