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;
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