CHAPTER VI

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.

• 6小时掌握学英语的秘诀！——点击看答案
• 专治男女记不住单词的秘密