Chapter Chapter 6 · For the Love of a Man

. 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 François 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 manœuvre, 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.