they would hold on steadily day after day and for weeks upon end they would camp here and there the dogs and the men burning holes through frozen and gravel and washing countless of dirt by the heat of the fire sometimes they went the call i sometimes they all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting summer arrived and dogs and men packed on their backs across blue mountain lakes and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender boats from the standing forest the months came and went and back and forth they twisted through the where no men were and yet where men had been if the lost cabin were true they went across in summer shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal dropped into summer valleys amid and flies and in the shadows i of picked and flowers as ripe f and fair as any the could boast in the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country sad and silent where wild fowl had been but where then there was no life nor sign of life � only the blowing of chill winds the forming of ice in sheltered places and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely and through another winter they wandered on the the of the wild of men who had gone before once they came upon a path blazed through the forest an ancient path and the lost cabin seemed very near but the path began nowhere and ended nowhere and it remained mystery as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery another time they chanced upon the time of a hunting lodge and amid the of blankets john found a long flint lock he knew it for a bay company gun of the s young days in the when such a gun t was worth its height in skins packed flat and that was all � no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets spring came on once more and at the end of all call i their wandering they i found not the lost i cabin but a shallow m i in a broad valley i i where the gold showed i i like yellow butter across i the bottom of the wash i ing pan they sought i i farther each day they worked earned i them thousands of in clean dust and and they worked every i day the gold was in hide bags fifty to the bag and piled like so much i outside the bough lodge like giants they i toiled days flashing on the heels of days like dreams i as they heaped the treasure up there was nothing for the dogs to do save the in of meat now and again that killed and buck spent long hours musing by the fire the vision of the short legged hairy man came e to him more frequently now that there was little to be done and often by the fire o the of the wild buck wandered with him m that other world which he remembered i i the thing of this other world seemed fear � when he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire � head between his knees and hands clasped above i � buck saw that he slept with many starts and at which times he would peer fear � fully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire did they walk by the beach of a sea where the hairy man gathered shell fish and ate them as he gathered it was with eyes that everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance through the forest they crept noiselessly buck at the hairy man s heels and they were alert and the pair of them ears and moving and nostrils quivering for the man heard and as keenly as buck the hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground swinging by the arms from limb to limb sometimes a dozen feet apart letting go and catching never falling never missing his grip in fact he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground and buck f � call � had memories of nights of spent beneath wherein the hairy man holding on tightly as he slept and closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the fort est it filled him with a great and strange desires it caused him to feel a vague sweet glad ness and he was aware of wild and for he knew not what sometimes he pursued the call into the forest looking for it as though it were a thing barking softly or as the mood might dictate he would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss or into the black soil where long grew and with joy at the fat earth smells or he would for hours as if in concealment behind covered trunks i of fallen trees wide eyed and wide to all that i moved and sounded about him it might be i lying thus that he hoped to surprise this call he could not understand but he did not know i why he did these various things he was im i to do them and did not reason about i them at all the call of the wild irresistible impulses seized him he would be lying in camp i lazily in the heat of the day when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up intent and listening and he would spring to his feet and dash away and on and on for hours through the forest and 