When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December his partners
had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves
up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was still
limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued
warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying by the river
bank through the long spring days, watching the running water, listening
lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back
his strength.
A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles,
and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his
muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For
that matter, they were all loafing,--Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet
and Nig,--waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to
Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with
Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first
advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a
mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's
wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast,
she performed her self-appointed task, till he came to look for her
ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly,
though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and
half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature.
To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They
seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck
grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in
which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion
Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love,
genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never
experienced at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working
partnership; with the Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship;
and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love
that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it
had taken John Thornton to arouse.
This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was
the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a
sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as
if they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw
further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to
sit down for a long talk with them ("gas" he called it) was as much his
delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between
his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him back
and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love
names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of
murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart
would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy. And when,
released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent,
his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained
without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, "God! you can
all but speak!"
Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. He would
often seize Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the
flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And as
Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this
feigned bite for a caress.
For the most part, however, Buck's love was expressed in adoration.
While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to
him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove
her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig,
who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck was
content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert,
at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying
it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every
movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie
farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and
the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the communion
in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze would draw John
Thornton's head around, and he would return the gaze, without speech,
his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.
For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out
of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it
again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he
had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could
be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as
Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in
the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times
he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of
the tent, where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's
breathing.
But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed
to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive,
which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active.
Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet
he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come
in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog
of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of
civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from
this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate
an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape
detection.
His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he
fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too
good-natured for quarrelling,--besides, they belonged to John Thornton;
but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly
acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life with
a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned well the
law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back
from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from
Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew
there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show
mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was
misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill
or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out
of the depths of Time, he obeyed.
He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He
linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed
through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and
seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog,
white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting,
tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank,
scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the
sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods,
directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down,
and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff
of his dreams.
So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and
the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a
call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously
thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire
and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on
and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the
call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained
the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton
drew him back to the fire again.
Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance
travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all,
and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When
Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft,
Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton;
after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors
from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same
large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and
seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the
saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not
insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.
For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among
men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Nothing
was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had
grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson
for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the
crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three
hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his
shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention
of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he
commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he
was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were
dragging them back into safety.
"It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their
speech.
Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too.
Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."
"I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's
around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck.
"Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution. "Not mineself either."
It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions
were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had
been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton
stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a
corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck
out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent
spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of
the bar.
Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp, but a
something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's body
rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man
saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled
backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth
from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time
the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open.
Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon
checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously,
attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile
clubs. A "miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the dog had
sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was
made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.
Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in
quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow
poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans
and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from
tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent
by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the
bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off
his master.
At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks
jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton
poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in
his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did,
and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when
Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted
over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer
out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids,
a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.
Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred
yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt
him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his
splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress
down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where the
wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks
which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the
water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful,
and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously
over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing
force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and
above the roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!"
Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling
desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's command
repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as
though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam
powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point
where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.
They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face
of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as
they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging
on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to
Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle
him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck
out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the
mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen
strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.
Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The
rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was jerked
under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body
struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and
Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him
and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down. The
faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not
make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His
master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his
feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.
Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he struck
out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculated once,
but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope,
permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on
till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with
the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him
coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole
force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms
around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and
Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating,
sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the
jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the
bank.
Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back
and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was for
Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a
howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was
himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body,
when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs.
"That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here." And camp they
did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.
That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic,
perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole
of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to the three
men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were
enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners
had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the
Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs.
Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton
was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man
stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and
walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for his dog; and a third,
seven hundred.
"Pooh! pooh!" said John Thornton; "Buck can start a thousand pounds."
"And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?" demanded
Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.
"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John
Thornton said coolly.
"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could
hear, "I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it
is." So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna
sausage down upon the bar.
Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He
could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had
tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in
Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a
load; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes
of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no
thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.
"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fiftypound sacks of
flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness; "so don't let
that hinder you."
Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from
face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of
thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start
it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time
comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him
to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.
"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of
Matthewson's. "Though it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast
can do the trick."
The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The
tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see
the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred
and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson's
sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a
couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the
runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two
to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning
the phrase "break out." O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege
to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break it out" from a dead
standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the
runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the men who had
witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds
went up to three to one against Buck.
There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.
Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that
he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team
of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the
task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant.
"Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you another thousand at that
figure, Thornton. What d'ye say?"
Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was
aroused--the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize
the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called
Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three
partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of
their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it
unhesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred.
The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own harness, was
put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and
he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton.
Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in
perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one
hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and
virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and
across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and
seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each
particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs
were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the
muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these
muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two
to one.
"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king
of the Skookum Benches. "I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before
the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands."
Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.
"You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested. "Free play and
plenty of room."
The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers
vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent
animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their
eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.
Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands
and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his
wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. "As you
love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck whined with
suppressed eagerness.
The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It
seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his
mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech,
but of love. Thornton stepped well back.
"Now, Buck," he said.
Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several
inches. It was the way he had learned.
"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.
Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up
the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty
pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp
crackling.
"Haw!" Thornton commanded.
Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the left. The crackling
turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and
grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were
holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.
"Now, MUSH!"
Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself
forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body
was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles
writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great
chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his
feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in
parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward.
One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled
lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it
never really came to a dead stop again...half an inch...an inch... two
inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum,
he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.
Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they
had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck
with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he
neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards,
a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed
the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose,
even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were
shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a
general incoherent babel.
But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head,
and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him
cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and
lovingly.
"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the Skookum Bench king. "I'll give you
a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir--twelve hundred, sir."
Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming
frankly down his cheeks. "Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench king, "no,
sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir."
Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and
forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back
to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to
interrupt.
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