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He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for
all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned
the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was
a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,
and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer
aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the
latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs
came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging
and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass
under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he
looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck:
a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not
necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he
did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails,
and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate
nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly,
and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such
times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of
the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never
came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was
glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who
spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck
could not understand.

"Sacredam!" he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. "Dat one dam bully
dog! Eh? How moch?"

"Three hundred, and a present at that," was the prompt reply of the man
in the red sweater. "And seem' it's government money, you ain't got no
kick coming, eh, Perrault?"

Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed
skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine
an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its
despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at
Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand--"One in ten t'ousand," he
commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a
good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened
man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as
Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it
was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below
by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois.
Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Francois was a
French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind
of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and while
he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew honestly to
respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and Francois were fair
men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other
dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had
been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied
a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous
sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some
underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the
first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip
sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained
to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided,
and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and
he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and
further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. "Dave"
he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took
interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte
Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When
Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as
though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and went
to sleep again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller,
and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that
the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the
propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of
excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change
was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the
first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy
something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white
stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell
upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It
bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried
it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and
he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.




Chapter II. The Law of Club and Fang


Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was
filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the
heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.
No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be
bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All
was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.
There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men
were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no
law but the law of club and fang.

He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his
first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was
a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.
Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in
her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown
wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap
in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and
Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there
was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and
surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not
comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they
were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again
and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar
fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them, This
was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,
snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath
the bristling mass of bodies.

So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback. He saw
Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing; and he saw
Francois, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men
with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two
minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were
clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled
snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing
over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to
trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down,
that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went
down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment
Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.

Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing
of Curly, he received another shock. Francois fastened upon him an
arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had seen
the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he had seen horses work,
so he was set to work, hauling Francois on a sled to the forest that
fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though his
dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too
wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though
it was all new and strange. Francois was stern, demanding instant
obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience;
while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quarters
whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,
and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now
and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck
into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined
tuition of his two mates and Francois made remarkable progress. Ere they
returned to camp he knew enough to stop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush,"
to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the
loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.

"T'ree vair' good dogs," Francois told Perrault. "Dat Buck, heem pool
lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt'ing."

By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his
despatches, returned with two more dogs. "Billee" and "Joe" he called
them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though
they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault
was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and
introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received
them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to
thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly,

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the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out
of his desire for mastery. He was preeminently cunning, and could bide
his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted
it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been
gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and
trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which
lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts
if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as
wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride
that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and
sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride
that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night,
letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This was the
pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered
and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible
lead-dog. And this was Buck's pride, too.

He openly threatened the other's leadership. He came between him and the
shirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night
there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer,
did not appear. He was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.
Francois called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath.
He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely
place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his
hiding-place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him,
Buck flew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so
shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike,
who had been trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny,
and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a
forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Francois, chuckling at
the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought
his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck
from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into
play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash
laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still
continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it
craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck,
a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks
were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse.
Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling.
Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the
life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place
sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling
and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe,
fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson
one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many
men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the
ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up
and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling
bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up
to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa
Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main
they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant,
in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping
in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow,
this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it
was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and
was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It
was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the
younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe
of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that
was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the
cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be
stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through
the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling
ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the
steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and
Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent
than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him,
and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things
favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put
them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was
packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged
in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was
travelling light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and
the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.
But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and
vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt led by Buck
had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog
leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them
into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly
to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging
his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped
it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even
Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half
so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without
snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that
of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's
very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their
relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever
among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and
Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the
unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped
the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing
among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned
they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was behind all the
trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be
caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil

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through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was
heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red
sweater had proved that.

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulating
skeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their very
great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the
bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and distant,
just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and
distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply
so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a
halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the
spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whip
fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to
their feet and staggered on.

There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise.
Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee
on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the
harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and
they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona
went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant;
Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough
longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil
of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with
which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who
was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck,
still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or
striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping
the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware
of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three
in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long
day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way
to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all
the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that
lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not
moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines.
The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines
were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and
in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into
the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the
forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked
the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the
air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of
unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon
was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away
from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprang
and spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into
the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening
life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like
wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing
innocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into
John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted,
the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedes
dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log
to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly what of his great
stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last
touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled
and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse
advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that
it would not be followed.

"They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail and
that the best thing for us to do was to lay over," Hal said in response
to Thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. "They
told us we couldn't make White River, and here we are." This last with a
sneering ring of triumph in it.

"And they told you true," John Thornton answered. "The bottom's likely
to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck of fools,
could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass on
that ice for all the gold in Alaska."

"That's because you're not a fool, I suppose," said Hal. "All the same,
we'll go on to Dawson." He uncoiled his whip. "Get up there, Buck! Hi!
Get up there! Mush on!"

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool
and his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the
scheme of things.

But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed
into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed
out, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed
his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed.
Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he
fell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buck
made no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into
him again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times
Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture
came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked
irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason
to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club.
Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon
him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he
had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending
doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and
it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had
felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at
hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive
him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was
he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon
him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly
out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was
aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He
no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of
the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far
away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was
inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang
upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as
though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on
wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his
stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too
convulsed with rage to speak.

"If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say
in a choking voice.

"It's my dog," Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came
back. "Get out of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going to Dawson."

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting
out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed,
cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria.
Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife
to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck's
traces.

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his
sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of
further use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out
from the bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his head
to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were
Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the
loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in
the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly
hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed
nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the
sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along
over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut,
and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's
scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to
run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans
disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had
dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

"You poor devil," said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.




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

t/wild.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

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.