Buck's best human master, John Thornton, saves him just
minutes before the rest of the dog team perishes in Call of the
Wild. The inexperienced group who had purchased the team decided to push
onward despite the fact that the dogs were weak and starving. When Hal began to whip
them again, Buck and the other dogs refused to move. Hal continued with the whip and
then the club, and John Thornton could take no more. He "sprang upon the man who wielded
the club."
"If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you," he at last managed to say in a choking
voice.
When Hal pulled a
knife, "Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe handle, knocking the knife to the
ground." Since Buck was "too near dead to be of further use," Hal allowed him to be left
behind. Within minutes, Hal's party and the rest of the dog team plunged through thin
ice and disappeared "into a yawning hole." When Thornton showed his sympathy toward
Buck, the grateful dog licked his hand. A new friendship had
begun.
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