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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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