Brown Wolf

"Brown Wolf," a short story by Jack London, explores the bond between humans and animals through the eyes of a dog named Brown Wolf. Set against the backdrop of the rugged wilderness, the narrative follows the journey of a wealthy man who adopts the dog, reflecting on themes of loyalty, survival, and the intrinsic connection between man and nature. The story highlights the instincts of Brown Wolf as he navigates various challenges, showcasing London's mastery in depicting the raw and emotional interplay between humans and their animal companions. As the tale unfolds, it reveals deeper insights into trust, freedom, and the essence of companionship.

								
She had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on
her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting
husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud. She sent a
questing glance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard
trees.

"Where's Wolf?" she asked.

"He was here a moment ago." Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk
from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and
surveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the last I saw of him."

"Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing and took
the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita jungle to
the county road.

Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent
to her efforts a shrill whistling.

She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace.

"My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can
make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle--"

"Orpheus."

"I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely.

"Poesy does not prevent one from being practical--at least it doesn't
prevent me. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell gems to the
magazines."

He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:

"I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am
practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute itself,
with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage, a sweet
mountain-meadow, a grove of redwoods, an orchard of thirty-seven
trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows of strawberries,
to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling brook. I am a
beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue utility, dear Madge.
I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine editors I transmute my song
into a waft of the west wind sighing through our redwoods, into a
murmur of waters over mossy stones that sings back to me another song
than the one I sang and yet the same song wonderfully--er--transmuted."

"O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she laughed.

"Name one that wasn't."

"Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that was
accounted the worst milker in the township."

"She was beautiful--" he began,

"But she didn't give milk," Madge interrupted.

"But she was beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted.

"And here's where beauty and utility fall out," was her reply. "And
there's the Wolf!"

From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush, and
then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock,
appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced fore paws dislodged
a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the
fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then he transferred
his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them.

"You Wolf, you!" and "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called out
to him.

The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed to
snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand.

They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded
on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail
where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst
of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not
demonstrative. A pat and a rub around the ears from the man, and a more
prolonged caressing from the woman, and he was away down the trail
in front of them, gliding effortlessly over the ground in true wolf
fashion.

In build and coat and brush he was a huge timber-wolf; but the lie
was given to his wolfhood by his color and marking. There the dog
unmistakably advertised itself. No wolf was ever colored like him. He
was brown, deep brown, red-brown, an orgy of browns. Back and shoulders
were a warm brown that paled on the sides and underneath to a yellow
that was dingy because of the brown that lingered in it. The white of
the throat and paws and the spots over the eyes was dirty because of
the persistent and ineradicable brown, while the eyes themselves were
twin topazes, golden and brown.

The man and woman loved the dog very much; perhaps this was because
it had been such a task to win his love. It had been no easy matter
when he first drifted in mysteriously out of nowhere to their little
mountain cottage. Footsore and famished, he had killed a rabbit under
their very noses and under their very windows, and then crawled away
and slept by the spring at the foot of the blackberry bushes. When Walt
Irvine went down to inspect the intruder, he was snarled at for his
pains, and Madge likewise was snarled at when she went down to present,
as a peace-offering, a large pan of bread and milk.

A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their advances,
refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with bared fangs
and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping and resting by
the spring, and eating the food they gave him after they set it down
at a safe distance and retreated. His wretched physical condition
explained why he lingered; and when he had recuperated, after several
days' sojourn, he disappeared.

And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his wife
were concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been called away
into the northern part of the state. Riding along on the train, near
to the line between California and Oregon, he chanced to look out of
the window and saw his unsociable guest sliding along the wagon road,
brown and wolfish, tired yet tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two
hundred miles of travel.

Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at the
next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and captured
the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip was made
in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the mountain
cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to by the man
and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making. Remote and alien
as a traveller from another planet, he snarled down their soft-spoken
love-words. He never barked. In all the time they had him he was never
known to bark.

To win him became a problem. Irvine liked problems. He had a metal
plate made, on which was stamped: RETURN TO WALT IRVINE, GLEN ELLEN,
SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. This was riveted to a collar and strapped
about the dog's neck. Then he was turned loose, and promptly he
disappeared. A day later came a telegram from Mendocino County. In
twenty hours he had made over a hundred miles to the north, and was
still going when captured.

He came back by Wells Fargo Express, was tied up three days, and was
loosed on the fourth and lost. This time he gained southern Oregon
before he was caught and returned. Always, as soon as he received his

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