showed that the terrier had been very much in earnest. Jan's dense coat
was thinner just there than in most spots; but even there a good deal of
energy was required to yield flesh-hold to a terrier's jaws. But the
wound was trifling, and Dick, knowing his hound, wasted no sentiment
over a scratch of this sort.
"It's just as well, sir," said he to Captain Arnutt. "There are some
pretty tough huskies hanging about our quarters, and this little start
will warn Jan to keep a sharp lookout. He has to get used to more
warlike conditions than he knew in Sussex, and the sooner he
understands, the better for him--and for the others. I fancy he can take
care of himself."
"He's certainly got the first essential--discipline. I never saw a more
obedient dog."
Dick looked his pleasure at this, and ventured upon the hope that
Captain Arnutt would pass on this testimonial among his brother
officers; for well Dick knew the value to a dog like Jan of a good
reputation, more particularly in so well-ordered a little world as that
of the R.N.W.M.P. barracks.
This opening incident ended, Dick was free to take Jan down to the
stables and introduce him to his own horse and the other chargers in
that division, as well as to their riders. Dick devoted considerable
time and care to this introductory process, because he realized its
importance. He had obtained permission to quarter Jan with his horse;
and an hour's work provided a rough bench for Jan at one end of Paddy's
manger--Paddy being Dick's charger. Dick had another day and a half
before having to report himself for duty, and had made up his mind so to
instruct Jan during that period as to make it unnecessary that the hound
should ever be called upon to suffer the indignity of being tethered,
even during his, Dick's, absence.
The task proved an easy one, and Dick was given every kind of assistance
by his comrades, most of whom were at once attracted by Jan, and
inclined to regard him as an acquisition to be proud of. Before the day
was out Jan had successfully passed through a number of tolerably severe
tests of trustworthiness, and Dick was satisfied that he might safely be
spared the indignity of the chain.
For example, being left on his rough bench with an old dandy-brush to
guard, Jan was approached in turn by half a dozen of Dick's comrades,
who exhausted their ingenuity in trying to entice, frighten, or persuade
him from his post. Jan eyed them all quite good-humoredly, wagging his
tail in response to enticements, and growling a little, very quietly,
when they tried harsher tactics, but remaining throughout immovably in
charge of his post.
Then Dick went well out into the barrack-yard, and called quietly to
Jan. Instantly the long, silky ears lifted. Snatching up his dandy-brush
and gripping it firmly between his jaws, Jan rushed out into the yard,
there to be rewarded with the assurance of Dick's affectionate approval
and the enthusiastic plaudits of the other troopers.
"You've put the Indian sign on him, all right," said French, the
Devonshire man. "It must have taken some doing to lick him into that
shape."
"There's no Indian sign about it, old man," said Dick. "It isn't any
lambasting Jan's afraid of. You watch his face now, when I lift this
stick."
The men all watched, and noted that Jan did not move so much as an
eyelid in response to the lifting of a stick.
"Well, that's queer," said old Cartier, the French-Canadian dealer, who
was visiting a friend in the barracks. "Don't seem as though that dog
ever was licked."
"And so far as I know," said Dick, "he never has been. But, mind you,
that's not to say he never will be. I'd never hesitate to thrash a dog
if he deserved it, and thrash him good and hard, too. But so far Master
Jan has never asked for lickings. Have you Jan? That's why he's not
afraid of a stick; for I'd never hit a dog or a horse unless really to
punish him, so that he'd know it was a thrashing--not just a bit of bad
luck for him, or temper in me."
"H'm! I believe you could get two hundred an' feefty dollar for that
dog, up north," said Cartier, musingly; "maybe three hundred, if you
broke him to harness."
Dick smiled quietly, and nodded.
"No, no," said O'Malley, the man of Cork; "he's going to stay right here
an' be our mascot. Aren't ye, Jan?" And Jan affably signified his
agreement.
"That's all right," said French, knocking his pipe out against the heel
of his boot. "But what's going to happen to-morrow when Sergeant Moore
gets back with his Sourdough? You'll see some fun then, I fancy. Old
Sourdough's been boss dog around here a goodish while now, you know. He
won't stand for having this chap put his nose out of joint. And, mind
you, there's no dog in Regina can cock his tail at Sourdough. I saw him
knock the stuffing out of that big sheep-dog of MacDougall's last year,
and I tell you he'd have buried the sheep-dog before he left him, if
Sergeant Moore hadn't managed to get a halter through his collar and
pretty near choked him. It was a close thing; an' they reckoned the
sheep-dog had never met his master till then."
"Yep, that's a fact," said another man. "There'll be trouble with
Sourdough if you're not careful, Vaughan. He's a demon of a dog, an', by
gee! he's sourer than his boss, an' that's saying something."
"Well, yes, I'd thought about Sourdough," said Dick; "and I'm glad his
quarters are the other side of the yard."
"The other side!" said French. "Why, man, he owns the whole place. You
see how the other dogs kow-tow to him. He's sour, all right, and a
fighter from way back; but the way he's built he somehow doesn't seem to
make trouble with any dog that kow-tows to him. But God help the husky
that don't kow-tow. Sourdough will have his salute as boss, or he'll
have blood. That's the sort of a duck Sourdough is."
"Ah! Well, he'll get civility from us, won't he, Jan? and if that's all
he wants, there'll be no trouble. But I'll tell you what, you fellows:
if Jan's in the stable there with Paddy any time when I'm not about,
don't you let Sourdough come into our quarters at all."
"It'd take a hefty chap to keep Sourdough out, if he meant coming in,"
said O'Malley. "But I guess we'll do our best--eh, boys? I reckon our
Jan's a better mascot than the sergeant's tyke."
"But there mustn't be any fighting," added Dick; "and there won't be if
we're careful; for there's nothing sour about Jan here, and you've seen
he's obedient."
XXI
INTRODUCING SOURDOUGH
In some respect Jan's life at the R.N.W.M.P. headquarters might have
been simpler if he had been less lovable and less popular. As a matter
of fact, while pretty nearly every one in the barracks took a fancy to
the big hound and felt a certain pride in his unique appearance as a
R.N.W.M.P. dog, the members of Dick's own division adored Jan to a man.
His docility, his affectionate nature, and his uniform courtesy bound
them to him, even apart from their pride in him and the influence of
Dick Vaughan as champion heavy-weight boxer and crack horseman of the
force.
There were eight or ten other dogs in the barracks, all of whom
(including the bellicose fox-terrier who first welcomed Jan at the
gates) took kindly to the big hound from Sussex as soon as they knew him
and had tested his frank and kindly nature. They were none of them
really big dogs, and that fact alone, apart from Dick's teaching, made
Jan specially indulgent in his attitude toward them. After certain curt
warnings, the two or three dogs among them whose natures inclined them
to fighting seemed to realize contentedly enough that Jan was somewhat
outside their class, and in any case not a good person to quarrel with.
But there were two people who hated Jan from the moment they first set
eyes upon his fine form, and these were Sergeant Moore and his dog
Sourdough. The sergeant and his dog had a good deal in common with each
other and not very much in common with any one else. Sergeant Moore was
one of the few really unpopular men in the force. But, if nobody in the
district liked him, it is but fair to say that many feared him, and none
could be found who spoke ill of him in the sense of calling his honesty
or his competence into question.
The sergeant was a terror to evil-doers, a hard man to cross, and too
grim and sour to be any one's companion. But no man doubted his honesty,
and those who had no call to fear him entertained a certain respect for
him, even though they could not like the man. In addition to his
grimness he had a stingingly bitter tongue. He was not a fluent speaker;
but most of his words had an edge to them, and he dealt not at all in
compliments, never going beyond a curt nod by way of response to another
man's "Good day!" When, with the punctiliousness of the perfectly
disciplined man, he saluted an officer, there was that in his expression
and in the almost fierce quality of his movement which made the salute
something of a menace.
His forbidding disposition had probably stood between Sergeant Moore and
further promotion. His contemporaries, the older men of the corps, knew
he had once been married. His juniors had never seen the sergeant in
converse with a woman. Withal it was believed that Sergeant Moore had
one weakness, one soft spot in his armor. It was said that when he
believed himself to be quite alone with his dog Sourdough he indulged
himself in some of the tendernesses of a widowed father who lavishes all
his heart upon a single child.
There was little enough about Sourdough to remind one of a human child,
lovable or otherwise. If the master was grim and forbidding in manner
and appearance, the dog exhibited a broadly magnified reflection of the
same attributes. His color was a sandy grayish yellow without markings.
His coat was coarse, rather ragged, and extraordinarily dense. His
pricked ears were chipped and jagged from a hundred fights, and in a
diagonal line across his muzzle was a broad white scar, gotten, men
said, in combat with a timber-wolf in the Athabasca country.
It was a part of Sourdough's pose or policy in life to profess
short-sightedness. He would walk past a group of dogs as though unaware
of their existence. Yet let one of those dogs but cock an eye of
impudence in his direction, or glance with lifting eyebrow at one of his
fellows, with a sneer or jeer in his heart for Sourdough, and in that
instant Sourdough would be upon him like an angry lynx, with a bitter
snarl and a snap that was pretty certain to leave its scar. This done,
Sourdough would pass on, with hackles erect and a hunch of his shoulders
which seemed to say:
"When next you are inclined to rudeness, remember that Sourdough knows
all things, forgets nothing, and bites deep."
The story went that in his youth Sourdough had led a team of sled-dogs,
and that he had saved Moore's life on one occasion when every one of his
team-mates had either died or deserted his post. He was of the mixed
northern breed whose members are called huskies, but he was bigger and
heavier than most huskies and weighed just upon a hundred pounds. A
wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would
have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters),
and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it
rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far
from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there
was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with
his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all his attacks,
served to win for him the submissive respect of almost every dog he met.
Occasionally, and upon a first meeting, some careless, undiscerning dog
would overlook these qualities. The same dog never made the same mistake
a second time.
Dick Vaughan made it his business to be on hand when Sourdough first met
Jan. When ordered to do so, Jan had learned to keep his muzzle within a
yard of Dick's heels, and that was his position when Sergeant Moore came
striding across the yard with Sourdough. Jan's hackles rose the moment
he set eyes on the big husky. Sourdough, as his way was, glared in
another direction. But his hackles rose also, and his upper lip lifted
slightly as the skin of his nose wrinkled. Clearly there was to be no
sympathy between these two.
Suddenly, and without apparently having looked in Jan's direction,
Sourdough leaped sideways at him, with an angry snarl.
"Keep in--Jan; keep in--boy!" said Dick, firmly, as he jumped between
the two dogs.
"Who gave you permission to bring that dog here?" snapped the sergeant
at Dick.
"Taking care of him for Captain Arnutt, sir," was the reply.
"H'm! Well, see you take care of him, then, and keep him out of the way.
Sourdough's boss here, and if this one is to stay around, the sooner he
learns it the better."
"Yes, sir. He's thoroughly good-tempered and obedient, though he is such
a big fellow," said Dick, still manoeuvering his legs as a barrier
betwixt the two dogs.
"It's little odds how big he is," growled the sergeant. "He'll have to
learn his lesson, an' I guess Sourdough will teach him."
Just then Sourdough succeeded in evading Dick and got well home on Jan's
right shoulder with a punishing slash of his razor fangs. Jan gave a
snarl that was half a roar. His antipathy had been aroused at the
outset. Now his blood was drawn. He had been ordered to keep to heel,
but--
"Keep in, there--Jan; keep in--keep in!"
The warning came not a second too soon. Almost the hound had sprung.
"Would you call your dog off, sir?" said Dick.
"I guess Sourdough'll call himself off when he's good an' ready,"
replied the sergeant; and himself strode on across the yard.
Once more Jan had to submit to the bitter ordeal of being slashed at by
Sourdough's teeth, as the big husky snarlingly passed him in the
sergeant's wake. It was little Jan cared for the bite, shrewd as that
was. His coat was dense. But again, and with a visible gulp of pain, he
was compelled to swallow the humiliation of lowering his muzzle in
answer to his lord's--
"Keep in, there! Steady! Keep in, Jan!"
It was a tough morsel to swallow. But the disciplined Jan swallowed it,
in full view of several lesser dogs and of half a dozen of Dick's
comrades. With it, however, came a natural swelling of the antipathy
which his first glimpse of Sourdough had implanted in the big hound, and
it may be, all things considered, that it would have been better for
both of them if Dick Vaughan had allowed the dogs to settle matters in
their own fashion. But he had Jan's future position in the barracks to
think of, and wished to consult Captain Arnutt before permitting any
open breach of the peace. Meantime, Jan's prestige had been lowered in
the eyes of half a dozen other dogs, each one of whom would certainly
presume upon the unresented affront they had seen put upon him by their
common enemy.
Captain Arnutt's advice was to let the dogs take their chances.
"Every one knows Sourdough is a morose old devil," he said, "and every
one has seen now that Jan is not a quarrelsome dog. If there's trouble,
they won't blame Jan, and Master Sourdough will have to take his gruel.
You don't think he'd seriously damage Jan, do you?"
"Well, he's got a deal more of ring-craft, sir, of course," said Dick,
with a smile. "Jan has had very little fighting experience, but he's
immensely strong and fit, and--No, I don't much think Sourdough could do
him any permanent harm; but one can't be certain. Sourdough is
practically a wolf, so far as fighting goes. He and his forebears have
fought ever since their eyes were opened. Whereas, I suppose there's
hardly been a fighter in a hundred generations of Jan's ancestors."
Dick Vaughan was probably thinking of the Lady Desdemona when he said
this. And, of course, it was true that, even on Finn's side, Jan had had
no fighting ancestors for very many generations. But Finn had been a
mighty fighter, and in the wild at that. And Jan had been born in a cave
and in his first weeks had tasted the wild life. Also he had fought
Grip, who fought like a wolf. Also he had learned many things from Finn
on the Sussex Downs; he did not know the meaning of fear, and his
hundred and sixty-four pounds of perfect development consisted almost
entirely of fighting material. There was no waste matter in Jan. Still,
Sourdough was a veritable wolf in combat, and for so long as he could
prevent a breach of the peace Dick decided he would do so. Accordingly,
while in barracks, Jan was kept pretty closely to sentinel duty in
Paddy's stall.
XXII
MURDER!
A day or so after Jan's first meeting with Sourdough a thing occurred in
Regina which, for a little while, occupied the minds of most people, to
the exclusion of such matters as the relations between any two dogs.
A woman and her husband were found murdered in a little fruiterer's and
greengrocer's shop. Evidence showed that the murder must have occurred
late at night. It was discovered quite early in the morning, and before
the first passenger-trains of the day stopped at Regina the line was
closely watched for a good many miles. It was believed that the murderer
could not be very far away. Suspicion attached to a compatriot of the
murdered pair, a Greek, who was found to be missing from his lodging.
Within three hours Sergeant Moore had rounded this man up a few miles
from the city, and placed him under arrest. But the man had been found
in the act of fishing, and there was not a tittle of evidence of any
kind against him.
Then a neighbor called at the R.N.W.M.P. barracks with word of an
Italian, now nowhere to be found, who had done some casual work for the
murdered couple, and had more than once been seen talking with the woman
in the little yard behind their shop. As it happened, the bearer of this
information imparted it to Dick Vaughan, who promptly went with it to
Captain Arnutt.
"Look here, sir," said Dick, with suppressed excitement, "my Jan is half
a bloodhound, and a splendid tracker. Will you let me take him down to
the shop and--"
"Why the deuce didn't you think of that earlier, before all the world
and his wife began investigating the place? Come on! Bring my horse and
your own."
Within half an hour, Captain Arnutt, Dick Vaughan, Jan, and one town
constable were alone in the little littered room of the tragedy, where
the dead lay practically as they had been discovered. Two incriminating
articles only had been found: a sheath-knife with a carved haft, and a
black soft felt hat. There was no name or initials on either, and both
might conceivably have belonged to the murdered man. As yet no one had
identified either article with any owner. The hat had been trodden down
by a boot-heel in a slither of blood on the floor-cloth of the squalid
little room.
Some chances had to be taken. Dick believed the hat and knife belonged
to the murderer, who had apparently ransacked the till of the little
shop and broken open a small carved and painted box which may have
contained money. It was perhaps impossible that Jan could understand
that murder had been done. But there was no shadow of doubt he knew
grave matters were toward. The concentrated earnestness of Dick Vaughan
had somehow communicated itself to the hound's mind. It was the hat and
not the knife to which Dick pinned his faith--the cheap, soiled,
crimson-lined felt hat, with its horrid stains and its imprint of a
boot-heel.
"It may have belonged to this poor chap," said Captain Arnutt, pointing
to the body of the shopkeeper. "It's just the kind nine Dagoes out of
ten do wear."
"That's true, sir, but the missing man's a Dago, too, you know; an
Italian. Italians are fond of knives like this and hats like that. Let's
try it, sir. Jan knows. Look at him."
Jan had sniffed long and meaningly at the bedraggled hat, and now was
unmistakably following a trail to the closed back door. The trouble was
that many feet had trodden that floor during the past few hours. Still,
there was a chance. Dick carefully wrapped the hat in paper, for
safe-keeping in his saddle-bag. Then the door was opened, and with eager
care the two men followed Jan out into the yard. Here it was obvious
that the confusion of fresh trails puzzled Jan for some minutes. Again
Dick showed him the hat, and again Jan sniffed. Then back to earth went
his muzzle, and all unseeing he brought up against the yard gate with a
sudden deep bay.
"That's the tracking note," said Dick, with suppressed eagerness. "We'd
better get our horses, sir."
Through the town streets Jan faltered only twice or thrice, and then not
for long. Within ten minutes he was on the open prairie, heading
northwestward, as for Long Lake, his pace steady and increasing now, his
deep-flewed muzzle low to the ground.
For more than two-and-twenty miles Jan loped along over the cocolike
dust of the trail, and never faltered once save at the side of a little
slough, where the two horsemen in his rear spent a few anxious minutes
while Jan paced this way and that, with indecision showing in each
movement of his massive head. And then, again with a rich deep bay--a
note of reassurance for the horseman, and of doom for a fugitive, if
such an one could have heard it--Jan was off again on the trail,
closely, but by no means hurryingly, followed by the captain and Dick.
In the twenty-second mile Jan brought his followers to the door of a
settler's little two-roomed shack, and then, within the minute, was off
again along the side of a half-mile stretch of wheat. Captain Arnutt
dismounted for a moment to speak to a woman who came to the door. Not
half an hour earlier she said, she had given a drink of tea and some
bread and meat to a dark, thin man with a red handkerchief tied over his
head. "A Dago he was," she said. And Captain Arnutt bit hard on one end
of his mustache as he thanked the woman, mounted again, and galloped off
after Dick and Jan.
As he rode, the captain turned back the flap of his magazine-pistol
holster; but the precaution was not needed. Jan was traveling at the
gallop now, and the height of his muzzle from the ground showed clearly
that he was on a warm trail, which, for such nostrils as his, required
no holding at all.
It was under the lee of a heap of last year's wheat-straw that Jan came
to the end of his trail; his fore feet planted hard in the dust before
him, his head well lifted, his jaws parted to give free passage to the
deep, bell-like call of his baying. The man with the red 'kerchief tied
over his head was evidently roused from sleep by Jan, and though the
hound showed no sign of molesting him, yet must he have formed a
terrifying picture for the newly opened eyes of the Italian. Almost
before the man had raised himself into a sitting posture Dick Vaughan
had jumped from the saddle and was beside him.
"Don't move," said Dick, "and the dog won't hurt you. If you move your
hands he'll be at your throat. See! Better let me slip these on--so! All
right, Jan, boy. Stay there."
When Captain Arnutt dismounted he found his subordinate standing beside
a handcuffed man, who sat on the ground, glaring hopelessly at the hound
responsible for his capture. Jan's tongue hung out from one side of his
parted jaws, and his face expressed satisfaction and good humor. He had
done his job and done it well. The thought of injuring his quarry had
never occurred to him, as Dick Vaughan very well knew, despite his
warning remark to the Italian. But although Jan had had no thought of
attacking the recumbent man he had trailed, he was very fully conscious
that this man was his quarry. The handcuffing episode had not been lost
upon him.
From the outset he had known that he and Dick were hunting that day. Why
they hunted man he had no idea. Personally, he had not so much pursued
an individual as he had hunted a certain smell. In coming upon the
sleeping Italian he had tracked down this particular smell. His
conception of his duty was, having tracked the smell to the man, to hand
the man over to Dick. That marked for him the end of his work; but not
by any means the end of his interest in the upshot of it.
XXIII
THE FIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE
Even without the confession he ultimately made, Jan's tracking, the
man's own empty leather sheath fitting the dagger he had left behind
him, and the watch, money, and rings found in his pockets, and proved to
be the property of the murdered couple, would have been sufficient to
condemn the Italian.