'How much are they paying you for this?' he asked.
'I only get fifty dollars.'
'And the man who stole him - how much did he get?' asked the barman.
'A hundred. He wouldn't take less.'
'That makes a hundred and fifty. It's a good price for a dog like him. Here, help me to get
him into this.'
They took off Buck's rope and pushed him into a wooden box. He spent the night in the
box in the back room of the bar. His neck still ached with pain from the rope, and he could
not understand what it all meant. What did they want with him, these strange men? And
where was Mr Miller?
The next day Buck was carried in the box to the railway station and put on a train to the
north. For two days and nights the train travelled north, and for two days and nights Buck
neither ate nor drank. Men on the train laughed at him and pushed sticks at him through the
holes in the box. For two days and nights Buck got angrier and hungrier and thirstier. His
eyes grew red and he bit anything that moved.
In Seattle four men took Buck to a small, high-walled back garden, where a fat man in an
old red coat was waiting. Buck was now very angry indeed and he jumped and bit at the
sides of his box. The fat man smiled and went to get an axe and a club.
'Are you going to take him out now?' asked one of the men.
'Of course,' answered the fat man, and he began to break the box with his axe.
Immediately the four other men climbed up onto the wall to watch from a safe place.
As the fat man hit the box with his axe, Buck jumped at the sides, growling and biting,
pulling with his teeth at the pieces of broken wood. After a few minutes there was a hole big
enough for Buck to get out.
'Now, come here, red eyes,' said the fat man, dropping his axe and taking the club in his
right hand.
Buck jumped at the man, sixty kilos of anger, his mouth wide open ready to bite the
man's neck. Just before his teeth touched the skin, the man hit him with the club. Buck fell to
the ground. It was the first time anyone had hit him with a club and he did not understand.
He stood up, and jumped again. Again the club hit him and he crashed to the ground. Ten
times he jumped at the man, and ten times the club hit him.