PROFESSOR McGILL
Red Gold City was ripe for a night of relaxation. There had been some
gambling, a few fights and enough liquor to create excitement now and
then, but the presence of the mounted police had served to keep things
unusually tame compared with events a few hundred miles farther north,
in the Dawson country. The entertainment proposed by Sandy McTrigger and
Jan Harker met with excited favor. The news spread for twenty miles
about Red Gold City and there had never been greater excitement in the
town than on the afternoon and night of the big fight. This was largely
because Kazan and the huge Dane had been placed on exhibition, each dog
in a specially made cage of his own, and a fever of betting began. Three
hundred men, each of whom was paying five dollars to see the battle,
viewed the gladiators through the bars of their cages. Harker's dog was
a combination of Great Dane and mastiff, born in the North, and bred to
the traces. Betting favored him by the odds of two to one. Occasionally
it ran three to one. At these odds there was plenty of Kazan money.
Those who were risking their money on him were the older wilderness
men--men who had spent their lives among dogs, and who knew what the red
glint in Kazan's eyes meant. An old Kootenay miner spoke low in
another's ear:
"I'd bet on 'im even. I'd give odds if I had to. He'll fight all around
the Dane. The Dane won't have no method."
"But he's got the weight," said the other dubiously. "Look at his jaws,
an' his shoulders--"
"An' his big feet, an' his soft throat, an' the clumsy thickness of his
belly," interrupted the Kootenay man. "For Gawd's sake, man, take my
word for it, an' don't put your money on the Dane!"
Others thrust themselves between them. At first Kazan had snarled at all
these faces about him. But now he lay back against the boarded side of
the cage and eyed them sullenly from between his forepaws.
The fight was to be pulled off in Barker's place, a combination of
saloon and cafe. The benches and tables had been cleared out and in the
center of the one big room a cage ten feet square rested on a platform
three and a half feet from the floor. Seats for the three hundred
spectators were drawn closely around this. Suspended just above the open
top of the cage were two big oil lamps with glass reflectors.
It was eight o'clock when Harker, McTrigger and two other men bore Kazan
to the arena by means of the wooden bars that projected from the bottom
of his cage. The big Dane was already in the fighting cage. He stood
blinking his eyes in the brilliant light of the reflecting lamps. He
pricked up his ears when he saw Kazan. Kazan did not show his fangs.
Neither revealed the expected animosity. It was the first they had seen
of each other, and a murmur of disappointment swept the ranks of the
three hundred men. The Dane remained as motionless as a rock when Kazan
was prodded from his own cage into the fighting cage. He did not leap or
snarl. He regarded Kazan with a dubious questioning poise to his
splendid head, and then looked again to the expectant and excited faces
of the waiting men. For a few moments Kazan stood stiff-legged, facing
the Dane. Then his shoulders dropped, and he, too, coolly faced the
crowd that had expected a fight to the death. A laugh of derision swept
through the closely seated rows. Catcalls, jeering taunts flung at
McTrigger and Harker, and angry voices demanding their money back
mingled with a tumult of growing discontent. Sandy's face was red with
mortification and rage. The blue veins in Barker's forehead had swollen
twice their normal size. He shook his fist in the face of the crowd, and
shouted:
"Wait! Give 'em a chance, you dam' fools!"
At his words every voice was stilled. Kazan had turned. He was facing
the huge Dane. And the Dane had turned his eyes to Kazan. Cautiously,
prepared for a lunge or a sidestep, Kazan advanced a little. The Dane's
shoulders bristled. He, too, advanced upon Kazan. Four feet apart they
stood rigid. One could have heard a whisper in the room now. Sandy and
Harker, standing close to the cage, scarcely breathed. Splendid in every
limb and muscle, warriors of a hundred fights, and fearless to the point
of death, the two half-wolf victims of man stood facing each other. None
could see the questioning look in their brute eyes. None knew that in
this thrilling moment the unseen hand of the wonderful Spirit God of the
wilderness hovered between them, and that one of its miracles was
descending upon them. It was _understanding_. Meeting in the
open--rivals in the traces--they would have been rolling in the throes
of terrific battle. But _here_ came that mute appeal of brotherhood. In
the final moment, when only a step separated them, and when men expected
to see the first mad lunge, the splendid Dane slowly raised his head and
looked over Kazan's back through the glare of the lights. Harker
trembled, and under his breath he cursed. The Dane's throat was open to
Kazan. But between the beasts had passed the voiceless pledge of peace.
Kazan did not leap. He turned. And shoulder to shoulder--splendid in
their contempt of man--they stood and looked through the bars of their
prison into the one of human faces.
A roar burst from the crowd--a roar of anger, of demand, of threat. In
his rage Harker drew a revolver and leveled it at the Dane. Above the
tumult of the crowd a single voice stopped him.
"Hold!" it demanded. "Hold--in the name of the law!"
For a moment there was silence. Every face turned in the direction of
the voice. Two men stood on chairs behind the last row. One was Sergeant
Brokaw, of the Royal Northwest Mounted. It was he who had spoken. He was
holding up a hand, commanding silence and attention. On the chair beside
him stood another man. He was thin, with drooping shoulders, and a pale
smooth face--a little man, whose physique and hollow cheeks told nothing
of the years he had spent close up along the raw edge of the Arctic. It
was he who spoke now, while the sergeant held up his hand. His voice was
low and quiet:
"I'll give the owners five hundred dollars for those dogs," he said.
Every man in the room heard the offer. Harker looked at Sandy. For an
instant their heads were close together.
"They won't fight, and they'll make good team-mates," the little man
went on. "I'll give the owners five hundred dollars."
Harker raised a hand.
"Make it six," he said. "Make it six and they're yours."
The little man hesitated. Then he nodded.
"I'll give you six hundred," he agreed.
Murmurs of discontent rose throughout the crowd. Harker climbed to the
edge of the platform.
"We ain't to blame because they wouldn't fight," he shouted, "but if
there's any of you small enough to want your money back you can git it
as you go out. The dogs laid down on us, that's all. We ain't to blame."
The little man was edging his way between the chairs, accompanied by the
sergeant of police. With his pale face close to the sapling bars of the
cage he looked at Kazan and the big Dane.
"I guess we'll be good friends," he said, and he spoke so low that only
the dogs heard his voice. "It's a big price, but we'll charge it to the
Smithsonian, lads. I'm going to need a couple of four-footed friends of
your moral caliber."
And no one knew why Kazan and the Dane drew nearer to the little
scientist's side of the cage as he pulled out a big roll of bills and
counted out six hundred dollars for Harker and Sandy McTrigger.