Chapter VII: Part 7

"Ah! moose-meat, hee's all right; good tack, for sure," said Jean. "But tha's not moose-meat mushed them dogs on so fast an' trim to-day. No, _sir_. Tha's Jan--bes' dog-musher in 'Merica to-day, now I'm tellin' you. He don' got Beel to upset things to-day, and, by gar! you see how he make them other dogs mush. You don't need no wheep, don't need no musher, so's you got Jan a-leadin', now I'm tellin' you."

Jan imbued each of the other dogs with a portion of his own inexhaustible pride in the team's perfect working. Ready to start in the morning he would stand in the lead, pawing eagerly at the snow, his head turning swiftly from side to side as he looked round to make sure his followers were in order, and in his anxiety to catch the first breath of the command to "Mush on there!"

And when the word came, with what a will those seven dogs bowed to their work! How furiously their hard pads scrabbled at the trail, to overcome the first inertia of the laden sled, before it gained the gliding momentum which they would never allow it to lose for an instant until the order came to halt! If any dog put one ounce less than the pressure he was capable of exerting into his breast-band, Jan knew it that instant, more surely than the watching man behind; and would let out a sharp, low-sounding bark. And very well each dog in the team knew what that bark meant. They feared it more than Jean's thong. For Jan had taught them to know that this bark gave warning of a shrewder blow to come than any whip could give; and a blow from which there would be no possible escape. Men-folk might sometimes forget a promised cuff. Jan was never known to forget a promised bite; and if twelve hours should elapse between promise and payment, so much the worse for the payee; for Jan had a system of his own for the reckoning of compound interest, the efficacy of which, at one time or another, each dog in the team had tested, and found deadly.

Yes, in the fortnight that followed the shooting of the moose and the disappearance of Bill the sled-team driven by Jean and Jake was perhaps the finest and the most efficient in all that white world of hard-bitten, hard-trained, hard-working men and dogs. And, by that token, there was no happier team living, and none in better condition. There are not many teams, of course, whose members eat moose-flesh every day. But quite apart from the substantial addition to their dietary which Jean's lucky moose-shot brought, his sled-team was superbly fit and efficient, because it was perfectly led and perfectly disciplined.

And then came all the strange confusion of the noisy mining town and the end of this particular phase of Jan's life.

XXXI

THE COST OF INCOMPETENCE

Jan's private impressions of the northern mining town were, first, that it was the most horrible place he had ever seen; second, that it was perhaps the most interesting place he had ever seen; and, third and lastly, that it was a very good place to get away from, and that he would be pleased to exchange its complex interests for the clean, arduous stress and strain of the trail.

Jan spent less than a week in the town; but into that week was packed perhaps rather more than the allowance of new impressions and excitement of one sort and another that go to make up the record of her first season in town for the average human débutante. The cynic might protest that many a modern débutante is as certainly put up for sale to the highest bidder of the town season as Jan was. Well, at least the thing is a good deal more carefully wrapped up and veiled, and a great deal more time is given to it.

Jean was very firmly set in his determination not to part with Jan for a cent under five hundred dollars. (Had not Jan cost him two hundred dollars on the night of Bill's disappearance?) Had there been any really knowledgeable judges of dogs in the town just then who needed a dog, they would hardly have quarreled with his owner over Jan's price. But it happened there were none. And the result was that Jan had to be put through his paces five separate times for the benefit of five separate prospective purchasers, not one of whom was really capable of appreciating his superlative quality, before the five hundred dollars demanded did eventually find its way into Jean's pouch and he was called upon to part with his leader. He intended to give Snip the leadership of his team now, because Snip was a curiously remorseless creature; and to buy a husky as cheaply as might be to take the trace ahead of Blackfoot--kindliest of wheelers.

Jean's parting with Jan was characteristic of the man. He had conceived an admiring and prideful affection for the big hound, and had liefer died than allow this to be shown to any other man. His pride in his dog's ability, his full appreciation of the animal's many points--yes, he would show these, and very insistently, to any man. But for his perfectly genuine affection; that, as he understood it, was a culpable weakness which no living soul must be permitted to suspect--no, not even Jan himself. And that was where Jean fooled himself. For his occasional blows and frequent curses did not in the least deceive Jan, who was perfectly well aware of Jean's fondness for him, and, to a considerable extent, reciprocated the feeling. He did not love Jean; but he liked the man, and trusted and respected him for his all-round ability and competence.

"Ye--es," said Jean, slowly, to the moneyed _chechaquo_ who had purchased Jan, "tha' Jan, hee's ther bes' lead dog ever I see, an' I've handled some. But ef you take my word, Mister Beeching, you won' ask Jan to take no other place than lead in your team. Eef you do, your leader 'll hear about it, en he might lose some hide over it, too, I guess. But tha' Jan, hee's a great lead dog, all right, an' I'm tellin' you. Well, so long, boss; I'll be gettin' along. Git back there, you, Jan! By gar! you stay right there now, when I say so. What 'n hell d'you want follerin' me? Git back!"

That was how Jean bade Jan good-by. Jan, scenting trouble vaguely, was determined to stick to Jean, and thought he went about it craftily enough. But Jean caught him each time, and kicked him back to the place where the _chechaquo_ stood, cuffing him roughly over the head by way of final salutation.

"I'll larn ye to foller me," he said, sourly.

"Mighty little _he_ cares for his dogs!" thought the tenderfoot; and he turned (with his more delicate sentiments) to caress Jan's head. But Jan abruptly lowered his head to avoid the touch; though, obedient now to Jean, the proved master, he remained where he had been told to stay.

But these things happened within twenty-four hours of Jan's departure from that town. In the days immediately preceding this one of his parting from Jean he had roamed the town at large with Blackfoot, Snip, and the others of his team, observing, making acquaintances, fending off attacks, administering punishment, and swaggering with the best among a great company of sled-dogs of all sorts and sizes and in every varying grade of condition, from fatted and vainglorious sleekness to downright emaciation. For there were dogs here who, having recently shared cruelly hard times with their men, would require weeks of recuperation to make them fit for the rigors of the trail. Some of this latter sort were for sale, and could be bought for a tenth of Jan's price, or less. Others, again, were "resting," as the actors say, while their impoverished masters worked at some other craft to earn money enough to give them back the freedom of the trail.

None the less, he felt tolerably forlorn and desolate when, upon his last evening there, he was led away by his new master, whose name, it seemed, was Beeching, and locked in a small inclosure of high iron rails with nine other dogs, the remaining complement of the team in which he was now to serve. However, for a while he was kept too busy here to spare much thought for the matter of the loss of his companions.

Every one of the nine strangers was sleek and well fed. _Chechaquo_ Beeching was bound for the sea and civilization, with the moderate pile which a beginner's luck, rather than any skill or enterprise of his, had brought him; and he was bent on doing the trip in style, he and his curious friend, whom he called Harry. Of these nine finely conditioned dogs, four had met Jan about the town and learned to show him some deference. Two--Jinny and Poll--were bitches, and therefore not to be regarded by Jan as possible opponents in a fight; but the remaining three members of the crowd, lusty huskies, full of meat and insolence, had never seen the big hound before, and these had to be thrashed pretty soundly before Jan won his footing in the inclosure.

Fortunately, the two bitches were disposed to be friendly from the outset, and of the three huskies, two were intently engaged upon bones at the time of Jan's entrance. The third husky attacked him, blindly, without stopping to exchange so much as glances. This little incident was soon ended. In ten seconds Jan had bowled clean over on his back the too temerarious Gutty--to give this particular husky the name under which Mr. Beeching had bought him--and was shaking him by the throat as a terrier shakes a rat. But Jan was far from being really angry, or Gutty had paid with his life for the impudence of his attack; and when the husky chokingly whined for mercy he was allowed to spring to his feet and slink away into a dark corner, with nothing worse than a little skin-wound to worry over.

The case of the other two huskies was more serious, however; for in the half-light Jan chanced to brush against one of them as he gnawed his bone; and in the next moment they both were leaping at him with clashing fangs, convinced that he aimed at plunder. While Jan, in warding off their attacks, tried to explain, good-humoredly, that he meant them no ill, Jinny and Poll made off with their bones. But of this the two huskies knew nothing, being fully occupied by their joint attack upon the great dog who, had they but known it, was destined for some time to be their master, in the traces and out of them.

It was a rather troublesome fight, involving considerable bloodshed; for Fish and Pad, the two huskies, were quite notable battlers, and Jan, for his part, was genuinely anxious to avoid any killing. He was quite shrewd enough to know that he had now joined a new team, and, while it was very necessary that his prowess should be recognized and respected, he desired peace, and perfectly understood that, if he began by killing, the results might be serious for the team and for himself.

In the end, having made some sacrifices, he had to inflict a severe gash on the side of Pad's face, and to come near to throttling the life out of Fish, before he could reduce the pair of them to a state of comparatively decent, if still snarling, submission. After that there was peace; Fish and Pad were too busy in dressing their wounds to notice the loss of their bones; and Jan was free to introduce himself to the others of the pack, which he did in friendly fashion enough, despite his still raised hackles and rather noticeably stiff gait.

There was quite a gathering assembled next morning to see the last of Jan's new masters. But though he eyed the crowd closely to find them, Jan saw nothing of Jake or Jean, nor any of his old team-mates. Beeching and Harry--the latter a gentleman who, having apparently no faith in his own luck, believed in attaching himself firmly to any more fortunate person who would tolerate his society--were, to all seeming, not really unpopular. The thoroughly unpopular man is rarely guyed, with roars of open laughter and back-slapping merriment, by men who wink and nod at one another while joining forces in the matter of ragging their butt.

That was how Beeching was treated by the crowd of acquaintances who came to give him his start on the southward, seaward trail. Harry was, for the most part, merely ignored. It was understood that now, as in the past, he was supposed to make himself "useful" by way of paying his shot; and as he had never been known to be any other thing than useless, it was evidence rather of the easy good nature than the perspicacity of his associates that he never had actually lacked food and shelter in that place. But that was as much, men thought, as "Tame Cat Harry" could possibly expect. One of the last fond messages flung at Beeching, as his overloaded sled swung out on the trail, was:

"Don't you be letting Harry loose, mind you, or he'll surely hark back on the trail; an' then we'll shoot him on sight."

"Well, say," yelled another man, "if you do loose him any, be sure you put a muzzle on him, so's to keep our grub-boxes safe."

After which crude gibe at Harry's sponging proclivities, Homeric laughter set a period upon the town's farewell to Jan's new masters. And that laughter stirred to fresh activity the uneasy want of confidence, the rather cheerless sense of foreboding, which, for close upon twenty-four hours now, had been growing in the breast of the team's leader. Jan should, perhaps, have felt drawn toward Beeching and Harry, since both were compatriots of his and hailed from southern England. But England has sent a good many of her most confirmed wastrels oversea, along with the very cream of her manhood; and whether or no, Jan had no more confidence in his masters than he had in Gutty, the husky he had thrashed overnight, and far less than he had in Fish and Pad, the two opponents he had found so much more difficult to trounce.

As a fact, Jan's skepticism was amply justified. In the thirty-five-day trip thus begun--which should have been completed in sixteen days--Jan was given as striking an example of the effects of man's muddle-headed, slack-minded incompetence as that which Jean had furnished him of the effects of man's able-bodied, clear-headed competence and efficiency. Jan never worked it out in precisely this way, but after his own simple and direct fashion he came to the definite conclusion, before he had been two days on the trail with Beeching and Harry, that, for his part, he would sooner thole the harshest kind of severity or even cruelty in a master, so that it be allied with competence, than he would endure this evils which (in the northland more than in most places) attend all the steps of the man who is slack, shiftless, and incompetent; and, be it noted, make miserable the days of all and sundry who are forced to be in any way dependent on that man.

It was with much wistful regret that Jan recalled in these days the daily round of his life, after the fight with Bill, as Jean's lead dog. The swift, positive, and ordered evolutions of those smoothly running days seemed merely miraculous in retrospect as Jan compared his memory of them with the wretched muddle of Beeching's wasteful scramble across the country: They carried no trade goods, nothing save the necessary dog-food and creature-comforts for the two men; yet their sled--an extra-large one--was half as heavy again to pull as Jean's had been, despite the ten primely conditioned dogs who made up Beeching's "flash" team.

The morning was generally far advanced when Beeching and Harry started in to clear the muddle of their amateurish night's camp, with all its preposterous litter of bedding, utensils (always unclean), and other wasteful truck such as no men can afford to carry in the northland. But the day would be half done by the time their muddled preparations were finally completed.

And then, more often than not, one of the men would add his own not inconsiderable weight to that of the half-packed, overladen sled; and, at the best, Harry as a trail-breaker and finder was of no more use than a blind kitten would have been. A dozen times in the day a halt would be called for some enforced repacking of the jerry-built load on the sled; and at such times some unpacking would often have to be done to provide liquor or other refreshment for the men. There were times when, on a perfect trail, the day's run would be no more than twenty miles; and there were days of bad trail, when even Jean would have been put to it to make more than five and twenty miles, and these incompetents, with their ten-dog team, covered a bare eight or ten miles.

Pride in his leadership was as impossible for Jan in these conditions as was content or pride in his share of the work for any other member of the team. But that was not the worst of it. During the first day or two of the trip Jan was staggered to find that these new masters of his had no notion of measuring dog-rations, or even of serving these with any sort of regularity as to time, or portions, or gross quantity. They would feed some or all the dogs, at any time of day at all, and in any feckless way that came handy. At their first and second midday halts, for instance, they flung down to the team, as though to a herd of sheep or swine, food enough for three days' rations, their own leavings, and the orthodox dog-ration stuff, in a mixed heap.

Given decent, proper feeding, Jan would have seen to it that order was preserved and no thieving done. Each dog should have had his own "whack," and none have been molested. But with all his genuine love of order and discipline, Jan was no magician. He could not possibly apportion out a scattered refuse-heap. He had necessarily to grab a share for himself; and, as was inevitable, the weaker members of the team went short, or got nothing.

Then--unheard-of profligacy--came another equally casual distribution at night; and yet another, it might be, in the morning--in the morning, with the trail before them!

It resolved itself into this: there were no dog-meals on that journey; but only daily dog-fights--snarling, scrapping, blood and hatred-letting scrimmages for grub; disgraceful episodes, in themselves sufficient to shut out any hope of discipline in the team.

The quite inevitable shock came on the evening of the twelfth day. (With his costly team, Beeching had gaily figured on fifteen days for the entire trip, in place of the thirty-five days which it actually occupied.) The only good thing that memorable twelfth day brought was the end of Beeching's whisky-supply. Incidentally it marked, too, the end of his easy-going good temper. And to the consternation of an already thoroughly demoralized team, it brought also the serving out, in a heap as before--this cruel and messy trick, more perhaps than any other one thing, marked the men's wretched slackness and incompetence; qualities generally more cruel in their effects than any harshness or over-severity--of fish representing in the aggregate rather less than half a day's ration for each dog in the team.

The next day, and the next, and the next brought a similar dispensation to the dogs; no more. By this time the nightly feeding had become a horrid and bloody battle.

"Nasty savage brutes!" said sponging Harry.

"Blood does tell," observed the oracular Beeching, himself by repute a man of family. "They're every one of 'em mongrels."

The son of lordly Finn and queenly Desdemona attached no meaning to these words, of course; but were it not for the discipline, the generations of discipline in his blood, he could have strangled these two muddlers for the tragic folly of their incompetence, the gross exhibition of their slackness.

As the men themselves began to feel the belly-pinch, they brought up no reserves of manhood, but, on the contrary, they took to cruelly beating their now weakened team, when the dogs were safely tethered in the traces, and to cowardly avoidance of the poor brutes at all other times. Harry was quite unashamedly afraid to throw the dogs their beggarly half or quarter ration; and but for Beeching, it may be the dogs had starved while food still remained on the sled.

Maybe the fact that Beeching, with all his faults, had never reached Harry's depths as a sponger, preserved him from this particular crime. But he had small ground in that for self-gratulation, since it is a fact remembered in the country that when he did eventually stagger down to salt water with his sadly reduced team, the dogs had positively not had their harness off for a week. Mr. Beeching and his precious partner had been afraid to let their dogs out of the traces and the safe reach of their whips!

The fatally unwise Gutty was the first to succumb. Fish downed him for a morsel of food he had grabbed; and when the team had been over the spot on which he fell, there simply was no Gutty left. Poll, the slighter of the two bitches, died under Harry's whip--the haft of it--or she, like Jinny, would have seen salt water, because their sex was their protection--from their fellow-dogs, though not from the now starving and insensate clowns who drove them.

Everything but the scant remains of the men's food had, of course, been jettisoned before this. The dogs made a meal of the smart water-proof sheets, and Jan ate Beeching's show pair of moccasins. The whole business forms a wretched and shameful record that need not be prolonged.

To be quite just, one should mention that Beeching was afoot (hammering Jan's protruding haunches) when they staggered into the township on the evening of the thirty-fifth day. Harry lay groaning on the sled, and had been there, too lame to walk, he said, too despicable, perhaps, for Death's consideration, for three days and more. The ten-dog team of prime-conditioned animals of five weeks before consisted now of seven gaunt, staggering creatures, each a bony framework, masked in dried blood and bruises; each suffering jarring agony from every tremulous step taken, and all together (as the market went) worth, it might be--to a very speculative dog-doctor--say, ten dollars. The team had cost the deplorable Beeching about three thousand.

But, as a matter of fact, Pad died in the moment of stoppage, and two of his mates got their release while yet in the traces. Jan, Jinny, and two others survived still at the bitter end of what was perhaps the most wretchedly bungled trip ever made over that famous trail.

XXXII

JAN OBEYS ORDERS AT THE GREAT DIVIDE

Experienced observers contended that the most truly remarkable thing about _Chechaquo_ Beeching was not, after all, his super-slackness or his criminal stupidity, but his invincible luck.

Where many good men and true, infinitely capable and knowledgeable, had starved, or failed to make a scavenger's wage, Beeching had tumbled into possession of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and, after having sampled most methods of "burning" money known to the northland, still had fully half this sum to his credit.

That was one astounding proof of his tenderfoot's luck. But more remarkable evidence of it was found, by those who understood, in his memorable journey to salt water.

By all the rules of the game, men said, Beeching and his hanger-on should have been starved, frozen, and eaten by their outraged dogs a week or more before the end of their trip. And failing that, some old-timers pointed out, they should have been publicly lynched on arrival at salt water.

Instead, they fell into the hands of roughly good-natured men, who not only gave them food and drink and helped them down to the wharf, but actually set them up with a traveling-kit of new clothing.

Then, again, consider the really astounding fact that a steamer should have been waiting to cast off at the moment these two men arrived, and that her skipper held his ship up for half an hour to suit the convenience of the precious pair, and finally carried them on in his best two cabins!

"But what about the sled and the team?" whined Harry, as he and Beeching hobbled up the gangway of the waiting steamer, bound for luxury and civilization. It may be Harry had thought of these as one of his hard-earned perquisites.

"Oh, to blazes with the sled and dogs!" cried _Chechaquo_ Beeching. "The town's welcome to 'em, for all I care."

Generous man! And at that precise moment, his tough life starved and hammered out of his hardy body, the exhausted Fish was breathing his last--still in the traces; and Jan, in whom the fires of life, though better laid than those of ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, were burning very low just now--barely flickering, indeed--was concentrating such energies as remained in him upon gnawing feebly at his traces, for the double purpose of extracting some nutriment from them, if that might be, and freeing himself from their control.

The first of these aims was a tolerably hopeless one, since Jan could not just now swallow any hard thing. But in the second he achieved success, just as the steamer's gangway was hauled up and the population of the town was engaged in waving farewell to the craft that connected with the big outside world, where sentimentality and dollars rule, just as in the northland muscle, grit, endurance--and dollars rule. Yes, even there money does play one of the chief ruling parts. But, as a general thing, sentimentality does not.

The remaining wrecks of the team, two dead, one dying, and three too far gone in the same direction to be capable of any effort, lay where they had fallen at the moment when willing hands had come to help their masters to the steamer.

It may be that Jan had bigger physical reserves to draw upon than his mates had. It is more likely, however, that the powers which kept him striving still to live, after the others had given up effort, were factors on the mental side of his composition. His memories were stronger and more vivid, his imagination a thing far more complex, than that of any husky. Also his faith in men and his desire for their help and companionship--even after five weeks with Beeching and Harry--were greatly stronger than the same factors were in any of his team-mates. The culminative influences of hundreds of generations of civilization spoke in him here.

And so, trailing beside him the gnawed-off ends of his traces, Jan dragged his emaciated frame along in jerks over the hard-trodden snow while the folk of the town cheered the departing steamer. In a little while Jan came to a small tent, the flap of which hung loose and open. At the entrance Jan smelt the fresh trail of a man; from within came--to nostrils cunning as Jan's--the odor of foodstuffs. Jan propped and jerked himself feebly into the tent, though for months now he had known that it was forbidden to enter the habitations of men-folk.

Nosing weakly to and fro, Jan found on a low shelf a can of milk. A half-blind jab of his muzzle brought it tumbling to the ground. Its lid was open, but the milk was firmly frozen. Jan licked at it, cutting his deep flews as he did so on the uneven edges of the tin. The warmth of his tongue extracted a certain sweet milkiness from this. But the metal edges were raw and sharp; Jan's exhaustion was very great, and presently he sank down upon the twig-strewn ground, and lay there, breathing in weak, sobbingly uncertain gasps, the milk-can between his outstretched paws.

Jan was now drawing very near, nearer than he had ever been before, to the Great Divide.

Within a hundred yards of Jan were groups of solid frame houses, with warm kitchens in them, and abundant food. But the tent, standing by itself, came first; and, though he could not know it, the tent was, on the whole, the very best of all the habitations in that bleak little town--for Jan. For this tent was the temporary home of an American named Willis--James Gurney Willis; as knowledgeable a man as Jean himself and, in addition, one known wherever he went into the northland as a white man.

Not many minutes after Jan's lying down there Jim Willis came striding up to his tent from the wharf, and found the half of its floor-space occupied by the gaunt wreck of the biggest hound he had ever seen. Willis was a man of experience in other places than the northland, and he would always have known a bloodhound when he saw one. But never had he seen a hound of any kind with such a frame as that he saw before him now. The dead, blood-matted black and iron-gray coat was no bloodhound's coat, he thought; too long and wiry and dense for that. But yet the head--And, anyway, thought Willis, how came the poor beast to have died just there, in his tent?

And in that moment the heavy lids of Jan's eyes twitched and lifted a little. It was rather ghastly. They showed no eyes, properly speaking. The eyes seemed to have receded, turned over, disappeared in some way. All that the lifted lids showed Willis was two deep, triangular patches of blood-red membrane. And above the prominent, thatched brows rose the noble bloodhound forehead, serried wrinkle over wrinkle to the lofty peak of the skull.

"My God!" muttered Willis, with no irreverent intent.

Always rich in the bloodhound characteristic of abundant folds of loose, rolling skin about the head, neck, and shoulders, the wreck of Jan, from which so very many pounds of solid flesh had been lost during the past month, seemed to carry the skin of two hounds. And set deep in these pouched and pendent folds of skin--tattered, blood-stained banners of the hound's past glories--the face of Jan was as a wedge, incredibly long and narrow.

His eyes had been torn out, it seemed. That was what forced the exclamation from Willis. But it was only an abnormal extension of the blood-red haws that Willis saw. The eyeballs had rolled up and back somewhat, as they mostly do when a hound is _in extremis_; but they would have shown if Jan had had the strength properly to lift his lids. Yet he had seen Willis. It was his utter weakness, combined with the hanging weight of his wrinkled face and flew-skin, that caused the ghastly show of blood-red membrane only where eyeballs should have been.

But Jan did see Willis, and the loose skin of his battered shoulders even shrank a little, in anticipation of a blow. Jan thought himself still in the traces. (As a fact he was; and breast-band, too.)

The moment Willis spoke--his low "My God!"--Jan fancied he had heard the old order to "Mush on!" and doubtless that another blow from the haft of Beeching's whip was due. In view of his then desperate state, the effort with which Jan answered the command he fancied he heard was a positive miracle. He actually staggered to his feet, though too weak to lift his eyelids, and plunged forward, with weakly scrabbling paws, to throw his weight upon the traces. And plunging against nothing but space, he had surely crashed to earth again, and in that moment crossed the Divide, but for Willis.

Willis was not of the type of men who waste breath over repetitions of exclamation of surprise. As Jan slowly heaved up his body, in a last effort at duty, Willis swiftly lowered his own body, dropping upon his knees, both arms widely extended. And it was at Willis's broad chest, and between his strongly supporting arms, that the wreck of Jan plunged, in response to what must be reckoned by far the greatest effort, till then, that the great hound had ever made.

And if the thing had ended there, this incident alone proved that when he chose the tent, before any of the more ambitious habitations near by, Jan had chosen what was assuredly the best place for him in all that town.

XXXIII

BACK TO THE TRAIL

Late that same evening two men who looked in to see Jim Willis found him playing sick-nurse to all that remained of the strangest-looking hound ever seen in those parts. His stove was well alight, and near by, on the bed, were a spoon, a flask of whisky, a dish of hot milk, and some meat-juice in a jar.

There was some talk about the hound, and then the bigger of the visitors said:

"Well, Jim, what's it to be? Will you tackle the job, or won't you? You must admit, if the trail _is_ bad, the money's pretty good. Will you go?"

Willis nodded shortly. That meant acquiescence in the statement that the money was "good." Then he pointed to the hound, whose head rested on his knee. (He himself was sitting on the ground.)

"Well, no, Mike; I guess I won't," he said, slowly. "You say I'd have to hit out to-morrow; and I reckon I'm going to try an' yank this feller back into the world before I go anywheres."

"But, hell, Jim," said the other man, a little petulantly. "I like a dawg as well as the next man, and this one does seem to have been some husky in his time. Only--well, you admit yourself the money's good, and--say, I won't try any bluffs with you. There ain't another man in the place we could trust to do the job. Come, now, is it a go, Jim?"

Willis pondered a minute, eying Jan's head the while.

"Well, Mike," he said at length, "I've kinder given my word to this feller here. He's a sort of a guest o' mine, in a way--in my tent, and that. No, Mike, I'll not hit out to-morrow, not for any money. But if you'd care to leave it for a week or ten days--ten days, say, I'll go. An' that's the best I can do for ye. Think it over, an' let me know to-morrow."

And with that the two men had to content themselves. They went out growling. Three minutes later the shorter of the two returned.

"Say, Jim," he remarked, as he thrust his head and shoulders in at the tent-flap, "I've been puzzling my head about that blame crittur ever since we first come in; an' now I've located him. He's dyin' a long way from home, Jim, is that dawg. But I can give ye his name. He's Jan, that's who he is. There! See his eyes move then, when I said 'Jan.' Look! Jan! See that?"

Jim Willis nodded comprehendingly as he watched Jan's feebly flickering eyelids.

"Yes, sir," continued the other man; "I've seen a picture of him in the Vancouver _News-Advertiser._ He's Jan of the R.N.W.M.P., that's who he is; 'the Mounted Police bloodhound,' they called him. He tracked a murderer down one time, somewhere out Regina way; though how in the nation he ever made this burg has me fairly beat. Where'n the world did that blame _chechaquo_ raise him, d'ye suppose? Surely he'd never have sand enough to go around dog-stealing, would he? An' from the North-west Mounted! Not on your life he wouldn't. Sneakin' coppers out've a blin' man's bowl 'd be more in his line o' country, I reckon. But that's Jan, all right; an' you can take it from me. Queer world, ain't it? Well, so long, Jim. I jest thought I'd look back an' tell ye. So long!"

"So long, Jock. Oh, say, Jock! What's happened the rest o' that--that feller's team, anyway?" asked Willis.

"Well, Seattle Charley told me they was plum petered out. Most of 'em's died, I believe. But two or three's alive. That Indian musher across the creek's got 'em, doctoring of 'em up, Charley says. He reckons to pull some round, an' make a bit on 'em, I suppose. But this feller here, he's too far gone, Jim. You can see he's done."

"Ah! Well, good night, Jock."

"S'long!"

And with that Jim Willis was left alone again with the hound he was nursing.

He folded a deerskin coat loosely, and placed it under Jan's head. Then he reached for his spoon, and proceeded to force down a little more warm whisky and milk beside the clenched jaws. One knew, by the way he lifted one of Jan's flews, raised the dog's head, and gently rubbed his gullet between thumb and forefinger to help the liquor down, that he had handled sick dogs before to-day. He had covered Jan's body with an old buffalo robe, and now he proceeded to fill a jar with boiling water, and placed that against Jan's chest.

* * * * *

There could be no doubt but what Jan chose more wisely than he knew in entering that tent.

On the morning of the ninth day--Jim Willis's word was a little better than the bonds of some men--after the departure for the south of Beeching and Harry, Willis hit the trail upon the commission he had undertaken for Mike and Jock; or for the more richly moneyed powers behind those two.

Willis's team consisted of five huskies, good workers all; and he traveled pretty light, with a sled packed and lashed as only an old hand at the trail can perform that task. But the queer thing about the outfit was that Willis had a sixth dog with him, a dog half as large again as any in the traces; and this one walked at Jim's heel, idle; though, at the outset, it had taken some sharp talk to get him there. Indeed, the big dog had almost fought for a place at the head of the team of huskies. But Jim Willis was accustomed to see to it that his will, not theirs, ruled all the dogs he handled; and as he had decided that this particular dog should, for the present, run loose at his heels, the thing fell out thus, and not otherwise.

In nine days Jan had made a really wonderful recovery. He was not strong and hard yet, of course; but, as every one who had observed his case admitted, it was something of a miracle that he should be alive at all. And here he was setting out upon a fourteen-hundred-mile journey, and, to begin with, fighting for a place in the traces.

"If I have any more of your back-talk, my gentleman," Jim Willis had said, with gruff apparent sternness, "I'll truss you like a Thanksgiving turkey an' lash you atop the sled. So you get to heel an' stay there. D'ye hear me?"

And Jan, not without a hint of convalescent peevishness, had heard, and dropped behind.

The bones of his big frame were still a deal too prominent, and he carried more than even the bloodhound's proper share of loose, rolling skin. But his fine black and iron-gray coat had regained its gleaming vitality; his tread, if still a little uncertain, was springy; his dark hazel eyes showed bright and full of spirit above their crimson haws; his stern was carried more than half erect, and he was gaining weight in almost every hour; not mere fatty substance--Willis saw to that--but the genuine weight that comes with swelling muscles and the formation of healthy flesh.

"There's nothing like the trail for a pick-me-up," said Jim Willis. And as the days slipped past, and the miles of silent whiteness were flung behind his sled, it became apparent that he was in the right of it, so far, at all events, as Jan was concerned.

It was exactly forty-two days later that they sighted salt water again and were met in the town's one street by Mike and Jock. And on that day, as on each of twenty preceding days, Willis's team consisted of six dogs, instead of five, and the leader of the team was half as big again as his mates. It was noticed that Willis's whip was carried jammed in the lower lashing of his sled-pack, instead of in his hand. He had learned as much, and more, than Jean had ever known about Jan's powers as a team-leader.

"No use for a whip with that chap in the lead," he told an inquirer. "If you hit Jan, I reckon he'd bust the traces; and he don't give you a chance to find fault with the huskies. I reckon he'd eat 'em before he'd let 'em really need a whip. I haven't carried mine these three weeks now."

"You don't say," commented a bystander. Jim nodded to show he did "say."

"I tell ye that dog he don't just do what you tell him; he finds out what you want before you know it, and blame well does it before you can open your mouth. An' he makes the huskies do it, too, on schedule, I can tell you, or he'll know the reason why. Yes, sir. I take no credit for his training. I guess he was kinder born to the job, an' knows it better 'n what I do. I don't know who did train him, if anybody ever did; but as a leadin' sled-dog he's got all the Yukon whipped to a standstill. He's the limit. Now you watch!"

Of set purpose, Willis spoke with elaborate carelessness.

"Just mush on a yard or two, not far, Jan."

His tone was conversational. Jan gave a short, low bark; and in the same moment the five huskies flung themselves into their collars behind him. The sled--its runners already tight frozen--creaked, jerked, and slid forward just eight feet. Jan let out a low, warning growl. The team stood still without a word from its owner.

"Say, does he talk?" asked a bystander. And then, with a chuckle: "Use a knife an' fork to his grub, Jim?"

"Oh, as to that," said Willis, "he don't need to do no talkin'. He can make any husky understand without talk; an' when that husky understands, if he won't do as Jan says, Jan'll smother him, quick an' lively."

As Jan stood now at the head of his team, awaiting final orders, he formed a picture of perfect canine health and fitness. He represented most of a northlander's ideals and dreams of what a sled-dog should be, plus certain other qualities that came to him from his breeding, and that no dog-musher would have even hoped for in a sled-dog: his immense size, for example, and his wonderful dignity and grace of form and action.

Jan never had been so superlatively fit; so instinct in every least hair of his coat, in every littlest vein of his body, with tingling life and pulsing energy. His coat crackled if a man's hand was passed along his black saddle.

Despite the lissom grace of all his motions, Jan moved every limb with a kind of exuberant snap, as though his strength spilled over from its superabundance, and had to be expended at every opportunity to avoid surcharge. His movements formed his safety-valve, you fancied. Robbed of these, his abounding vitality would surely burst through the cage of his great body in some way, and destroy him. He walked as though the forces of gravitation were but barely sufficient to tether him down to mother earth.

"And I reckon he weighs near a hundred and sixty," said Willis; a guess the store scales proved good that night, when Jan registered exactly one hundred and fifty-seven pounds, though he carried no fat, nor an ounce of any kind of waste material.

XXXIV

THE PEACE RIVER TRAIL

Winter set in with unusual rigor, the temperature dropping after heavy snow to fifty below zero, and hovering between thirty and sixty below for weeks together.

Jim Willis and his sled-team lived on a practically "straight" meat diet. Jan had forgotten the taste of sun-dried salmon, and men and dogs together were living now on moose-meat chopped with an ax from the slabs and chunks that were stowed away on the sled. Willis occasionally treated himself to a dish of boiled beans, and when fortune favored he ate ptarmigan. But moose-meat was the staple for man and dogs alike.

For months the valleys they had traversed had been rich in game. But in the northland the movements of game are mysterious and unaccountable; and now, in a bleak and gloomy stretch of country north of the Caribou Mountains, they had seen no trace of life of any kind for a fortnight except wolves. And of these, by day and by night, Jim Willis had seen and heard more than he cared about. It seemed the brutes had come from country quite unlike the valleys Willis had traveled, and resembling more nearly that in which he now found himself. For these wolves were gaunt and poor, and the absence of game made them more than normally audacious. So far from seeking to avoid man and his dogs, they seemed to infest Willis's trail, ranging emptily and wistfully to his rear and upon either side as hungry sharks patrol a ship's wake.

The circumstances would have had little enough of significance for Willis, but for an accident which befell just before the cold snap set in. Hastening along the track of a moose he had already mortally wounded, beside one of the tributaries of the Mackenzie, Willis had had the misfortune to take a false step among half-formed ice, and he and his gun had fallen into deep water. The bigger part of a day was given to the attempted salvaging of that gun. But in the end the quest had to be relinquished.

The gun was never seen again; and, though Jim had good store of ammunition, he now had no weapon of any sort or kind, save ax and whip. This was the reason why the presence of large packs of hungry wolves annoyed him and made him anxious to reach a Peace River station as speedily as might be. He carried a fair stock of moose-meat, but accidents might happen, and in any case, apart from the presence of hungry wolves in large numbers, no man cares to be without weapons of precision in the wilderness, for it is these which more than any other thing give him his mastery over the predatory of the wild.

Just before three o'clock in an afternoon of still, intense cold, when daylight was fading out, the narrow devious watercourse whose frozen surface had formed Willis's trail for many a mile, brought him at last to a bend of the Peace River from which he knew he could reach a settlement within four or five days of good traveling. Therefore his arrival at this point was of more interest and importance to Willis than any ordinary camping halt. But it struck him as curious that Jan should show the interest he did show in it.

"Seems like as if that blame dog knows everything," he muttered as he saw Jan trotting to and fro over the trail, his flews sweeping the trodden snow with eager, questing gestures, his stern waving as with excitement of some sort.

"Surely there's been no game past this way," thought Willis, "or them wolves would be on to the scent of it pretty quick."

He could hear his tireless escorts of the past week yowling a mile or more away in the rear. Having built and lighted a fire of pine-knots, he called the dogs about him to be fed. Jan seemed disinclined to answer the call, being still busily questing to and fro. Willis had to call him separately and sternly.

"You stay right here," he said, sharply. "This ain't no place for hunting-excursions an' picnic-parties, let me tell you. You're big an' husky, all right, but the gentlemen out back there 'd make no more o' downing an' eatin' you than if you was a sody-cracker, so I tell ye now. They're fifty to one an' hungry enough to eat chips."

His ration swallowed, Jan showed an inclination to roam again, though his team-mates, with ears pricked and hackles rising in answer to the wolf-calls, huddled about as near the camp-fire as they dared.

"H'm! 'Tain't jest like you to be contemplatin' sooicide, neither; but it seems you've got some kind of a hunch that way to-night. Come here, then," said Willis. And he proceeded to tether Jan securely to the sled, within a yard of his own sleeping-place. "If I'd my old gun here, me beauties," he growled, shaking his fist in the direction from which he had come that day, "I'd give some o' ye something to howl about, I reckon." Then to Jan, "Now you lie down there an' stay there till I loose ye."

Obediently enough Jan proceeded to scoop out his nest in the snow, and settle. But it was obvious that he labored with some unusual interest; some unseen cause of excitement.

Next morning it seemed Jan had forgotten his peculiar interest in the Peace River trail, his attention being confined strictly to the customary routine of harnessing and schooling the team.

But two hours later he did a thing that Willis had never seen him do before. He threw the team into disorder by coming to an abrupt standstill in mid-trail without any hint of an order from his master. He was sniffing hard at the trail, turning sharply from side to side, his flews in the snow, while his nostrils avidly drank in whatever it was they found there, as a parched dog drinks at a water-hole.

"Mush on there, Jan! What ye playin' at?" cried Willis.

At the word of command Jan plunged forward mechanically. But in the next moment he had halted again and, nose in the snow, wheeled sharply to the right, almost flinging on its side the dog immediately behind him in the traces.

For an instant Jim Willis wondered uncomfortably if his leader had gone mad. He had known sudden and apparently quite inexplicable cases of madness among sled-dogs, and, like most others having any considerable experience of the trail, he had more than once had to shoot a dog upon whom madness had fallen. At all events, before striding forward to the head of his team Willis fumbled under the lashings of the sled and drew out the long-thonged dog-whip which for months now he had ceased to carry on the trail, finding no use for it under Jan's leadership of the team.

A glance now showed the cause of Jan's abrupt unordered right turn. Close to the trail Jim saw the fresh remains of a camp-fire beside the deep marks of a sled's runners.

"Well, an' what of it?" said he to Jan, sharply. "'Tain't the first time you've struck another man's trail, is it? What 'n the nation ails ye to be so het up about it, anyway?"

And then, with his practised trailer's eyes he began to examine these tracks himself.

"H'm! Do seem kind o' queer, too," he muttered. "The sled's a middlin'-heavy one, all right, only I don't see but one dog's track here, and that's onusu'l. Mus' be a pretty good husky, Jan, to shift that load on his own--eh? But hold on! I reckon there's two men slep' here. But there's only one man's track on the trail, an' only one dog. Some peculiar, I allow: but this here stoppin' and turnin' an' playin' up is altogether outside the contrac', Jan. Clean contr'y to discipline. Come, mush on there! D'ye hear me? Mush on, the lot o' ye."

It may be that, if he had had no reason for haste, Jim Willis would have gone farther in the matter of investigating Jan's peculiar conduct. As it was he saw every reason against delay and no justification for close study of a trail which he was desirous only of putting behind him. As a result he carried his whip for the rest of that day, and used it more often than it had been used in all the months since he first saw Jan. For, contrary to all habit and custom, Jan seemed to-day most singularly indifferent to his master's wishes, and yet not indifferent, either, to these or to anything, but so much preoccupied with other matters as to be neglectful of these.

He checked frequently in his stride to sniff hard and long at the trail. And after one or two of these checks Jim Willis sent the end of his whip-thong sailing through the keen air from his place beside the sled clear into Jan's flank by way of reminder and indorsement of his sharp, "Mush on there, Jan!"