Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble
was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water 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 companies 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
Miller s 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 was approached
by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns
and under the interlacing 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 arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there
was the pumping plant 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
lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of
Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, strange
creatures that rarely 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 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 neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.
He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge s
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