Tiếng gọi nơi hoang dã - THE CALL OF THE WILD

Chapter I.
Into the Primitive

"Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain."

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.