Identifier: callofwild02lond (find matches)
Title: The call of the wild
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: London, Jack, 1876-1916 Frank Tirro Collection. NcD
Subjects: Animal welfare Feral dogs Pet theft Sled dogs Dogs
Publisher: New York London : The Macmillan company
Contributing Library: Duke University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Duke University Libraries

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other as Hal and Charles. Charleswas a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, withweak and watery eyes and a mustache thattwisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving thelie to the limply drooping lip it concealed.Hal was a youngster of nineteen or twenty,with a big Colts revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about him on a belt thatfairly bristled with cartridges. This belt wasthe most salient thing about him. It adver-tised his callowness — a callowness sheer andunutterable. Both men were manifestly outof place, and why such as they should ad-venture the North is part of the mystery ofthings that passes understanding. Buck heard the chaffering, saw the moneypass between the man and the Governmentagent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed andthe mail-train drivers were passing out of hislife on the heels of Perrault and Francoisand the others who had gone before. Whendriven with his mates to the new ownerscamp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenlyaffair, tent half stretched, dishes unwashed,
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HAL. THE TOIL OF TRACE AND TRAIL 129 everything in disorder; also, he saw awoman. Mercedes the men called her.She was Charless wife and Hals sister — anice family party. Buck watched them apprehensively as theyproceeded to take down the tent and loadthe sled. There was a great deal of effortabout their manner, but no businesslikemethod. The tent was rolled into an awk-ward bundle three times as large as it shouldhave been. The tin dishes were packed awayunwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered inthe way of her men and kept up an un-broken chattering of remonstrance and advice.When they put a clothes-sack on the frontof the sled, she suggested it should go onthe back; and when they had put it on theback, and covered it over with a coupleof other bundles, she discovered overlookedarticles which could abide nowhere else butin that very sack, and they unloaded again. Three men from a neighboring tent cameout and looked on, grinning and winking atone another. 130 THE CALL OF THE WILD You

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