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
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