by Jack London
As the story opens we see how London’s Klondike is now under the control of a series of state functionaries—clerks, mounted policemen, governor, presiding judge—all surrogates for the “chief white man” that London has been searching for throughout the Northland and is yet to find. Against the inexorable incursions of the State, Imber and his fellow tribal elders have banded together to form a terrorist union of their own bent on taking the white man down with them. At a key moment in Imber’s confession, London interrupts the native’s testimony to bring his own art to account. He registers the illiterate Indian’s shock at the power of writing as a magical instrument of subjugation, as opposed to the impermanence of Imber’s own act of speaking. Not these petty functionaries, not even the authority of the court, hold the secret to the Wolf’s domination, but rather the field of writing/reading through which the symbolic Law of the (White) Father makes itself known.
Jack London used to insist to his friends, somewhat notoriously, that he was a white man first and a socialist only second. But his sympathetic rendering of conspiring red revolutionaries in “The League of the Old Men” suggests a more complex and unstable relation between his thinking on race and his politics. Closing out three concentrated collections totaling thirty tales, “The League of the Old Men” culminates London’s search for patriarchal order in the Northland. In its ambitious anatomizing of the regulatory function of the State, the story also harkens back to London’s earliest public role as “Boy Socialist of Oakland” (in 1895-96), as well as looking forward to his powerful depiction of class warfare in The Iron Heel (1908). No wonder London himself once deemed “The League of the Old Men” his favorite story.
After “The League” London would continue to publish other tales set in the Klondike, including “Love of Life” (1905) and his most famous short story of all, “To Build a Fire” (1908). In addition to these well-known tales of survival, this present edition reprints “The Sun-Dog Trail” (first published in 1905)—a brilliant, austere narrative that again takes up the question of writing/ reading in its depiction of an obsessive pursuit through ice and snow with no apparent object. By way of such Northland trailing, London explores the relationship between artistic production and interpretation; although the story would seem to have little to do with race, it is noteworthy that this quest narrative is told by Sitka Charley, appearing for the final time in London’s fiction. The “white” native’s role as an illiterate mailman and trail guide—an entrepreneur for hire—significantly sheds light on London’s self-perception as a writer engaged in his own strenuous pursuit of signs.
The pointed illiteracy of the Indians Imber and Charley also gives us a crucial clue as to what would subsequently become of the question of race in London’s Northland. Early in Imber’s mythic account of the white man’s invasion of his tribe’s land, he remarks that the first Wolf brought with him an equally strange hairless dog, who begins breeding with the Indians’ own wolf-like dogs to produce a new stock of dog, “big-headed, thick-jawed, and short-haired, and helpless” in the wilderness. The miscegenation between “Wolf” and “Raven” clans is thus matched by an analogous miscegenation of their animals, whose offspring bears a striking resemblance to London’s most famous creation of all: Buck in The Call of the Wild (1903), which London began composing two months after Children of the Frost was published. As a mail carrier in the wild, learning how to deliver letters without being able to read them, London’s animal protagonist closely follows in the footsteps of Imber and carries on the hard work of Charley. The dog’s link to Northland natives is reinforced by his very name; showing up in a number of these tales, including “Where the Trail Forks” (which ends with a passage about animal interbreeding), the word “buck” at the turn of the century was common slang for an Indian male. As an intelligent beast, not a noble savage, Buck further enables London to treat racial crossing in terms of a naturalist parable of survival. Transforming concepts of race into the concept of species, London at once naturalizes the cultural categories of “white” and “red” at the same time that he literalizes his quest for the status of “Wolf.” By the end of The Call of the Wild, Buck has actually turned into a wolf—the very creature that London’s men in the Northland could only approximate through totemic identification. Working like a dog, Buck lets his author Jack completely realize the “Wolf” in him: to become in effect his own self-sufficient father.
The Call of the Wild remains London’s most enduring fiction. Readers over the years have attributed the narrative’s power to its lyrical mythopoetic structure—a universal quest-romance celebrating a hero’s initiation, courage, education, survival, and eventual apotheosis. Yet situating the novel in relation to London’s first three collections of Northland tales, seeing it as a logical extension of London’s ongoing, evolving treatment of totemic kinship, may help give us a new perspective on a very familiar text. Perhaps we find The Call of the Wild so satisfying, so comforting, because anxieties about race and manhood seem to be completely absent in it—anxieties that London expressed more openly, albeit more uncertainly, throughout his early Klondike tales. Preparing the way for Buck, this Northland field of publication deserves our close and sustained revisiting: the region where Jack London first struck gold, first found himself as a man of letters.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
EDITIONS
London, Jack. The Letters of Jack London. Edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, and I. Milo Shepard. 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
—. The Complete Stories of Jack London. Edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, and I. Milo Shepard. 3 vols. Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1993.
BOOKS
Auerbach, Jonathan. Male Call: Becoming Jack London. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Cassuto, Leonard, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman, eds. Rereading Jack London. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
Foner, Philip S. Jack London, American Rebel: A Collection of His Social Writings Together with an Extensive Study of the Man and His Times. New York: Citadel, 1947.
Hedrick, Joan D. Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Johnston, Carolyn. Jack London—An American Radical? West-port, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984.
Kingman, Russ. A Pictorial Life of Jack London. New York: Crown Publishers, 1979.
Labor, Earle, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. Jack London. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1994.
London, Joan. Jack London and His Times: An Unconventional Biography. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939; reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.
McClintock, James I. White Logic: Jack London’s Short Stories. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wolf House Books, 1975.
Sinclair, Andrew. Jack: A Biography of Jack London. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Walker, Franklin. Jack London and the Klondike. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1966.
Watson, Charles N., Jr. The Novels of Jack London: A Reappraisal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
This Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of selected Northland stories is based on the first American book editions of Jack London’s short story collections. Although many of these stories were initially published in periodicals, London regularly used the opportunity of book publication to restore cuts and changes that had been made previously by magazine editors. With the exception of a few minor typographical errors, which have been silently corrected, the present edition preserves the spelling and punctuation (including open contractions) in the texts of the first editions. For a list of original dates and places of publication for these stories, see Appendix.
The White Silence
“Carmen won’t last more than a couple of days.” Mason spat out a chunk of ice and surveyed the poor animal ruefully, then put her foot in his mouth and proceeded to bite out the ice which clustered cruelly between the toes.
“I
never saw a dog with a highfalutin’ name that ever was worth a rap,” he said, as he concluded his task and shoved her aside. “They just fade away and die under the responsibility. Did ye ever see one go wrong with a sensible name like Cassiar, Siwash, or Husky? No, sir! Take a look at Shookum here, he’s”—
Snap! The lean brute flashed up, the white teeth just missing Mason’s throat.
“Ye will, will ye?” A shrewd clout behind the ear with the butt of the dogwhip stretched the animal in the snow, quivering softly, a yellow slaver dripping from its fangs.
“As I was saying, just look at Shookum, here—he’s got the spirit. Bet ye he eats Carmen before the week’s out.”
“I’ll bank another proposition against that,” replied Malemute Kid, reversing the frozen bread placed before the fire to thaw. “We’ll eat Shookum before the trip is over. What d’ ye say, Ruth?”
The Indian woman settled the coffee with a piece of ice, glanced from Malemute Kid to her husband, then at the dogs, but vouchsafed no reply. It was such a palpable truism that none was necessary. Two hundred miles of unbroken trail in prospect, with a scant six days’ grub for themselves and none for the dogs, could admit no other alternative. The two men and the woman grouped about the fire and began their meagre meal. The dogs lay in their harnesses, for it was a midday halt, and watched each mouthful enviously.
“No more lunches after to-day,” said Malemute Kid. “And we’ve got to keep a close eye on the dogs,—they’re getting vicious. They’d just as soon pull a fellow down as not, if they get a chance.”
“And I was president of an Epworth once, and taught in the Sunday school.” Having irrelevantly delivered himself of this, Mason fell into a dreamy contemplation of his steaming moccasins, but was aroused by Ruth filling his cup. “Thank God, we’ve got slathers of tea! I’ve seen it growing, down in Tennessee. What would n’t I give for a hot corn pone just now! Never mind, Ruth; you won’t starve much longer, nor wear moccasins either.”
The woman threw off her gloom at this, and in her eyes welled up a great love for her white lord,—the first white man she had ever seen,—the first man whom she had known to treat a woman as something better than a mere animal or beast of burden.
“Yes, Ruth,” continued her husband, having recourse to the macaronic jargon in which it was alone possible for them to understand each other; “wait till we clean up and pull for the Outside. We’ll take the White Man’s canoe and go to the Salt Water. Yes, bad water, rough water,—great mountains dance up and down all the time. And so big, so far, so far away,—you travel ten sleep, twenty sleep, forty sleep” (he graphically enumerated the days on his fingers), “all the time water, bad water. Then you come to great village, plenty people, just the same mosquitoes next summer. Wigwams oh, so high,—ten, twenty pines. Hi-yu skookum!”
He paused impotently, cast an appealing glance at Malemute Kid, then laboriously placed the twenty pines, end on end, by sign language. Malemute Kid smiled with cheery cynicism; but Ruth’s eyes were wide with wonder, and with pleasure; for she half believed he was joking, and such condescension pleased her poor woman’s heart.
“And then you step into a—a box, and pouf! up you go.” He tossed his empty cup in the air by way of illustration, and as he deftly caught it, cried: “And biff! down you come. Oh, great medicine-men! You go Fort Yukon, I go Arctic City,—twenty—five sleep,—big string, all the time,—I catch him string,—I say, ‘Hello, Ruth! How are ye?’—and you say, ‘Is that my good husband?’—and I say ‘Yes,’—and you say, ‘No can bake good bread, no more soda,’—then I say, ‘Look in cache, under flour; good-by.’ You look and catch plenty soda. All the time you Fort Yukon, me Arctic City. Hi-yu medicine-man!”
Ruth smiled so ingenuously at the fairy story, that both men burst into laughter. A row among the dogs cut short the wonders of the Outside, and by the time the snarling combatants were separated, she had lashed the sleds and all was ready for the trail.
“Mush! Baldy! Hi! Mush on!” Mason worked his whip smartly, and as the dogs whined low in the traces, broke out the sled with the gee-pole. Ruth followed with the second team, leaving Malemute Kid, who had helped her start, to bring up the rear. Strong man, brute that he was, capable of felling an ox at a blow, he could not bear to beat the poor animals, but humored them as a dog-driver rarely does,—nay, almost wept with them in their misery.
“Come, mush on there, you poor sorefooted brutes!” he murmured, after several ineffectual attempts to start the load. But his patience was at last rewarded, and though whimpering with pain, they hastened to join their fellows.
No more conversation; the toil of the trail will not permit such extravagance. And of all deadening labors, that of the Northland trail is the worst. Happy is the man who can weather a day’s travel at the price of silence, and that on a beaten track.
And of all heart-breaking labors, that of breaking trail is the worst. At every step the great webbed shoe sinks till the snow is level with the knee. Then up, straight up, the deviation of a fraction of an inch being a certain precursor of disaster, the snowshoe must be lifted till the surface is cleared; then forward, down, and the other foot is raised perpendicularly for the matter of half a yard. He who tries this for the first time, if haply he avoids bringing his shoes in dangerous propinquity and measures not his length on the treacherous footing, will give up exhausted at the end of a hundred yards; he who can keep out of the way of the dogs for a whole day may well crawl into his sleeping-bag with a clear conscience and a pride which passeth all understanding; and he who travels twenty sleeps on the Long Trail is a man whom the gods may envy.
The afternoon wore on, and with the awe, born of the White Silence, the voiceless travelers bent to their work. Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity,—the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven’s artillery,—but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot’s life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him,—the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence,—it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
So wore the day away. The river took a great bend, and Mason headed his team for the cut-off across the narrow neck of land. But the dogs balked at the high bank. Again and again, though Ruth and Malemute Kid were shoving on the sled, they slipped back. Then came the concerted effort. The miserable creatures, weak from hunger, exerted their last strength. Up—up—the sled poised on the top of the bank; but the leader swung the string of dogs behind him to the right, fouling Mason’s snowshoes. The result was grievous. Mason was whipped off his feet; one of the dogs fell in the traces; and the sled toppled back, dragging everything to the bottom again.
Slash! the whip fell among the dogs savagely, especially upon the one which had fallen.
“Don’t, Mason,” entreated Malemute Kid; “the poor devil’s on its last legs. Wait and we’ll put my team on.”
Mason deliberately withheld the whip till the last word had fallen, then out flashed the long lash, completely curling about the offending creature’s body. Carmen—for it was Carmen—cowered in the snow, cried piteously, then rolled over on her side.
It was a tragic moment, a pitiful incident of the trail,—a dying dog, two comrades in anger. Ruth glanced solicitously from man to man. But Malemute Kid restrained himself, though there was a world of reproach in his eyes, and bending over the dog, cut the traces. No word was spoken. The teams were double-spanned and the difficulty overcome; the sleds were under way again, the
dying dog dragging herself along in the rear. As long as an animal can travel, it is not shot, and this last chance is accorded it,—the crawling into camp, if it can, in the hope of a moose being killed.
Already penitent for his angry action, but too stubborn to make amends, Mason toiled on at the head of the cavalcade, little dreaming that danger hovered in the air. The timber clustered thick in the sheltered bottom, and through this they threaded their way. Fifty feet or more from the trail towered a lofty pine. For generations it had stood there, and for generations destiny had had this one end in view,—perhaps the same had been decreed of Mason.
He stooped to fasten the loosened thong of his moccasin. The sleds came to a halt and the dogs lay down in the snow without a whimper. The stillness was weird; not a breath rustled the frost-encrusted forest; the cold and silence of outer space had chilled the heart and smote the trembling lips of nature. A sigh pulsed through the air,—they did not seem to actually hear it, but rather felt it, like the premonition of movement in a motionless void. Then the great tree, burdened with its weight of years and snow, played its last part in the tragedy of life. He heard the warning crash and attempted to spring up, but almost erect, caught the blow squarely on the shoulder.
The sudden danger, the quick death,—how often had Malemute Kid faced it! The pine needles were still quivering as he gave his commands and sprang into action. Nor did the Indian girl faint or raise her voice in idle wailing, as might many of her white sisters. At his order, she threw her weight on the end of a quickly extemporized handspike, easing the pressure and listening to her husband’s groans, while Malemute Kid attacked the tree with his axe. The steel rang merrily as it bit into the frozen trunk, each stroke being accompanied by a forced, audible respiration, the “Huh!” “Huh!” of the woodsman.
