Her soul thrilled. Once--a long time ago--he had known a master with a
white heart, just as she had known a girlhood in which the flowers
bloomed and the birds sang. She tried to look back, but she could not
see very far. She could not vision that day, less than a year ago, when
Miki, an angular pup, came down out of the Farther North with
Challoner; she could not vision the strange comradeship between the pup
and Neewa, the little black bear cub, nor that tragic day when they had
fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the swift stream that had carried
them over the waterfall and into the Great Adventure which had turned
Neewa into a grown bear and Miki into a wild dog. But in her heart she
FELT the things which she could not see. Miki had not come by chance.
Something greater than that had sent him.
She rose quietly, so that she would not waken the baby in the crib, and
opened the door. The moon was just rising over the forest and through
the glow of it she went to the cage. She heard the dog's joyous whine,
and then she felt the warm caress of his tongue upon her bare hands as
she thrust them between the sapling bars.
"NON, NON; you are not a devil," she cried softly, her voice filled
with a strange tremble. "O-o-ee, my SOKETAAO, I prayed, PRAYED--and you
came. Yes, on my knees each night I prayed to Our Blessed Lady that she
might have mercy on my baby, and make the sun in heaven shine for her
through all time. AND YOU CAME! And the dear God does not send devils
in answer to prayer. NON; never!"
And Miki, as though some spirit had given him the power to understand,
rested the weight of his bruised and beaten head on her hands.
From the edge of the forest Durant was watching. He had caught the
flash of light from the door and had seen Nanette go to the cage, and
his eyes did not leave her until she returned into the cabin. He
laughed as he went to his fire and finished making the WAHGUN he was
fastening to the end of a long pole. This WAHGUN and the pole added to
his own cleverness were saving him twelve good fox skins, and he
continued to chuckle there in the fireglow as he thought how easy it
was to beat a woman's wits. Nanette was a fool to refuse the pelts, and
Jacques was--dead. It was a most lucky combination of circumstances for
him. Fortune had surely come his way. On LE BETE, as he called the wild
dog, he would gamble all that he possessed in the big fight. And he
would win.
He waited until the light in the cabin went out before he approached
the cage again. Miki heard him coming. At a considerable distance he
saw him, for the moon was already turning the night into day. Durant
knew the ways of dogs. With them he employed a superior reason where Le
Beau had used the club and the rawhide. So he came up openly and
boldly, and, as if by accident, dropped the end of the pole between the
bars. With his hands against the cage, apparently unafraid, he began
talking in a casual way. He was different from Le Beau. Miki watched
him closely for a space and then let his eyes rest again on the
darkened cabin window. Stealthily Durant began to take advantage of his
opportunity. A little at a time he moved the end of the pole until it
was over Miki's head, with the deadly bowstring and its open noose
hanging down. He was an adept in the use of the WAHGUN. Many foxes and
wolves, and even a bear, he had caught that way. Miki, numbed by the
cold, scarcely felt the BABICHE noose as it settled softly about his
neck. He did not see Durant brace himself, with his feet against the
running-log of the cage.
Then, suddenly, Durant lurched himself backward, and it seemed to Miki
as though a giant trap of steel had closed about his neck. Instantly
his wind was cut off. He could make no sound as he struggled
frantically to free himself. Hand over hand Durant dragged him to the
bars, and there, with his feet still braced, he choked with his whole
weight until--when at last he let up on the WAHGUN--Miki collapsed as
if dead. Ten seconds later Durant was looping a muzzle over his closed
jaws. He left the cage door open when he went back to his sledge,
carrying Miki in his arms. Nanette's slow wits would never guess, he
told himself. She would think that LE BETE had escaped into the forest.
It was not his scheme to club Miki into serfdom, as Le Beau had failed
to do. Durant was wiser than that. In his crude and merciless way he
had come to know certain phenomena of the animal mind. He was not a
psychologist; oh the other hand brutality had not utterly blinded him.
So, instead of lashing Miki to the sledge as Le Beau had fastened him
to his improvised drag, Durant made his captive comfortable, covering
him with a warm blanket before he began his journey eastward. He made
sure, however, that there was no flaw in the muzzle about Miki's jaws,
and that the free end of the chain to which he was still fastened was
well hitched to the Gee-bar of his sledge.
When these things were done Durant set off in the direction of Fort O'
God, and if Jacques Le Beau could have seen him then he would have had
good reason to guess at his elation. By taint of birth and blood Durant
was a gambler first, and a trapper afterward. He set his traps that he
might have the thrill of wagering his profits, and for half a dozen
successive years he had won at the big annual dog fight at Post Fort O'
God. But this year he had been half afraid. His fear had not been of
Jacques Le Beau and Netah, but of the halfbreed away over on Red Belly
Lake. Grouse Piet was the halfbreed's name, and the "dog" that he was
going to put up at the fight was half wolf. Therefore, in the foolish
eagerness of his desire, had Durant offered two cross foxes and ten
reds--the price of five dogs and not one--for the possession of Le
Beau's wild dog. And now that he had him for nothing, and Nanette was
poorer by twelve skins, he was happy. For he had now a good match for
Grouse Piet's half wolf, and he would chance his money and his credit
at the Post to the limit.
When Miki came back to his senses Durant stopped his dogs, for he had
been watching closely for this moment. He bent over the sledge and
began talking, not in Le Beau's brutal way, but in a careless chummy
sort of voice, and with his mittened hand he patted his captive's head.
This was a new thing to Miki, for he knew that it was not the hand of
Nanette, but of a man-beast, and the softness of his nest in the
blanket, over which Henri had thrown a bear skin, was also new. A short
time ago he was frozen and stiff. Now he was warm and comfortable. So
he did not move. And Durant exulted in his cleverness. He did not
travel far in the night, but stopped four or five miles from Nanette's
cabin, and built a fire. Over this he boiled coffee and roasted meat.
He allowed the meat to roast slowly, turning it round and round on a
wooden spit, so that the aroma of it grew thick and inviting in the
air. He had fastened his two sledge dogs fifty paces away, but the
sledge was close to the fire, and he watched the effect on Miki of the
roasting meat. Since the days of his puppyhood with Challoner a smell
like that which came from the meat had not filled Miki's nostrils, and
at last Durant saw him lick his chops and heard the click of his teeth.
He chuckled in his beard. Still he waited another quarter of an hour.
Then he pulled the meat off the spit, cut it up, and gave a half of it
to Miki. And Miki ate it ravenously.
A clever man was Henri Durant!