Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories | Page 5

stranger and first smelled
his hands, then licked them with his tongue.
Skiff Miller patted the dog's head, and slowly and solemnly repeated,
"Well, I'll be hanged!"
"Excuse me, ma'am," he said the next moment, "I was just s'prised
some, that was all."
"We're surprised, too," she answered lightly. "We never saw Wolf
make up to a stranger before."
"Is that what you call him--Wolf?" the man asked.
Madge nodded. "But I can't understand his friendliness toward
you--unless it's because you're from the Klondike. He's a Klondike dog,
you know."
"Yes'm," Miller said absently. He lifted one of Wolf's forelegs and
examined the footpads, pressing them and denting them with his thumb.
"Kind of soft," he remarked. "He ain't been on trail for a long time."
"I say," Walt broke in, "it is remarkable the way he lets you handle
him."
Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and
in a sharp, businesslike manner asked, "How long have you had him?"
But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer's
legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief and
joyous, but a bark.
"That's a new one on me," Skiff Miller remarked.
Walt and Madge stared at each other. The miracle had happened. Wolf
had barked.
"It's the first time he ever barked," Madge said.
"First time I ever heard him, too," Miller volunteered.
Madge smiled at him. The man was evidently a humorist.
"Of course," she said, "since you have only seen him for five minutes."
Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile her
words had led him to suspect.
"I thought you understood," he said slowly. "I thought you'd tumbled to
it from his makin' up to me. He's my dog. His name ain't Wolf. It's
Brown."
"Oh, Walt!" was Madge's instinctive cry to her husband.
Walt was on the defensive at once.
"How do you know he's your dog?" he demanded.

"Because he is," was the reply.
"Mere assertion," Walt said sharply.
In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then asked,
with a nod of his head toward Madge:
"How d'you know she's your wife? You just say, 'Because she is,' and
I'll say it's mere assertion. The dog's mine. I bred 'm an' raised 'm, an' I
guess I ought to know. Look here. I'll prove it to you."
Skiff Miller turned to the dog. "Brown!" His voice rang out sharply,
and at the sound the dog's ears flattened down as to a caress. "Gee!"
The dog made a swinging turn to the right. "Now mush-on!" And the
dog ceased his swing abruptly and started straight ahead, halting
obediently at command.
"I can do it with whistles," Skiff Miller said proudly. "He was my lead
dog."
"But you are not going to take him away with you?" Madge asked
tremulously.
The man nodded.
"Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?"
He nodded and added: "Oh, it ain't so bad as all that. Look at me. Pretty
healthy specimen, ain't I!"
"But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the
starvation, the frost! Oh, I've read about it and I know."
"I nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River," Miller volunteered
grimly. "If I hadn't got a moose that day was all that saved 'm."
"I'd have died first!" Madge cried.
"Things is different down here," Miller explained. "You don't have to
eat dogs. You think different just about the time you're all in. You've
never been all in, so you don't know anything about it."
"That's the very point," she argued warmly. "Dogs are not eaten in
California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He'll never want for
food--you know that. He'll never suffer from cold and hardship. Here
all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage.
He will never know a whip-lash again. And as for the weather--why, it
never snows here."
"But it's all-fired hot in summer, beggin' your pardon," Skiff Miller
laughed.
"But you do not answer," Madge continued passionately. "What have

you to offer him in that northland life?"
"Grub, when I've got it, and that's most of the time," came the answer.
"And the rest of the time?"
"No grub."
"And the work?"
"Yes, plenty of work," Miller blurted out impatiently. "Work without
end, an' famine, an' frost, an' all the rest of the miseries--that's what
he'll get when he comes with me. But he likes it. He is used to it. He
knows that life. He was born to it an' brought up to it. An' you don't
know anything about it. You don't know what you're talking about.
That's where the dog belongs, and that's where he'll be happiest."
"The dog doesn't go,"