"Jack London. The Call of the Wild (Сборник из 7 рассказов на англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

Judge Miller's place, it was called. 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.
The house was approached by gravelled driveways which wound about
through wide-spreading lawns and under the interlacing boughs of
tall poplars. At the rear things were on even a more spacious
scale than at the front. 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. 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.


And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and
here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there
were other dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a
place, but they did not count. 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. 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.


But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm
was his. 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. 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.


His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's
inseparable companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of
his father. He was not so large,-he weighed only one hundred and
forty pounds,-for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd
dog. 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. During the
four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated