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The Call of the Wild
Chapter 8. For the Love of a Man
When John Thornton froze his feet the previous December, his partners made him comfortable and left him to get well.
They went on up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson.
He was still limping a little when he rescued Buck, but with the warm weather even that slight limp left him.
Buck lay by the river bank through the long spring days, watching the running water.
Listening lazily to birds' songs and the hum of nature, he slowly won back his strength.
A rest feels very good after one has travelled three thousand miles.
And it must be said that Buck grew 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 that was to carry them down to Dawson.
Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with Buck.
He was in a dying condition and couldn't 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 cleaned Buck's wounds.
Regularly, each morning after he finished his breakfast, she performed her self-appointed task.
He came to look for her care as much as he did for Thornton's.
Nig, equally friendly, though less showy, 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 showed no jealousy toward him.
They seemed to share the kindliness and big-heartedness of John Thornton.
As Buck grew stronger, they invited him into all sorts of silly games, in which Thornton himself couldn't help joining.
And in this way Buck played through his recovery and into a new life.
Love, real passionate love, was his for the first time.
He had never experienced this at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
With the Judge's sons, hunting and hiking, it had been a working partnership.
With the Judge's grandsons, it had been a sort of proud 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 awaken this.
This man had saved his life, which was something.
But further, he was the perfect master.
Other men looked after their dogs' welfare from a sense of duty and business practicality.
He looked after his dogs' welfare as if they were his own children, because he couldn't help it.
And he saw further, he never forgot a kind greeting or a cheerful 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.
He'd rest his own head upon Buck's and shake him back and forth.
While doing this, he called Buck bad names that were love names to Buck.
Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of murmured curses.
And at each jerk back and forth, it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body, so great was his happiness.
He was released and jumped to his feet.
His mouth was laughing, his eyes full of feeling.
His throat was full of unspoken sound, he stayed without moving.
"John Thornton would say with great respect, "God!" You can almost speak!"
Buck had a way of showing love that was like hurt.
He'd often take Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the flesh showed the mark of his teeth for some time afterward.
And as Buck understood the curses to be love words, so the man understood this pretended bite for a caress.
For the most part, however, Buck's love was shown in adoration.
While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to him, he didn't look for these signs.
Unlike Skeet, Buck was happy to adore from a distance.
Skeet would push her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge till she was petted.
Nig would walk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee.
He'd lie for hours, eager and alert at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, studying and following every passing expression and movement
Or, by chance, he'd lie farther away, to the side or behind, watching the man's outline and occasional movements.
And often, such was the connection in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze would draw John Thornton's head around.
He'd 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 didn't 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 temporary 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 troubled by this fear.
At such times he'd shake off sleep and creep through the cold to the flap of the tent.
There he'd stand and listen to the sound of his master's breathing.
But despite the great love he bore John Thornton, which showed a soft civilizing influence, he kept a primitive strain.
The Northland had awakened that strain, and it remained alive and active.
Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his.
Yet he kept his wildness and cleverness.
He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire.
He was not a dog of the soft Southland marked with signs of generations of civilization.
Because of his very great love, he couldn't steal from this man.
But from any other man, in any other camp, he didn't hesitate for an instant.
And the cunning with which he stole allowed him to escape being caught.
His face and body were marked by the teeth of many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever and more cleverly.
Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for fighting - besides, they belonged to John Thornton.
But the strange dog, no matter what the breed or courage, quickly accepted Buck's superiority or found himself struggling for life with a terrible enemy.
And Buck was merciless, he had learned well the law of club and fang.
And he never gave up an advantage or backed away from a foe he had started on the way to Death.
He had learned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle path.
He must master or be mastered, and to show mercy was a weakness.
Mercy didn't exist in the primitive life.
It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings led to death.
Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law.
And this command, from the depths of Time, he obeyed.
He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn.
He connected past and present, and the eternity behind him throbbed in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed like tides and seasons.
He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-chested dog, white-fanged and long-furred.
Behind him were the shadows of many dogs, half-wolves, and wild wolves.
They were urgent and pushing, tasting the meat he ate.
They thirsted for the water he drank.
They smelled the wind with him and listened with him.
They told him the sounds of forest wildlife.
They dictated his moods and directed his actions.
When he lay down, they slept with him.
They dreamed with him and beyond him, becoming the stuff of his dreams.
So strongly did these shadows call him that each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him.
Deep in the forest a call was sounding.
He often heard this call, it was mysteriously exciting and tempting.
He felt forced to turn his back on the fire and the beaten earth.
Then he plunged into the forest, on and on, not knowing where or why.
Nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding strongly, deep in the forest.
But as often as he reached 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 showy man he'd 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 big type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly.
Before they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw-mill at Dawson, they learned to understand Buck and his ways.
They did not insist on the closeness they showed 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.
The men and dogs sat on top of a cliff.
The cliff fell straight down three hundred feet to bare rock below.
They had supplied themselves with money from the raft.
Then they left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana.
John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder.
A thoughtless whim took 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 struggling with Buck on the very edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety.
"It's strange," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech.
Thornton shook his head slowly, unable to speak, tears standing in his eyes.
"No, it's wonderful, and it's terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."
"I'm not eager to be the man that lays hands on you while he's around," Pete announced firmly, nodding his head toward Buck.
"By Jingo!" was Hans's contribution.
"Not myself either."
It was at Circle City, before the year was out, that Pete's fears came true.
"Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a newcomer at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between.
Buck, as was his habit, 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 grabbing the rail of the bar.
Those who were watching 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 thrown backward to the floor with Buck on top of him.
Buck let go of the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat.
This time the man only partly blocked it, and his throat was torn open.
Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off.
While a doctor stopped the bleeding, he paced, growling, trying to rush in but forced back by a line of hostile clubs.
A "miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the dog had enough reason, and Buck was set free.
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 way.
The three partners were guiding a long and narrow poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek.
Hans and Pete moved along the bank, tying a thin Manila rope from tree to tree.
Thornton stayed in the boat, helped its descent with a pole, and shouted directions to the shore.
Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious, kept level with the boat, his eyes never off his master.
At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely hidden rocks stuck out into the river, Hans let go of the rope.
Thornton poled the boat out into the stream.
Hans ran down the bank, holding the rope end to tie the boat after it cleared the ledge.
This it did, and was flying down-stream in a current as fast as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly.
The boat flipped over, it was tied to the bank, bottom up.
Thornton was thrown completely out, he was carried downstream toward the worst part of the rapids.
This was a stretch of wild water where no swimmer could live.
Buck had jumped in on the instant.
And at the end of three hundred yards, in a mad swirl of water, he caught up with Thornton.
When he felt him grab his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his wonderful strength.
But the progress toward shore was slow, the progress down-stream was amazingly fast.
From below came the deadly roaring where the wild current went wilder.
It was torn into pieces and spray by rocks that stuck through like the teeth of an enormous comb.
The pull of the water as it took the beginning of the last steep drop was terrible, 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 grabbed its slippery top with both hands, letting go of Buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted, "Go, Buck! Go!"
Buck couldn't hold his own, and was swept on down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to get back.
When he heard Thornton's command repeated, he partly rose out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look.
Then he turned obediently toward the bank.
He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swimming stopped being possible and destruction began.
They knew that the time a man could hold onto 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 they had been using to tie the boat to Buck's neck and shoulders.
They were careful it would neither choke him nor stop his swimming, and then 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 level with him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.
Hans quickly pulled tight on 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 stayed till his body struck against the bank and he was pulled 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 couldn't make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his final danger.
His master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock.
He jumped 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 wouldn't make that mistake a second time.
Hans let out the rope, allowing no slack, while Pete kept it free 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.
When Buck struck him like a battering ram with the current behind him, he reached and closed both arms around the shaggy neck.
Hans pulled the rope tight around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water.
Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one on top and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they swung in to the bank.
Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently pushed back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete.
His first look was for Buck, limp and battered where they had dragged him ashore.
Over his 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 healed and he was able to travel.
That winter at Dawson, Buck performed a feat that raised his name many notches on Alaska's totem pole.
This feat was especially pleasing to the three men.
For they needed the outfit which it provided, and were able to make a long-desired trip into the untouched East, where miners hadn't yet appeared.
It was brought about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which men bragged about their favorite dogs.
Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton was forced to defend him strongly.
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 boast.
"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John Thornton said coolly.
"Well," Matthewson said slowly and carefully, 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 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 didn't know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton! The enormousness of it shocked 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 did Hans or Pete.
"I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness.
"So don't let that stop you."
Thornton didn't reply, he didn't know what to say.
He looked from face to face in an absent way, like a man who had lost the power of thought.
He searched for something, somewhere, to start his mind going again.
The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time comrade, caught his eyes.
It was like a signal to him, seeming to wake him up to do what he'd never have dreamed of doing.
"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a fat sack by the side of Matthewson's.
"Though I don't have much faith, 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 out to see the outcome of the bet and to lay odds.
Several hundred men, furred and mittened, crowded 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 couldn't move the sled.
A small argument arose concerning the phrase "break out."
O'Brien argued it was Thornton's right 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 seen the making of the bet decided in his favor.
At that, 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 bet, heavy with doubt.
Now that he looked at the sled itself as a concrete fact, he saw the team of ten dogs curled up before it.
The task seemed more impossible.
Matthewson grew joyful, rubbing his hands and grinning as the crowd cheered.
"Three to one!" he proclaimed.
"I'll bet you another thousand at that figure, Thornton. What do you say?"
Thornton's doubt showed strongly on his face.
His fighting spirit awakened, it rose above odds, ignored the impossible, and was deaf to everything but the call to battle.
He called Hans and Pete to him.
Their sacks were thin, and with his own the three partners could gather together only two hundred dollars.
In the low point of their fortunes, this sum was their total capital.
Yet they laid it without hesitation 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 excitement, and he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton.
Murmurs of admiration at his wonderful appearance went up.
He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of extra flesh.
And the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of courage and strength.
His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk.
Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane half bristled even when still.
It seemed to lift with every movement, as though too much energy made each hair alive and active.
His great chest and heavy forelegs were proportioned to his body, muscles showing in tight rolls under the skin.
Men felt these muscles and declared 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 away from him," Matthewson protested.
"Free play and plenty of room."
The crowd fell silent, Only the voices of the gamblers could be heard, vainly offering two to one.
Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal and admired his strength and noble bearing.
But twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour looked too big in their eyes for them to open their money bags.
Thornton knelt down by Buck's side, he took his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek.
He didn't playfully shake him, as was his habit, 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 held-back eagerness, his tail twitching and eyes bright with longing.
The crowd was watching curiously, the affair was growing mysterious, it seemed like a magic spell.
As Thornton got to his feet, Buck took his mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and letting go 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 loosened 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 right, plunged to take up the slack and, with a sudden jerk, stopped his one hundred fifty pounds.
The load shook, and from under the runners came a crisp crackling.
"Haw!" Thornton commanded.
Buck repeated the movement, this time to the left.
The crackling turned into a snapping, the sled turned, and the runners slipped and scraped several inches to the side.
The sled was broken out, Men were holding their breaths, deeply unaware 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 twisted and knotted like live things under the silky fur.
His great chest was low, head forward, feet flying, claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves.
The sled swayed and shook, half-started forward.
One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud.
Then the sled moved ahead in a rapid series of jerks, though it never stopped, half an inch, an inch, two inches.
The jerks grew noticeably smaller, As the sled gained speed, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.
Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had stopped breathing.
Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheerful words.
The distance had been measured off, As he neared the pile of firewood, a cheer began to grow.
It marked the end of the hundred yards.
The cheer burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and stopped at command.
Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson.
Hats and mittens were flying in the air.
Men were shaking hands, it didn't matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general confused noise.
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 warmly, 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 openly 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 took Thornton's hand in his teeth.
Thornton shook him back and forth, As though moved by a common feeling, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance.
Nor were they again foolish enough to interrupt.