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.