![]() And as Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this feigned bite for a caress.įor the most part, however, Buck’s love was expressed in adoration. 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 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!īuck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. 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. 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. 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. 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. This man had saved his life, which was something but, further, he was the ideal master. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse. ![]() 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. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. 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. They seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. To Buck’s surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. ![]() 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. 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. 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. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first advances. 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. 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.Ī 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. He was still limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued warm weather even the slight limp left him. 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.
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