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.