INTO THE PRIMITIVE
Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at s ;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferirain.
Buck did not read the neers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation panies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, 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 Millers place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half-hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house roached by graveled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and uhe interlag boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on even 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 arbreen pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big t tank where Judge Milers boys took their m plunge a cool i 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 s. There could not but be s on so vast a place, but they did not t. They came a, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexi hairless, strange creatures that rarely put of doors or set foot to ground. Oher hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.
But Buck was her house dog nor kennel dog. The whole realm was his. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judges sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judges daughters, on long twilight or early m rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judges feet before the r library fire; he carried the Judges grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain iable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king--king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Millers place, humans included.
His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judges inseparable panion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not se--he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds--for his mother, She, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. heless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that es of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as try gentlemen sometimes bee because of their insula