I
It was the black patch over his left eye that made all the trouble. In
reality he was of a disposition most peaceful and propitiating, a friend
of justice and fair dealing, strongly inclined to a domestic life, and
capable of extreme devotion. He had a vivid sense of righteousness, it
is true, and any violation of it was apt to heat his indignation to the
boiling-point. When this occurred he was strong in the back, stiff
in the neck, and fearless of consequences. But he was always open to
friendly overtures and ready to make peace with honour.
Singularly responsive to every touch of kindness, desirous of affection,
secretly hungry for caresses, he had a heart framed for love and
tranquillity. But nature saw fit to put a black patch over his left eye;
wherefore his days were passed in the midst of conflict and he lived the
strenuous life.
How this sinister mark came to him, he never knew. Indeed it is not
likely that he had any idea of the part that it played in his career.
The attitude that the world took toward him from the beginning, an
attitude of aggressive mistrust,--the role that he was expected and
practically forced to assume in the drama of existence, the role of
a hero of interminable strife,--must have seemed to him altogether
mysterious and somewhat absurd. But his part was fixed by the black
patch. It gave him an aspect so truculent and forbidding that all
the elements of warfare gathered around him as hornets around a sugar
barrel, and his appearance in public was like the raising of a flag for
battle.
“You see that Pichou,” said MacIntosh, the Hudson's Bay agent at Mingan,
“you see yon big black-eye deevil? The savages call him Pichou because
he's ugly as a lynx--'LAID COMME UN PICHOU.' Best sledge-dog and the
gurliest tyke on the North Shore. Only two years old and he can lead
a team already. But, man, he's just daft for the fighting. Fought his
mother when he was a pup and lamed her for life. Fought two of his
brothers and nigh killed 'em both. Every dog in the place has a grudge
at him, and hell's loose as oft as he takes a walk. I'm loath to part
with him, but I'll be selling him gladly for fifty dollars to any man
that wants a good sledge-dog, eh?--and a bit collie-shangie every week.”
Pichou had heard his name, and came trotting up to the corner of the
store where MacIntosh was talking with old Grant the chief factor, who
was on a tour of inspection along the North Shore, and Dan Scott,
the agent from Seven Islands, who had brought the chief down in his
chaloupe. Pichou did not understand what his master had been saying
about him: but he thought he was called, and he had a sense of duty;
and besides, he was wishful to show proper courtesy to well-dressed and
respectable strangers. He was a great dog, thirty inches high at the
shoulder; broad-chested, with straight, sinewy legs; and covered with
thick, wavy, cream-coloured hair from the tips of his short ears to the
end of his bushy tail--all except the left side of his face. That
was black from ear to nose--coal-black; and in the centre of this
storm-cloud his eye gleamed like fire.
What did Pichou know about that ominous sign? No one had ever told
him. He had no looking-glass. He ran up to the porch where the men
were sitting, as innocent as a Sunday-school scholar coming to the
superintendent's desk to receive a prize. But when old Grant, who had
grown pursy and nervous from long living on the fat of the land at
Ottawa, saw the black patch and the gleaming eye, he anticipated evil;
so he hitched one foot up on the porch, crying “Get out!” and with the
other foot he planted a kick on the side of the dog's head.
Pichou's nerve-centres had not been shaken by high living. They acted
with absolute precision and without a tremor. His sense of justice
was automatic, and his teeth were fixed through the leg of the chief
factor's boot, just below the calf.
For two minutes there was a small chaos in the post of the Honourable
Hudson's Bay Company at Mingan. Grant howled bloody murder; MacIntosh
swore in three languages and yelled for his dog-whip; three Indians and
two French-Canadians wielded sticks and fence-pickets. But order did not
arrive until Dan Scott knocked the burning embers from his big pipe on
the end of the dog's nose. Pichou gasped, let go his grip, shook
his head, and loped back to his quarters behind the barn, bruised,
blistered, and intolerably perplexed by the mystery of life.
As he lay on the sand, licking his wounds, he remembered many strange
things. First of all, there was the trouble with his mother.
She was a Labrador Husky, dirty yellowish gray, with bristling neck,
sharp fangs, and green eyes, like a wolf. Her name was Babette. She had
a fiendish temper, but no courage. His father was supposed to be a huge
black and white Newfoundland that came over in a schooner from Miquelon.
Perhaps it was from him that the black patch was inherited. And perhaps
there were other things in the inheritance, too, which came from this
nobler strain of blood Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other
dogs when they made night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense
of fair play; his love of the water; his longing for human society and
friendship.
But all this was beyond Pichou's horizon, though it was within his
nature. He remembered only that Babette had taken a hate for him, almost
from the first, and had always treated him worse than his all-yellow
brothers. She would have starved him if she could. Once when he was half
grown, she fell upon him for some small offence and tried to throttle
him. The rest of the pack looked on snarling and slavering. He caught
Babette by the fore-leg and broke the bone. She hobbled away, shrieking.
What else could he do? Must a dog let himself be killed by his mother?
As for his brothers--was it fair that two of them should fall foul of
him about the rabbit which he had tracked and caught and killed? He
would have shared it with them, if they had asked him, for they ran
behind him on the trail. But when they both set their teeth in his
neck, there was nothing to do but to lay them both out: which he did.
Afterward he was willing enough to make friends, but they bristled and
cursed whenever he came near them.
It was the same with everybody. If he went out for a walk on the beach,
Vigneau's dogs or Simard's dogs regarded it as an insult, and there
was a fight. Men picked up sticks, or showed him the butt-end of their
dog-whips, when he made friendly approaches. With the children it was
different; they seemed to like him a little; but never did he follow one
of them that a mother did not call from the house-door: “Pierre! Marie!
come away quick! That bad dog will bite you!” Once when he ran down to
the shore to watch the boat coming in from the mail-steamer, the
purser had refused to let the boat go to land, and called out, “M'sieu'
MacIntosh, you git no malle dis trip, eef you not call avay dat dam'
dog.”
True, the Minganites seemed to take a certain kind of pride in his
reputation. They had brought Chouart's big brown dog, Gripette, down
from the Sheldrake to meet him; and after the meeting was over and
Gripette had been revived with a bucket of water, everybody, except
Chouart, appeared to be in good humour. The purser of the steamer had
gone to the trouble of introducing a famous BOULE-DOGGE from Quebec,
on the trip after that on which he had given such a hostile opinion of
Pichon. The bulldog's intentions were unmistakable; he expressed them
the moment he touched the beach; and when they carried him back to the
boat on a fish-barrow many flattering words were spoken about Pichou. He
was not insensible to them. But these tributes to his prowess were not
what he really wanted. His secret desire was for tokens of affection.
His position was honourable, but it was intolerably lonely and full of
trouble. He sought peace and he found fights.
While he meditated dimly on these things, patiently trying to get the
ashes of Dan Scott's pipe out of his nose, his heart was cast down
and his spirit was disquieted within him. Was ever a decent dog so
mishandled before? Kicked for nothing by a fat stranger, and then beaten
by his own master!
In the dining-room of the Post, Grant was slowly and reluctantly
allowing himself to be convinced that his injuries were not fatal.
During this process considerable Scotch whiskey was consumed and there
was much conversation about the viciousness of dogs. Grant insisted that
Pichou was mad and had a devil. MacIntosh admitted the devil, but firmly
denied the madness. The question was, whether the dog should be killed
or not; and over this point there was like to be more bloodshed, until
Dan Scott made his contribution to the argument: “If you shoot him, how
can you tell whether he is mad or not? I'll give thirty dollars for him
and take him home.”
“If you do,” said Grant, “you'll sail alone, and I'll wait for the
steamer. Never a step will I go in the boat with the crazy brute that
bit me.”
“Suit yourself,” said Dan Scott. “You kicked before he bit.”
At daybreak he whistled the dog down to the chaloupe, hoisted sail, and
bore away for Seven Islands. There was a secret bond of sympathy between
the two companions on that hundred-mile voyage in an open boat. Neither
of them realized what it was, but still it was there.
Dan Scott knew what it meant to stand alone, to face a small hostile
world, to have a surfeit of fighting. The station of Seven Islands
was the hardest in all the district of the ancient POSTES DU ROI.
The Indians were surly and crafty. They knew all the tricks of the
fur-trade. They killed out of season, and understood how to make a
rusty pelt look black. The former agent had accommodated himself to his
customers. He had no objection to shutting one of his eyes, so long as
the other could see a chance of doing a stroke of business for himself.
He also had a convenient weakness in the sense of smell, when there was
an old stock of pork to work off on the savages. But all of Dan Scott's
senses were strong, especially his sense of justice, and he came into
the Post resolved to play a straight game with both hands, toward the
Indians and toward the Honourable H. B. Company. The immediate results
were reproofs from Ottawa and revilings from Seven Islands. Furthermore
the free traders were against him because he objected to their selling
rum to the savages.
It must be confessed that Dan Scott had a way with him that looked
pugnacious. He was quick in his motions and carried his shoulders well
thrown back. His voice was heavy. He used short words and few of them.
His eyebrow's were thick and they met over his nose. Then there was
a broad white scar at one corner of his mouth. His appearance was
not prepossessing, but at heart he was a philanthropist and a
sentimentalist. He thirsted for gratitude and affection on a just basis.
He had studied for eighteen months in the medical school at Montreal,
and his chief delight was to practise gratuitously among the sick and
wounded of the neighbourhood. His ambition for Seven Islands was to
make it a northern suburb of Paradise, and for himself to become a
full-fledged physician. Up to this time it seemed as if he would have to
break more bones than he could set; and the closest connection of Seven
Islands appeared to be with Purgatory.
First, there had been a question of suzerainty between Dan Scott and the
local representative of the Astor family, a big half-breed descendant
of a fur-trader, who was the virtual chief of the Indians hunting on
the Ste. Marguerite: settled by knock-down arguments. Then there was a
controversy with Napoleon Bouchard about the right to put a fish-house
on a certain part of the beach: settled with a stick, after Napoleon had
drawn a knife. Then there was a running warfare with Virgile and Ovide
Boulianne, the free traders, who were his rivals in dealing with the
Indians for their peltry: still unsettled. After this fashion the record
of his relations with his fellow-citizens at Seven Islands was made
up. He had their respect, but not their affection. He was the only
Protestant, the only English-speaker, the most intelligent man, as well
as the hardest hitter in the place, and he was very lonely. Perhaps it
was this that made him take a fancy to Pichou. Their positions in the
world were not unlike. He was not the first man who has wanted sympathy
and found it in a dog.
Alone together, in the same boat, they made friends with each other
easily. At first the remembrance of the hot pipe left a little suspicion
in Pichou's mind; but this was removed by a handsome apology in the
shape of a chunk of bread and a slice of meat from Dan Scott's lunch.
After this they got on together finely. It was the first time in his
life that Pichou had ever spent twenty-four hours away from other dogs;
it was also the first time he had ever been treated like a gentleman.
All that was best in him responded to the treatment. He could not have
been more quiet and steady in the boat if he had been brought up to a
seafaring life. When Dan Scott called him and patted him on the head,
the dog looked up in the man's face as if he had found his God. And
the man, looking down into the eye that was not disfigured by the black
patch, saw something that he had been seeking for a long time.
All day the wind was fair and strong from the southeast. The chaloupe
ran swiftly along the coast past the broad mouth of the River
Saint-Jean, with its cluster of white cottages past the hill-encircled
bay of the River Magpie, with its big fish-houses past the fire-swept
cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre, and the turbulent, rocky shores of the
Sheldrake: past the silver cascade of the Riviere-aux-Graines, and the
mist of the hidden fall of the Riviere Manitou: past the long, desolate
ridges of Cap Cormorant, where, at sunset, the wind began to droop away,
and the tide was contrary So the chaloupe felt its way cautiously toward
the corner of the coast where the little Riviere-a-la-Truite comes
tumbling in among the brown rocks, and found a haven for the night in
the mouth of the river.
There was only one human dwelling-place in sight As far as the eye
could sweep, range after range of uninhabitable hills covered with the
skeletons of dead forests; ledge after ledge of ice-worn granite thrust
out like fangs into the foaming waves of the gulf. Nature, with her
teeth bare and her lips scarred: this was the landscape. And in the
midst of it, on a low hill above the murmuring river, surrounded by the
blanched trunks of fallen trees, and the blackened debris of wood and
moss, a small, square, weather-beaten palisade of rough-hewn spruce, and
a patch of the bright green leaves and white flowers of the dwarf cornel
lavishing their beauty on a lonely grave. This was the only habitation
in sight--the last home of the Englishman, Jack Chisholm, whose story
has yet to be told.
In the shelter of this hill Dan Scott cooked his supper and shared it
with Pichou. When night was dark he rolled himself in his blanket,
and slept in the stern of the boat, with the dog at his side. Their
friendship was sealed.
The next morning the weather was squally and full of sudden anger. They
crept out with difficulty through the long rollers that barred the tiny
harbour, and beat their way along the coast. At Moisie they must run far
out into the gulf to avoid the treacherous shoals, and to pass beyond
the furious race of white-capped billows that poured from the great
river for miles into the sea. Then they turned and made for the group of
half-submerged mountains and scattered rocks that Nature, in some freak
of fury, had thrown into the throat of Seven Islands Bay. That was a
difficult passage. The black shores were swept by headlong tides. Tusks
of granite tore the waves. Baffled and perplexed, the wind flapped and
whirled among the cliffs. Through all this the little boat buffeted
bravely on till she reached the point of the Gran Boule. Then a strange
thing happened.
The water was lumpy; the evening was growing thick; a swirl of the
tide and a shift of the wind caught the chaloupe and swung her suddenly
around. The mainsail jibed, and before he knew how it happened Dan Scott
was overboard. He could swim but clumsily. The water blinded him, choked
him, dragged him down. Then he felt Pichou gripping him by the shoulder,
buoying him up, swimming mightily toward the chaloupe which hung
trembling in the wind a few yards away. At last they reached it and the
man climbed over the stern and pulled the dog after him. Dan Scott lay
in the bottom of the boat, shivering, dazed, until he felt the dog's
cold nose and warm breath against his cheek. He flung his arm around
Pichon's neck.
“They said you were mad! God, if more men were mad like you!”