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
sons; he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long
twilight or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the
Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge’s
grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their
footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable
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 Miller’s place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable
companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was
not so large,—he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,—for his
mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred
and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes 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 country gentlemen sometimes become
because of their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not
becoming a mere pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor
delights had kept down the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as
to the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a
health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the
Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North.
But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel,
one of the gardener’s helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel
had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his
gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this
made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while
the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife
and numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers’ Association, and the
boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of
Manuel’s treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard
on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a
solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known
as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between
them.

“You might wrap up the goods before you deliver ’m,” the stranger said
gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck’s neck
under the collar.

“Twist it, an’ you’ll choke ’m plentee,” said Manuel, and the stranger
grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an
unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and
to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the
ends of the rope were placed in the stranger’s hands, he growled
menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride
believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope
tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he
sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the
throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope
tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue
lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in
all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life
had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he
knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into
the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and
that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse
shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He
had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of
riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the
unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but
Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they
relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

“Yep, has fits,” the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the
baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. “I’m
takin’ ’m up for the boss to ’Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks
that he can cure ’m.”

Concerning that night’s ride, the man spoke most eloquently for
himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water
front.