Buck did not read the newspapers, 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 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,halfhidden 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 widespreading 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 demense 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, whoyel |
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