The Wild (24 page)

“If you end up with my knife in your gut, and flies buzzing around your corpse when the sun comes up, who's going to cry for you?” Jack asked.

Horse Face looked confused, but Archie flinched.

“That's what I thought,” Jack said. “So I'm going to give you a choice. You can fight, or you can forget about those kids and pan for your own damned gold. Maybe you'll get lucky, strike it rich, but you'll do it yourself.”

“Archie—,” Horse Face began.

Jack shook his head, never taking his eyes off of Archie.
“Don't listen. He's a greedy son of a bitch, just like you. Your last partner shot you. I shouldn't have to remind you, but it seems like you need reminding. Anyway, those are your choices. Walk away, or fight. But if you fight, know that I'll win. And though I don't want to kill you, we've both got knives, and people die in knife fights. It's the way of things.”

For several long seconds, Jack wasn't sure which way it would go.

Then Archie seemed to deflate. He smiled a little, almost in admiration, and he picked up his coat.

“You must be joking,” Horse Face said, striding toward him. “You're not really gonna let this—”

Archie punched him so hard that a tooth shot from his split and bloody mouth, catching the moonlight as it landed in the dirt. Horse Face hit the ground, tried to rise, and then only lay there, dazed.

Dragging on his coat, Archie walked away without so much as a backward glance.

“You had me scared there for a minute,” Merritt said. Jack picked up his gun belts and buckled them into place.

As he put his coat back on, Jack gave Merritt a reassuring smile but said nothing. He had come to the Yukon to conquer the wild, and finally he had done so, though not in a way he ever would have dreamed. It had become a part
of him, deep inside, and no matter where he wandered in the world, he would carry the wild with him, and would always hear its call.

Part of him would forever be the wolf, but first and foremost, Jack London was a man. A son, a brother, a friend. He had responsibilities, a truth that had been lost to him in the wild.

It was time to go home.

The Secret Journeys of Jack London
is a work of fiction. As such, it has taken some liberties with the truth. Most of the supernatural events are entirely invented, but readers may be surprised to learn that Jack's mother actually was a medium who held séances in the family home, and that the story of her offering him up to the spirits is a true one, at least according to biographer Alex Kershaw in his
Jack London: A Life
, which was one of our primary research sources. In this first volume, we have combined numerous elements, including details and characters from London's actual first journey to the Yukon, fictional parallels to the events of
The Call of the Wild
, and supernatural legends of the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness. For instance, the Wendigo is a traditional North American legend, a cannibalistic spirit that could possess humans, particularly
those who themselves indulged in cannibalism. Who's to say the actual scars Jack London brought back with him from the Yukon
weren't
caused by a confrontation with the Wendigo? Likewise, the scary, mysterious Leshii exists in Russian folklore: a wood spirit who plays tricks on people to make them lose their way in his forests. As far as we can, we've researched and tried to stay true to these legends. They're fascinating enough without us needing to change them.

We've also tried to make the settings and hardships Jack and his friends encounter as genuine and realistic as possible. Dyea and Dawson City were real places, true frontier towns, and were as wild and lawless as we've portrayed them here, populated with equally downbeat inhabitants. And the Chilkoot Trail really was as we described it—steep, deadly, and treacherous, littered with abandoned equipment and the corpses of dead horses. These men and women stampeders were hard people facing hard times, all in the search for the elusive gold…which, in truth, was found by few.

It should be noted that we have wilfully altered the timeline of history in one vital respect. Most of Jack's actual adventures in the north and at sea took place when he was in his early twenties. We have taken some small license in featuring him as a seventeen-and eighteen-year-old (and
somewhat larger license, in the sense that this means the gold rush takes place several years earlier in our fictional world than it did in reality). Altering Jack's age is not a great leap of artistic license, however, considering that at the age of thirteen he had bought a sloop from an oyster pirate and became a pirate himself, and at the age of seventeen he had signed on as a sailor on a schooner and traveled to Japan. By then, Jack London's life-changing journeys of adventure, danger, and excitement were well under way.

Our gratitude, first and foremost, to our agent Howard Morhaim, who always sees the big picture, and to the excellent Jordan Brown and everyone at HarperCollins. Big thanks to Greg Ruth for illustrations that perfectly match the soul of the novel. Thanks to Fox 2000 and the folks who made it happen: Peter Donaldson, Adam Rosen, Michael Prevett, and Riley Ellis. Thanks to Jeremy Lassen for wanting to buy it, and to Jason Williams for saying no. (Smile) And finally, a nod to the attendees of the “wild” Thai diner in Toronto in 2007, at which table the seed of this story was planted.

Jacket art © 2011 by Greg Ruth

Jacket design by Sarah Hoy