The story opens with Buck, a large and powerful St. Bernard-Scotch Shepherd mix,[1][2] living happily in California's Santa Clara Valley as the pampered pet of rich Judge Miller and his family. However, assistant gardener Manuel, in need of money to finance his gambling addiction, steals Buck and sells him. Buck is shipped to Seattle. Put in a crate, he is starved and ill-treated. When released, he attacks his overseer, known only as of the "man in the red sweater" but this man teaches the "law of the club", hitting Buck until he is sufficiently cowed (but the man shows some kindness after Buck stops). Buck is then sold to a pair of French-Canadian dispatchers from the Canadian government, François and Perrault, who take him with them to Alaska. There, they train him as a sled dog, and drive him through the Klondike region of Canada. From his teammates, he quickly learns to survive cold winter nights and the pack society. A rivalry develops between Buck and the vicious, quarrelsome lead dog, Spitz. Buck eventually beats Spitz in a fight and kills him, and then becomes the new leader of the team.