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, genuinepassionate 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 mightyrhythm 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