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. He was still limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck. And here, lying by the river bank through the long spring days, watching the water, listening to the songs of birds, Buck slowly got back his strength.

They were all loafing, – Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and Nig, – waiting for the raft that would 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 resist her. She had the doctor talent which some dogs have; so she washed and cleansed Buck’s wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast, she performed her task. Nig, friendly, though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and half deerhound, with eyes that laughed.

To Buck’s surprise these dogs showed no jealousy toward him. They seemed to share the kindliness of John Thornton. As Buck grew stronger they invited him into all sorts of games, in which Thornton himself joined; and so Buck came into a new existence. Love, true passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s house. Now it was a burning love, adoration, madness for Thornton.

This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was the ideal master. Other men cared about their dogs from a sense of duty and business; he cared his as if they were his own children. He never forgot a kind word, and to sit down for a long talk with them, which was as much his delight as theirs. He took Buck’s head between his hands, and rested his own head upon Buck’s, of shaked him back and forth, calling him ill names that to Buck were love names. Buck knew no greater joy than that, and at each move it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body, so great was its love. And when he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, John Thornton exclaimed, “God! you can all but speak!”

Buck could often get Thornton’s hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that there was the impress of his teeth for some time after. And as Buck understood the ill words to be love words, so the man understood this fake bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck was content to adore at a distance. He could lie for hours, looking up into Thornton’s face, studying it, following every movement. And often John Thornton returned this look, 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 previous masters since he had come into the Northland had made him 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 at night, in his dreams, he feared that. At such times he got up, went to the tent and listened to the sound of his master’s breathing.

But in spite of this great love for John Thornton, the primordial nature, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active. He came in from the wild to sit by John Thornton’s fire. 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.

His face and body were marked by the teeth of many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever. Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for quarrelling, – besides, they belonged to John Thornton; but the strange dog quickly acknowledged Buck’s supremacy. And Buck was merciless. He had learnt the law of club and fang well. He knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy was misunderstood for fear, and fear meant death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the old law.

He sat by John Thornton’s fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shadows of other dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, tasting the meat he ate and the water he drank, scenting and listening with him, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams.

So strongly these shadows called to him, that each day mankind went farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding imperatively, and he felt he had to turn his back upon the fire and to run into the forest, on and on, he knew not where or why. But as soon as he got to the forest, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. When Thornton’s partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learnt they were close to Thornton; after that he tolerated them. They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly; they understood Buck and did not insist upon friendship.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day the men and dogs were sitting on the cliff. A mad idea came to Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. “Jump, Buck!” he commanded, waving his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was dragging Buck from the edge, with Pete and Hans helping him.

“It’s awful,” Pete said, after it was over.

Thornton shook his head. “No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too. It sometimes makes me afraid.”

“I wouldn’t be the man that offends you while he’s near,” Pete said, nodding his head toward Buck. Hans agreed.

It was at Circle City that Pete’s apprehensions were realized. “Black” Burton, a terrible man, had been having a quarrel with another man at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as usual, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his master’s every action, when Burton hit, without warning, straight from the shoulder.

Those who were looking on heard a roar, and saw Buck rush for Burton’s throat. The man saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but fell on the floor with Buck on top of him. Next moment his throat was torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he walked up and down, growling furiously, attempting to rush in. People decided that the dog was provoked, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was made, and from that day his name was known in every camp in Alaska.

Later on, in autumn of the year, he saved John Thornton’s life in quite another fashion. The three partners were driving a poling-boat down the rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans and Pete moved along the bank, with a rope while Thornton remained in the boat, with a pole. But, at a particularly bad place, is so happened that the boat turned bottom up, while Thornton, flung out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids.

Buck had jumped in at once; and at the end of three hundred yards, among a mad swirl of water, he caught Thornton. When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck turned for the bank, swimming with all his strength. But river current was stronger. They could die on the sharp stones below. Thornton understood that to get to the shore was impossible. He clutched one slippery rock, releasing Buck, and shouted: “Go, Buck! Go!”

When he heard Thornton’s command repeated, he held his head high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was dragged from the water by Pete and Hans.

They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock was just a few 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 rope to Buck’s neck and shoulders and put him into the water. He swam well, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and, while he was being carried helplessly past by the power of running water.

When got back to the bank, he was half drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and the water out of him. The sound of Thornton’s voice came to them, and though they could not make out the words, they knew that he was losing strength. 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 he was put in the water with the rope around him. This time Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then with the speed of an express train he swam upon him. Thornton closed with both arms around his neck. Suffocating, smashing against rocks, they came to the bank.

Thornton’s first glance was for Buck, over whose seemingly lifeless body Nig was howling, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised and injured, and he went carefully over Buck’s body, finding three broken ribs.

“We camp right here,” he announced. And so they did, till Buck was able to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another trick, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame.

In the Eldorado Saloon men boasted of their favourite dogs. One man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off with it; a second said six hundred for his dog; and a third, seven hundred.

“Buck can start a thousand pounds,” – said John Thornton.

“And walk off with it for a hundred yards?” demanded Matthewson, the master of the seven-hundred-bet dog.

“Sure,” John Thornton said coolly.

“Well,” Matthewson said, “I’ve got a thousand dollars that says he can’t. And there it is.” So saying, he put a sack of gold dust upon the bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton did not know whether Buck could move a thousand pounds. Half a ton! He had great faith in Buck’s strength; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it. And he had no thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.

“I’ve got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it,” Matthewson went on; “let’s use it.”

Thornton did not know what to say. The face of Jim O’Brien, an old-time comrade, caught his eyes.

“Can you lend me a thousand?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“Sure,” answered O’Brien, putting a sack near Matthewson’s. “Though I doubt, John, that the dog can do it.”

Everyone came into the street to see the test. Matthewson’s sled, with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a couple of hours, and in the cold (it was sixty below zero) the runners had frozen into the snow. Odds went up to three to one against Buck. Not a man believed him capable of the trick. Now when Thornton looked at the sled, with the regular team of ten dogs beside it, the more impossible the task looked. Matthewson was happy.

“Three to one!” he cried. “I’ll lay you another thousand, Thornton. What do you say?”

Thornton’s doubt was strong in his face, but he had his fighting spirit. He called Hans and Pete. The three partners could find together only two hundred dollars. This sum was their total capital; yet they laid it against Matthewson’s six hundred.

Buck, with his own harness, was put into the sled. He felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton.

He was in perfect condition. His furry coat shone like silk. Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane seemed to lift with every movement. The great breast and heavy fore legs were in proportion with the rest of the body, where the muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men touched these muscles and saw they were hard as iron, and the odds went down to two to one.

The crowd fell silent. Everybody saw Buck was a magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks were too large in their eyes.

Thornton knelt down by Buck’s side. He took his head in his hands and rested cheek on cheek. “A s you love me, Buck. As you love me,” was what he whispered in his ear. Buck whined with eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The thing was growing mysterious. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck got his hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth. It was the answer, not of speech, but of love. Thornton stepped back.

“Now, Buck,” he said.

Buck tightened the traces and turned right and left. The load was shaken, and from under the runners came crackling. The sled was broken out.

“Now, MUSH!”

Buck threw himself forward. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad. The sled shook, half-started forward. Then the sled went ahead…half an inch…an inch… two inches… till it was moving slowly along.

Men began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had forgot to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck. As he to the end of the hundred yards and stopped at command, the crowd roared. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth and cursing him softly and lovingly.

Somebody offered Thornton twelve hundred for Buck. Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. “Sir,” he said to the man, “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 again. And the people did not dare to disturb them.