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1For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the
2summer travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked
3themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were
4sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John
5Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention
6of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm.
7The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into
8safety. "It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. "No, it
9is splendid, and it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid." "I'm not hankering to be the man that
10lays hands on you while he's around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck. "Py Jingo!" was Hans's
11contribution. "Not mineself either." It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions were
12realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar,
13when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his
14master's every action. Burton struck out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning, and
15saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of the bar. Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark
16nor 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
17floor for Burton's throat. The man saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the
18floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This
19time the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was
20driven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously, attempting to rush in,
21and being forced back by an array of hostile clubs. A "miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the dog had
22sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was made, and from that day his name spread through
23every camp in Alaska. Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The
24three partners were lining a long and narrow poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans and
25Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat,
26helping its descent by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious,
27kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his master. At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged
28rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out into the stream, ran
29down the bank with the end in his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did, and was flying
30down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat
31flirted over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream toward
32the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live. Buck had sprung in on the instant;
33and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp his
34tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the
35progress down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where the wild current went wilder and was rent
36in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the water as it
37took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped
38furiously over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing force. He clutched its slippery top
39with both hands, releasing Buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!" Buck could not hold
40his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's command
41repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently
42toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swimming ceased to
43be possible and destruction began. They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face of that
44driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where
45Thornton was hanging on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to Buck's neck and shoulders,
46being careful that it should neither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck
47out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of
48him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past. Hans promptly snubbed with the rope,
49as though Buck were a boat. The rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was jerked under the
50surface, and under the surface he remained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half
51drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and the water out of him. He
52staggered to his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not make
53out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock. He
54sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous departure. Again the rope was
55attached and he was launched, and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculated
56once, but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it
57clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with the speed of an
58express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the
59whole force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the
60rope around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one
61uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to
62the bank. Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back and forth across a drift log by Hans and
63Pete. His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet
64was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's
65body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs. "That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here."
66And camp they did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.
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