Batard was a devil. This was recognized throughout the Northland.
"Hell's Spawn" he was called by many men, but his master, Black
Leclere, chose for him the shameful name "Batard." Now Black
Leclere was also a devil, and the twain were well matched. There
is a saying that when two devils come together, hell is to pay.
This is to be expected, and this certainly was to be expected when
Batard and Black Leclere came together. The first time they met,
Batard was a part-grown puppy, lean and hungry, with bitter eyes;
and they met with snap and snarl, and wicked looks, for Leclere's
upper lip had a wolfish way of lifting and showing the white, cruel
teeth. And it lifted then, and his eyes glinted viciously, as he
reached for Batard and dragged him out from the squirming litter.
It was certain that they divined each other, for on the instant
Batard had buried his puppy fangs in Leclere's hand, and Leclere,
thumb and finger, was coolly choking his young life out of him.
"SACREDAM," the Frenchman said softly, flirting the quick blood
from his bitten hand and gazing down on the little puppy choking
and gasping in the snow.
Leclere turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the Sixty Mile Post.
"Dat fo' w'at Ah lak heem. 'Ow moch, eh, you, M'sieu'? 'Ow moch?
Ah buy heem, now; Ah buy heem queek."
And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Leclere
bought Batard and gave him his shameful name. And for five years
the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael's and
the Yukon delta to the head-reaches of the Pelly and even so far as
the Peace River, Athabasca, and the Great Slave. And they acquired
a reputation for uncompromising wickedness, the like of which never
before attached itself to man and dog.
Batard did not know his father--hence his name--but, as John Hamlin
knew, his father was a great grey timber wolf. But the mother of
Batard, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling, bickering,
obscene, husky, full-fronted and heavy-chested, with a malign eye,
a cat-like grip on life, and a genius for trickery and evil. There
was neither faith nor trust in her. Her treachery alone could be
relied upon, and her wild-wood amours attested her general
depravity. Much of evil and much of strength were there in these,
Batard's progenitors, and, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh,
he had inherited it all. And then came Black Leclere, to lay his
heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy life, to press and prod
and mould till it became a big bristling beast, acute in knavery,
overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical. With a
proper master Batard might have made an ordinary, fairly efficient
sled-dog. He never got the chance: Leclere but confirmed him in
his congenital iniquity.
The history of Batard and Leclere is a history of war--of five
cruel, relentless years, of which their first meeting is fit
summary. To begin with, it was Leclere's fault, for he hated with
understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly
puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method.
At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come
later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these
Batard had an ear injured. He never regained control of the riven
muscles, and ever after the ear drooped limply down to keep keen
the memory of his tormentor. And he never forgot.
His puppyhood was a period of foolish rebellion. He was always
worsted, but he fought back because it was his nature to fight
back. And he was unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of
lash and club, he none the less contrived always to throw in the
defiant snarl, the bitter vindictive menace of his soul which
fetched without fail more blows and beatings. But his was his
mother's tenacious grip on life. Nothing could kill him. He
flourished under misfortune, grew fat with famine, and out of his
terrible struggle for life developed a preternatural intelligence.
His were the stealth and cunning of the husky, his mother, and the
fierceness and valour of the wolf, his father.
Possibly it was because of his father that he never wailed. His
puppy yelps passed with his lanky legs, so that he became grim and
taciturn, quick to strike, slow to warn. He answered curse with
snarl, and blow with snap, grinning the while his implacable
hatred; but never again, under the extremest agony, did Leclere
bring from him the cry of fear nor of pain. This unconquerableness
but fanned Leclere's wrath and stirred him to greater deviltries.
Did Leclere give Batard half a fish and to his mates whole ones,
Batard went forth to rob other dogs of their fish. Also he robbed
caches and expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he
became a terror to all dogs and masters of dogs. Did Leclere beat
Batard and fondle Babette--Babette who was not half the worker he
was--why, Batard threw her down in the snow and broke her hind leg
in his heavy jaws, so that Leclere was forced to shoot her.
Likewise, in bloody battles, Batard mastered all his team-mates,
set them the law of trail and forage, and made them live to the law
he set.
In five years he heard but one kind word, received but one soft
stroke of a hand, and then he did not know what manner of things
they were. He leaped like the untamed thing he was, and his jaws
were together in a flash. It was the missionary at Sunrise, a
newcomer in the country, who spoke the kind word and gave the soft
stroke of the hand. And for six months after, he wrote no letters
home to the States, and the surgeon at McQuestion travelled two
hundred miles on the ice to save him from blood-poisoning.
Men and dogs looked askance at Batard when he drifted into their
camps and posts. The men greeted him with feet threateningly
lifted for the kick, the dogs with bristling manes and bared fangs.
Once a man did kick Batard, and Batard, with quick wolf snap,
closed his jaws like a steel trap on the man's calf and crunched
down to the bone. Whereat the man was determined to have his life,
only Black Leclere, with ominous eyes and naked hunting-knife,
stepped in between. The killing of Batard--ah, SACREDAM, THAT was
a pleasure Leclere reserved for himself. Some day it would happen,
or else--bah! who was to know? Anyway, the problem would be
solved.
For they had become problems to each other. The very breath each
drew was a challenge and a menace to the other. Their hate bound
them together as love could never bind. Leclere was bent on the
coming of the day when Batard should wilt in spirit and cringe and
whimper at his feet. And Batard--Leclere knew what was in Batard's
mind, and more than once had read it in Batard's eyes. And so
clearly had he read, that when Batard was at his back, he made it a
point to glance often over his shoulder.
Men marvelled when Leclere refused large money for the dog. "Some
day you'll kill him and be out his price," said John Hamlin once,
when Batard lay panting in the snow where Leclere had kicked him,
and no one knew whether his ribs were broken, and no one dared look
to see.
"Dat," said Leclere, dryly, "dat is my biz'ness, M'sieu'."
And the men marvelled that Batard did not run away. They did not
understand. But Leclere understood. He was a man who lived much
in the open, beyond the sound of human tongue, and he had learned
the voices of wind and storm, the sigh of night, the whisper of
dawn, the clash of day. In a dim way he could hear the green
things growing, the running of the sap, the bursting of the bud.
And he knew the subtle speech of the things that moved, of the
rabbit in the snare, the moody raven beating the air with hollow
wing, the baldface shuffling under the moon, the wolf like a grey
shadow gliding betwixt the twilight and the dark. And to him
Batard spoke clear and direct. Full well he understood why Batard
did not run away, and he looked more often over his shoulder.
When in anger, Batard was not nice to look upon, and more than once
had he leapt for Leclere's throat, to be stretched quivering and
senseless in the snow, by the butt of the ever ready dogwhip. And
so Batard learned to bide his time. When he reached his full
strength and prime of youth, he thought the time had come. He was
broad-chested, powerfully muscled, of far more than ordinary size,
and his neck from head to shoulders was a mass of bristling hair--
to all appearances a full-blooded wolf. Leclere was lying asleep
in his furs when Batard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon
him stealthily, head low to earth and lone ear laid back, with a
feline softness of tread. Batard breathed gently, very gently, and
not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for
a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty,
and swelling to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his
fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that moment he
remembered his drooping ear, his uncounted blows and prodigious
wrongs, and without a sound sprang on the sleeping man.
Leclere awoke to the pang of the fangs in his throat, and, perfect
animal that he was, he awoke clear-headed and with full
comprehension. He closed on Batard's windpipe with both his hands,
and rolled out of his furs to get his weight uppermost. But the
thousands of Batard's ancestors had clung at the throats of
unnumbered moose and caribou and dragged them down, and the wisdom
of those ancestors was his. When Leclere's weight came on top of
him, he drove his hind legs upwards and in, and clawed down chest
and abdomen, ripping and tearing through skin and muscle. And when
he felt the man's body wince above him and lift, he worried and
shook at the man's throat. His team-mates closed around in a
snarling circle, and Batard, with failing breath and fading sense,
knew that their jaws were hungry for him. But that did not matter-
-it was the man, the man above him, and he ripped and clawed, and
shook and worried, to the last ounce of his strength. But Leclere
choked him with both his hands, till Batard's chest heaved and
writhed for the air denied, and his eyes glazed and set, and his
jaws slowly loosened, and his tongue protruded black and swollen.
"Eh? Bon, you devil!" Leclere gurgled mouth and throat clogged
with his own blood, as he shoved the dizzy dog from him.
And then Leclere cursed the other dogs off as they fell upon
Batard. They drew back into a wider circle, squatting alertly on
their haunches and licking their chops, the hair on every neck
bristling and erect.
Batard recovered quickly, and at sound of Leclere's voice, tottered
to his feet and swayed weakly back and forth.
"A-h-ah! You beeg devil!" Leclere spluttered. "Ah fix you; Ah fix
you plentee, by GAR!"
Batard, the air biting into his exhausted lungs like wine, flashed
full into the man's face, his jaws missing and coming together with
a metallic clip. They rolled over and over on the snow, Leclere
striking madly with his fists. Then they separated, face to face,
and circled back and forth before each other. Leclere could have
drawn his knife. His rifle was at his feet. But the beast in him
was up and raging. He would do the thing with his hands--and his
teeth. Batard sprang in, but Leclere knocked him over with a blow
of the fist, fell upon him, and buried his teeth to the bone in the
dog's shoulder.
It was a primordial setting and a primordial scene, such as might
have been in the savage youth of the world. An open space in a
dark forest, a ring of grinning wolf-dogs, and in the centre two
beasts, locked in combat, snapping and snarling raging madly about
panting, sobbing, cursing, straining, wild with passion, in a fury
of murder, ripping and tearing and clawing in elemental
brutishness.
But Leclere caught Batard behind the ear with a blow from his fist,
knocking him over, and, for the instant, stunning him. Then
Leclere leaped upon him with his feet, and sprang up and down,
striving to grind him into the earth. Both Batard's hind legs were
broken ere Leclere ceased that he might catch breath.
"A-a-ah! A-a-ah!" he screamed, incapable of speech, shaking his
fist, through sheer impotence of throat and larynx.
But Batard was indomitable. He lay there in a helpless welter, his
lip feebly lifting and writhing to the snarl he had not the
strength to utter. Leclere kicked him, and the tired jaws closed
on the ankle, but could not break the skin.
Then Leclere picked up the whip and proceeded almost to cut him to
pieces, at each stroke of the lash crying: "Dis taim Ah break you!
Eh? By GAR! Ah break you!"
In the end, exhausted, fainting from loss of blood, he crumpled up
and fell by his victim, and when the wolf-dogs closed in to take
their vengeance, with his last consciousness dragged his body on
top of Batard to shield him from their fangs.
This occurred not far from Sunrise, and the missionary, opening the
door to Leclere a few hours later, was surprised to note the
absence of Batard from the team. Nor did his surprise lessen when
Leclere threw back the robes from the sled, gathered Batard into
his arms and staggered across the threshold. It happened that the
surgeon of McQuestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on a
gossip, and between them they proceeded to repair Leclere,
"Merci, non," said he. "Do you fix firs' de dog. To die? NON.
Eet is not good. Becos' heem Ah mus' yet break. Dat fo' w'at he
mus' not die."
The surgeon called it a marvel, the missionary a miracle, that
Leclere pulled through at all; and so weakened was he, that in the
spring the fever got him, and he went on his back again. Batard
had been in even worse plight, but his grip on life prevailed, and
the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves,
during the several weeks he lay strapped to the floor. And by the
time Leclere, finally convalescent, sallow and shaky, took the sun
by the cabin door, Batard had reasserted his supremacy among his
kind, and brought not only his own team-mates but the missionary's
dogs into subjection.
He moved never a muscle, nor twitched a hair, when, for the first
time, Leclere tottered out on the missionary's arm, and sank down
slowly and with infinite caution on the three-legged stool.
"BON!" he said. "BON! De good sun!" And he stretched out his
wasted hands and washed them in the warmth.
Then his gaze fell on the dog, and the old light blazed back in his
eyes. He touched the missionary lightly on the arm. "Mon pere,
dat is one beeg devil, dat Batard. You will bring me one pistol,
so, dat Ah drink de sun in peace."
And thenceforth for many days he sat in the sun before the cabin
door. He never dozed, and the pistol lay always across his knees.
Batard had a way, the first thing each day, of looking for the
weapon in its wonted place. At sight of it he would lift his lip
faintly in token that he understood, and Leclere would lift his own
lip in an answering grin. One day the missionary took note of the
trick.
"Bless me!" he said. "I really believe the brute comprehends."
Leclere laughed softly. "Look you, mon pere. Dat w'at Ah now
spik, to dat does he lissen."
As if in confirmation, Batard just perceptibly wriggled his lone
ear up to catch the sound.
"Ah say 'keel'."
Batard growled deep down in his throat, the hair bristled along his
neck, and every muscle went tense and expectant.
"Ah lift de gun, so, like dat." And suiting action to word, he
sighted the pistol at Batard. Batard, with a single leap,
sideways, landed around the corner of the cabin out of sight.
"Bless me!" he repeated at intervals. Leclere grinned proudly.
"But why does he not run away?"
The Frenchman's shoulders went up in the racial shrug that means
all things from total ignorance to infinite understanding.
"Then why do you not kill him?"
Again the shoulders went up.
"Mon pere," he said after a pause, "de taim is not yet. He is one
beeg devil. Some taim Ah break heem, so an' so, all to leetle
bits. Hey? some taim. BON!"
A day came when Leclere gathered his dogs together and floated down
in a bateau to Forty Mile, and on to the Porcupine, where he took a
commission from the P. C. Company, and went exploring for the
better part of a year. After that he poled up the Koyokuk to
deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back, from camp to
camp, along the Yukon. And during the long months Batard was well
lessoned. He learned many tortures, and, notably, the torture of
hunger, the torture of thirst, the torture of fire, and, worst of
all, the torture of music.
Like the rest of his kind, he did not enjoy music. It gave him
exquisite anguish, racking him nerve by nerve, and ripping apart
every fibre of his being. It made him howl, long and wolf-life, as
when the wolves bay the stars on frosty nights. He could not help
howling. It was his one weakness in the contest with Leclere, and
it was his shame. Leclere, on the other hand, passionately loved
music--as passionately as he loved strong drink. And when his soul
clamoured for expression, it usually uttered itself in one or the
other of the two ways, and more usually in both ways. And when he
had drunk, his brain a-lilt with unsung song and the devil in him
aroused and rampant, his soul found its supreme utterance in
torturing Batard.
"Now we will haf a leetle museek," he would say. "Eh? W'at you
t'ink, Batard?"
It was only an old and battered harmonica, tenderly treasured and
patiently repaired; but it was the best that money could buy, and
out of its silver reeds he drew weird vagrant airs that men had
never heard before. Then Batard, dumb of throat, with teeth tight
clenched, would back away, inch by inch, to the farthest cabin
corner. And Leclere, playing, playing, a stout club tucked under
his arm, followed the animal up, inch by inch, step by step, till
there was no further retreat.
At first Batard would crowd himself into the smallest possible
space, grovelling close to the floor; but as the music came nearer
and nearer, he was forced to uprear, his back jammed into the logs,
his fore legs fanning the air as though to beat off the rippling
waves of sound. He still kept his teeth together, but severe
muscular contractions attacked his body, strange twitchings and
jerkings, till he was all a-quiver and writhing in silent torment.
As he lost control, his jaws spasmodically wrenched apart, and deep
throaty vibrations issued forth, too low in the register of sound
for human ear to catch. And then, nostrils distended, eyes
dilated, hair bristling in helpless rage, arose the long wolf howl.
It came with a slurring rush upwards, swelling to a great heart-
breaking burst of sound, and dying away in sadly cadenced woe--then
the next rush upward, octave upon octave; the bursting heart; and
the infinite sorrow and misery, fainting, fading, falling, and
dying slowly away.
It was fit for hell. And Leclere, with fiendish ken, seemed to
divine each particular nerve and heartstring, and with long wails
and tremblings and sobbing minors to make it yield up its last
shred of grief. It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after,
Batard was nervous and unstrung, starting at common sounds,
tripping over his own shadow, but, withal, vicious and masterful
with his team-mates. Nor did he show signs of a breaking spirit.
Rather did he grow more grim and taciturn, biding his time with an
inscrutable patience that began to puzzle and weigh upon Leclere.
The dog would lie in the firelight, motionless, for hours, gazing
straight before him at Leclere, and hating him with his bitter
eyes.
Often the man felt that he had bucked against the very essence of
life--the unconquerable essence that swept the hawk down out of the
sky like a feathered thunderbolt, that drove the great grey goose
across the zones, that hurled the spawning salmon through two
thousand miles of boiling Yukon flood. At such times he felt
impelled to--express his own unconquerable essence; and with strong
drink, wild music, and Batard, he indulged in vast orgies, wherein
he pitted his puny strength in the face of things, and challenged
all that was, and had been, and was yet to be.
"Dere is somet'ing dere," he affirmed, when the rhythmed vagaries
of his mind touched the secret chords of Batard's being and brought
forth the long lugubrious howl. "Ah pool eet out wid bot' my
han's, so, an' so. Ha! ha! Eet is fonee! Eet is ver' fonee! De
priest chant, de womans pray, de mans swear, de leetle bird go
peep-peep, Batard, heem go yow-yow--an' eet is all de ver' same
t'ing. Ha! ha!"
Father Gautier, a worthy priest, one reproved him with instances of
concrete perdition. He never reproved him again.
"Eet may be so, mon pere," he made answer. "An' Ah t'ink Ah go
troo hell a-snappin', lak de hemlock troo de fire. Eh, mon pere?"
But all bad things come to an end as well as good, and so with
Black Leclere. On the summer low water, in a poling boat, he left
McDougall for Sunrise. He left McDougall in company with Timothy
Brown, and arrived at Sunrise by himself. Further, it was known
that they had quarrelled just previous to pulling out; for the
Lizzie, a wheezy ten-ton stern-wheeler, twenty-four hours behind,
beat Leclere in by three days. And when he did get in, it was with
a clean-drilled bullet-hole through his shoulder muscle, and a tale
of ambush and murder.
A strike had been made at Sunrise, and things had changed
considerably. With the infusion of several hundred gold-seekers, a
deal of whisky, and half-a-dozen equipped gamblers, the missionary
had seen the page of his years of labour with the Indians wiped
clean. When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking beans and
keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with
swapping their warm furs for black bottles and broken time-pieces,
he took to his bed, said "Bless me" several times, and departed to
his final accounting in a rough-hewn, oblong box. Whereupon the
gamblers moved their roulette and faro tables into the mission
house, and the click of chips and clink of glasses went up from
dawn till dark and to dawn again.
Now Timothy Brown was well beloved among these adventurers of the
North. The one thing against him was his quick temper and ready
fist--a little thing, for which his kind heart and forgiving hand
more than atoned. On the other hand, there was nothing to atone
for Black Leclere. He was "black," as more than one remembered
deed bore witness, while he was as well hated as the other was
beloved. So the men of Sunrise put an antiseptic dressing on his
shoulder and haled him before Judge Lynch.
It was a simple affair. He had quarrelled with Timothy Brown at
McDougall. With Timothy Brown he had left McDougall. Without
Timothy Brown he had arrived at Sunrise. Considered in the light
of his evilness, the unanimous conclusion was that he had killed
Timothy Brown. On the other hand, Leclere acknowledged their
facts, but challenged their conclusion, and gave his own
explanation. Twenty miles out of Sunrise he and Timothy Brown were
poling the boat along the rocky shore. From that shore two rifle-
shots rang out. Timothy Brown pitched out of the boat and went
down bubbling red, and that was the last of Timothy Brown. He,
Leclere, pitched into the bottom of the boat with a stinging
shoulder. He lay very quiet, peeping at the shore. After a time
two Indians stuck up their heads and came out to the water's edge,
carrying between them a birch-bark canoe. As they launched it,
Leclere let fly. He potted one, who went over the side after the
manner of Timothy Brown. The other dropped into the bottom of the
canoe, and then canoe and poling boat went down the stream in a
drifting battle. After that they hung up on a split current, and
the canoe passed on one side of an island, the poling boat on the
other. That was the last of the canoe, and he came on into
Sunrise. Yes, from the way the Indian in the canoe jumped, he was
sure he had potted him. That was all. This explanation was not
deemed adequate. They gave him ten hours' grace while the Lizzie
steamed down to investigate. Ten hours later she came wheezing
back to Sunrise. There had been nothing to investigate. No
evidence had been found to back up his statements. They told him
to make his will, for he possessed a fifty-thousand dollar Sunrise
claim, and they were a law-abiding as well as a law-giving breed.
Leclere shrugged his shoulders. "Bot one t'ing," he said; "a
leetle, w'at you call, favour--a leetle favour, dat is eet. I gif
my feefty t'ousan' dollair to de church. I gif my husky dog,
Batard, to de devil. De leetle favour? Firs' you hang heem, an'
den you hang me. Eet is good, eh?"
Good it was, they agreed, that Hell's Spawn should break trail for
his master across the last divide, and the court was adjourned down
to the river bank, where a big spruce tree stood by itself.
Slackwater Charley put a hangman's knot in the end of a hauling-
line, and the noose was slipped over Leclere's head and pulled
tight around his neck. His hands were tied behind his back, and he
was assisted to the top of a cracker box. Then the running end of
the line was passed over an over-hanging branch, drawn taut, and
made fast. To kick the box out from under would leave him dancing
on the air.
"Now for the dog," said Webster Shaw, sometime mining engineer.
"You'll have to rope him, Slackwater."
Leclere grinned. Slackwater took a chew of tobacco, rove a running
noose, and proceeded leisurely to coil a few turns in his hand. He
paused once or twice to brush particularly offensive mosquitoes
from off his face. Everybody was brushing mosquitoes, except
Leclere, about whose head a small cloud was visible. Even Batard,
lying full-stretched on the ground with his fore paws rubbed the
pests away from eyes and mouth.
But while Slackwater waited for Batard to lift his head, a faint
call came from the quiet air, and a man was seen waving his arms
and running across the flat from Sunrise. It was the store-keeper.
"C-call 'er off, boys," he panted, as he came in among them.
"Little Sandy and Bernadotte's jes' got in," he explained with
returning breath. "Landed down below an' come up by the short cut.
Got the Beaver with 'm. Picked 'm up in his canoe, stuck in a back
channel, with a couple of bullet-holes in 'm. Other buck was Klok
Kutz, the one that knocked spots out of his squaw and dusted."
"Eh? W'at Ah say? Eh?" Leclere cried exultantly. "Dat de one fo'
sure! Ah know. Ah spik true."
"The thing to do is to teach these damned Siwashes a little
manners," spoke Webster Shaw. "They're getting fat and sassy, and
we'll have to bring them down a peg. Round in all the bucks and
string up the Beaver for an object lesson. That's the programme.
Come on and let's see what he's got to say for himself."
"Heh, M'sieu!" Leclere called, as the crowd began to melt away
through the twilight in the direction of Sunrise. "Ah lak ver'
moch to see de fon."
"Oh, we'll turn you loose when we come back," Webster Shaw shouted
over his shoulder. "In the meantime meditate on your sins and the
ways of Providence. It will do you good, so be grateful."
As is the way with men who are accustomed to great hazards, whose
nerves are healthy and trained in patience, so it was with Leclere
who settled himself to the long wait--which is to say that he
reconciled his mind to it. There was no settling of the body, for
the taut rope forced him to stand rigidly erect. The least
relaxation of the leg muscles pressed the rough-fibred noose into
his neck, while the upright position caused him much pain in his
wounded shoulder. He projected his under lip and expelled his
breath upwards along his face to blow the mosquitoes away from his
eyes. But the situation had its compensation. To be snatched from
the maw of death was well worth a little bodily suffering, only it
was unfortunate that he should miss the hanging of the Beaver.
And so he mused, till his eyes chanced to fall upon Batard, head
between fore paws and stretched on the ground asleep. And their
Leclere ceased to muse. He studied the animal closely, striving to
sense if the sleep were real or feigned. Batard's sides were
heaving regularly, but Leclere felt that the breath came and went a
shade too quickly; also he felt that there was a vigilance or
alertness to every hair that belied unshackling sleep. He would
have given his Sunrise claim to be assured that the dog was not
awake, and once, when one of his joints cracked, he looked quickly
and guiltily at Batard to see if he roused. He did not rouse then
but a few minutes later he got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and
looked carefully about him.
"Sacredam," said Leclere under his breath.
Assured that no one was in sight or hearing, Batard sat down,
curled his upper lip almost into a smile, looked up at Leclere, and
licked his chops.
"Ah see my feenish," the man said, and laughed sardonically aloud.
Batard came nearer, the useless ear wabbling, the good ear cocked
forward with devilish comprehension. He thrust his head on one
side quizzically, and advanced with mincing, playful steps. He
rubbed his body gently against the box till it shook and shook
again. Leclere teetered carefully to maintain his equilibrium.
"Batard," he said calmly, "look out. Ah keel you."
Batard snarled at the word and shook the box with greater force.
Then he upreared, and with his fore paws threw his weight against
it higher up. Leclere kicked out with one foot, but the rope bit
into his neck and checked so abruptly as nearly to overbalance him.
"Hi, ya! Chook! Mush-on!" he screamed.
Batard retreated, for twenty feet or so, with a fiendish levity in
his bearing that Leclere could not mistake. He remembered the dog
often breaking the scum of ice on the water hole by lifting up and
throwing his weight upon it; and remembering, he understood what he
now had in mind. Batard faced about and paused. He showed his
white teeth in a grin, which Leclere answered; and then hurled his
body through the air, in full charge, straight for the box.
Fifteen minutes later, Slackwater Charley and Webster Shaw
returning, caught a glimpse of a ghostly pendulum swinging back and
forth in the dim light. As they hurriedly drew in closer, they
made out the man's inert body, and a live thing that clung to it,
and shook and worried, and gave to it the swaying motion.
"Hi, ya! Chook! you Spawn of Hell!" yelled Webster Shaw.
But Batard glared at him, and snarled threateningly, without
loosing his jaws.
Slackwater Charley got out his revolver, but his hand was shaking,
as with a chill, and he fumbled.
"Here you take it," he said, passing the weapon over.
Webster Shaw laughed shortly, drew a sight between the gleaming
eyes, and pressed the trigger. Batard's body twitched with the
shock, threshed the ground spasmodically for a moment, and went
suddenly limp. But his teeth still held fast locked.