Chapter 1 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 graveled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interfacing 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 domain 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
The author's use of the word "legion" to describe the house staff who protect Toots and Ysabel suggests
O the children do not care for the little dogs
the little dogs are the least useful on the property
the little dogs are much loved in the house
the outside dogs are often rough and dirty