life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a
caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the
hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact. Every
part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most
exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect
equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which
required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as
a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could
leap twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and
responded in less time than another dog required to compass the mere
seeing or hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the
same instant. In point of fact the three actions of perceiving,
determining, and responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were
the intervals of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His
muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply,
like steel springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad
and rampant, until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer
ecstasy and pour forth generously over the world.
Never was there such a dog, said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp.
When he was made, the mould was broke, said Pete.
Py jingo! I t ink so mineself, Hans affirmed.
They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant and
terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within the
secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thing
of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow that
appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like
a snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest,
kill a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks
fleeing a second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not
too quick for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He
killed to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he
killed himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was
his delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them,
to let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.
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