Chapter Six
For the Love of a Man
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.
Next Chapter |
