e than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the
muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these
muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two
to one.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king
of the Skookum Benches. "I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before
the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands."

Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.

"You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested. "Free play and
plenty of room."

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers
vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent
animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their
eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands
and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his
wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. "As you
love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck whined with
suppressed eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It
seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his
mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech,
but of love. Thornton stepped well back.

"Now, Buck," he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several
inches. It was the way he had learned.

"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up
the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty
pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp
crackling.

"Haw!" Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the left. The crackling
turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and
grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were
holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.

"Now, MUSH!"

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself
forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body
was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles
writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great
chest was low