During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation. Nevertheless, one hundred and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right royal fashion.
He was not so large, – he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds, – for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog.
Bernard, had been the Judge’s inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, – king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included. He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles on wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire he carried the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches.
CRACK OPEN A COLD ONE WITH THE BOYS IN CHINESE WINDOWS
On the other hand, there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.īut Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, – strange creatures that rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. Then there was the pumping plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge Miller’s boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot afternoon.Īnd over this great demesne Buck ruled.
There were great stables, where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants’ cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors, green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. At the rear things were on even a more spacious scale than at the front. The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. It stood back from the road, half hidden among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide cool veranda that ran around its four sides. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.īuck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. В книге приводится полный неадаптированный текст романа с комментариями и словарем.īuck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
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