第30章

For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of his sight.He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate, saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning.But after two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiously than ever.Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond the divide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches.Once again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came no more; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl was never raised.

He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went down into the land of timber and streams.There he wandered for a week, seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never to tire.He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest helpless and terrible.Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity.And two days later, when he returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind who would quarrel no more.

The blood-longing became stronger than ever before.He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.Because of all this he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated itself like a contagion to his physical being.It advertised itself in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious furry coat if anything more glorious.But for the stray brown on his muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic wolf, larger than the largest of the breed.From his St.Bernard father he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who had given shape to that size and weight.His muzzle was the long wolf muzzle, save that was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head, somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence, shepherd intelligence and St.Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable a creature as any that intelligence roamed the wild.A carnivorous animal living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility.When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharing 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.