第2章 INTO THE PRIMITIVE (2)

He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to intimate was to command.But to his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath.In a quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back.Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely.Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry.But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance.The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was.He had traveled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car.He opened his eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnaped king.The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him.His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

"Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the baggage man, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle."I'm taking him up for the boss to 'Frisco.A crack dog doctor there thinks that he can cure him."Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for himself, in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water front.

"All I get is fifty for it," he grumbled, "and I wouldn't do it over for a thousand, cold cash."His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg was ripped from knee to ankle.

"How much did the other mug get?" the saloon-keeper demanded.

"A hundred," was the reply."Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me.""That makes a hundred and fifty," the saloon-keeper calculated, "and he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead."The kidnaper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated hand."If I don't get hydrophobia--""It'll be because you was born to hang," laughed the saloon-keeper.

"Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight," he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors.But he was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing the heavy brass collar from off his neck.Then the rope was removed, and he was flung into a cage-like crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and wounded pride.He could not understand what it all meant.What did they want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by the vague sense of impending calamity.Several times during the night he sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the Judge, or the boys at least.But each time it was the bulging face of the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow candle.And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men entered and picked up the crate.More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at them through the bars.They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that was what they wanted.Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be lifted into a wagon.Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned, began a passage through many hands.Clerks in the express office took charge of him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate nor drank.In his anger he had met the first advances of the express messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him.When he flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed at him and taunted him.They growled and barked like detestable dogs, mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed.It was all very silly, he knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed.He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch.For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck.That had given them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.

They would never get another rope around his neck.Upon that he was resolved.

For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him.His eyes turned bloodshot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend.So changed was he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the express messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small, high-walled back yard.A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled himself savagely against the bars.The man smiled grimly, and brought a hatchet and a club.

"You ain't going to take him out now?" the driver asked.

"Sure," the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.