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 traveled 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.