Oscar’s mood remained morose for the first days of our journey.I don’t think he regretted what he’d done, but he missed that horse, and I reckoned he missed those children, too, like I did.There was something joyful about the innocence of wee ones, who were full of life and optimistic promise.
The second night of our journey, Oscar woke me from a deep sleep.
“Jimmy.”
“Hmm?What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’.But I can’t sleep.”
I turned on my bedroll to wrap my arm around him and snug him close.
“You want me to sing to you?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Maybe you could read to me, instead?”
I squinted in the darkness, trying to see his expression, but ’twas too dark.
“All right.I’ll light the lantern.”
’Twas a warm night, so I was only on top of my bedroll.I found the lantern and lit it, then got the book that Sally had gifted me the day before we’d left.
“You’re almost done with that book,” Oscar said, as I sat down near him, with my back against a convenient rock.“Is it good?”
“Yeah, ‘tis real good,” I said, smiling at him.“C’mere then.”
Oscar scooched o’er so that he could lean against the rock and snuggle against me, while the campfire crackled and the lantern hissed.
“Now this here story is told from Buck’s point of view—that’s the dog who’s half St.Bernard and half Scotch Shepard—about his life up in the Yukon, after a slew of owners that mistreated him and some who only looked on him as a useful servant.”
“Okay.”
“Only now he’s with a man who’s caring and loving of him, and he talks about how that feels after a life of toil and cruelty.”
I flattened the page and held it so ’twas bathed in light from the lantern, then began to read.
“This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was the ideal master.Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as if they were his own children, because he could not help it.And he saw further.He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to sit down for a long talk with them—‘gas’ he called it—was as much his delight as theirs.He had a way of taking Buck’s head roughly between his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck’s, of shaking him back and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love names.Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy.And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, ‘God!You can all but speak!’
“Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt.He would often seize Thornton’s hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward.And as Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this feigned bite for a caress.”
I stopped reading then, a heat spreading through my body that warmed me through, and I felt like we were both thinking how these words expressed some of what we felt for each other.
Sure enough, Oscar stirred against me.
“Jimmy, that’s…why, that’s us!That’s you and me, for sure.How is that possible?”
I shrugged, so glad that he saw in those words what I did—a connection based on love, respect and adoration, that didn’t find its strength in flowery words and romantic promises but in rough gestures and sharp jibes that meant much, much more when you looked beneath the surface.
“Well, I suppose the writer maybe had feelings like that, possibly for another man, and the only way he could express it was through the eyes of a male dog for his master, in this here story.”
I watched Oscar blink at this hypothesis then he nodded.“I reckon you might be right.”
He snuggled into me, and I kept reading, as the stars shone in the sky above and the promise of Port Essington and our home lay just out of reach.
* * * *
We rode into town late on the Thursday.The smell of the fish canneries greeted us before we got there, now that they’d gone full bore again, and there were lots more people walking the streets, even in the rain.We got some queer looks, but nobody would directly question two men sharing a horse in these times.
