Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing.
Chance travellers might praise or pet (撫摸) him; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative (親熱的) man he would get up and walk away.
When Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton;
after that he tolerated them in a passive (消極的) sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting.{1}
They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly;
and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon an intimacy (親昵行為) such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.{2}
For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling.
Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded.
One day (they had grub-staked themselves from the proceeds (收益) of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the crest (頂) of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below.{3}
John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim (念頭) seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment (實驗) he had in mind.
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"Jump, Buck!" he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm (深坑). The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety.
"It's uncanny (可怕的)," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech.
Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid (非常好的), and it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."
"I'm not hankering (渴望) to be the man that lays hands on you while he’s around," Pete announced conclusively (結論性地), nodding his head toward Buck.
"Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution. "Not mineself (相當于 myself) either."
It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions (擔心) were realized.
"Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious (惡毒的), had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot (新來者) at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between.
Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck out, without warning, straight from the shoulder.
Thornton was sent spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching (抓住) the rail (扶手) of the bar.
Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor 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 floor for Burton's throat.
The man saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the floor with Buck on top of him.
Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time the man succeeded only in partly blocking (阻止), and his throat was torn open.
Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled (徘徊) up and down, growling furiously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile clubs.
A "miners' meeting (礦工會議)," called on the spot, decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged (允許…離開).
But his reputation was made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.
Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow poling-boat down a bad stretch (一段) of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek (河名).
Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore.
Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his master.
At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge (突出的部分) of barely submerged (淹沒) rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge.{4}
This it did, and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked (制止) it with the rope and checked too suddenly.
The boat flirted (擺動) over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung (拋) sheer out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.{5}
Buck had sprung in on the instant (瞬間); and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl (漩渦) of water, he overhauled (追上) Thornton.
When he felt him grasp (抓住) his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his splendid strength.
But the progress shoreward (朝向岸邊) was slow; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid.
From below came the fatal roaring where the wild current (水流) went wilder and was rent in shreds (條狀) and spray by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb (梳子).
The suck (吸) of the water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible.
He scraped (擦傷) furiously over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing force.
He clutched (抓住) its slippery top with both hands, releasing (放開) Buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!"{4}
Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win back.
When he heard Thornton’s command repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently (服從地) toward the bank.
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He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.
They knew that the time a man could cling (堅持) to a slippery rock in the face of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging on.
They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle (使…窒息) him nor impede (阻礙) his swimming, and launched (使…下水) him into the stream.
He struck out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.
Hans promptly (迅速地) snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat.
The rope thus tightening (繃緊) on him in the sweep (席卷) of the current, he was jerked (急拉) under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled (拖) out.
He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding (重擊) the breath into him and the water out of him.
He staggered to his feet and fell down.
