The Wild by Christopher Golden Page B

hesitation. They bade Jim a good night and went down to the hotel lobby. Just before they stepped outside, Merritt grabbed Jack’s arm.
    â€œJack, I’ve got to speak plainly. I’m not sure I like what happened today. I know you’ve lived rough, at times, but that scene with the dog…I confess it shocked me a little.”
    â€œBut what they were doing to that kid—”
    â€œThey had it coming for sure, Jack! I’m no coward, and I’ll not shy away from a confrontation. But for a while there you looked…wild.”
    â€œWe’re in the wild, Merritt,” Jack said. He could think of so much more to say then—about looking after yourself, and kill or be killed—but instead he went out into the Dawson City night, and Merritt followed.
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    They found a table in the corner of the Dawson Bar and sat nursing their drinks as the world went on around them. It was not unlike a dozen such bars Jack had frequented along the harbor in San Francisco and Oakland, but there was something about this place that gave it a sharper, harder edge. It took a while for Jack to place it—it took two drinks, both of them nursed carefully and drunk withdelectation—but then he had it:
    Desperation. This place hummed with it; it wound its way into and out of every smiling face and laughing mouth, and Dawson City at night really was little different from how it had been during the day. The only slight distinction was that at night, the people’s disillusionment came out in different ways.
    â€œI’ll never be like this, Merritt,” Jack said. “I’ll always have hope. Promise me you will, too?”
    â€œOf course I will!” Merritt said, grinning. “Jack, I know what you see, but give these people a chance. Many of them have probably been here for over a year, separated from their loved ones, doing their best to find—”
    â€œI’ll bet half of them haven’t even left Dawson since they arrived! Prospectors?” Jack looked around, trying to see if he could make out who spent their time prospecting, and who lived off the prospectors’ needs. Perhaps he was being unfair: After all, they were availing themselves of the limited facilities Dawson had to offer. But Jack’s spirit was free and determined, and he could not understand how someone could have come this far and then not gone that extra small step. This could well have been a bar anywhere in North America, but beyond those doors and out in the wilds, there could lie a world’s ransom just waiting to be found.
    And it wasn’t all about money. It was about grabbing life and living it to the fullest. The adventure had left these people, and having hauled themselves through the wilderness and countless hardships, they were creating new lives that were probably barely discernible from their old ones.
    â€œYoung as you are, you’re a hard man,” Merritt said, and that shocked Jack. He saw that his friend meant it, and it wasn’t just about the fight they’d been in that day. It was something deeper.
    Is it true? he wondered. Who is Jack London? He thought about that as he drank. And he could never have known that within weeks, that familiar question would be answered for him in a manner he could not possibly imagine.
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    Hollow-eyed prospectors told tales at the bar to anyone willing to spring for the price of a drink. Local merchants, lost men without the nerve to set off into the true wilderness, abandoned women, and new arrivals nearly trembling with the excitement of their dreams…all gathered around to listen to tales of epic dogsled races, fistfights and murders, and the men who’d struck it rich. The bar breathed resentment and greed, filled with a collective yearning for gold.
    Amid those tales, though, were others—the stories and legends of the north. There were Indian curses, river gods, and wandering ghosts to be found in the