Chapter 13

Now began the fight between Bill and Jan, ex-leader and leader; the veteran northland dog, comparatively empty and exquisitely poised and prepared; and the new-comer from the outside world, terribly full, heavy, and unprepared. All, or nearly all, had fallen out as Bill had planned. Their distance from the camp was a safe one; Jan was grossly bloated and he, Bill, was in quite perfect fighting trim.

Only one thing was wrong: Jan ought, by all the calculations of his enemy, to be lying feet up with his throat exposed; and instead he was standing, and as it happened, on slightly raised ground, waiting with dripping jaws for Bill's attack. Bill knew not fear. His brain was as brilliantly lighted, his furnace of hate as hot within him, as ever. But--the new-wakened Jan's snarl was certainly terrific, and his bulk, as he stood there with erect stern, bristling hackles, high-lifted lips, and legs planted like buttresses--the bulk of him was immense.

"Come on!" his roaring snarl seemed to say. And fiery Bill, like a wrestler, pranced to and fro for an opening. Rage filled him to the throat, but never for an instant did it cloud his vision. Jan's instinct kept him still, warning him that he was too heavy now for the lightning footwork of the wolves, that his sole chance lay in his strength, and that by the same token his strength must be conserved.

Whoof! Tsss!

Jan's right ear hung in two separate flaps. Valiantly he strove to extort some penalty by thrust of massive shoulder and clash of fangs. But Bill to all seeming was twice his own length away in the same instant that he flashed in to the attack. Jan breathed hard in a defiant snarl.

Hup! Grrrr!

The massive shoulder which had missed its thrust was cut clear into the bone, a groove four inches long, and in the selfsame fraction of a second the catlike Bill, from two lengths distant, darted his red tongue in and out at Jan in cold ribaldry.

A little show of temper now on Jan's part had been a thing of priceless worth to Bill. Indeed, it was the ex-leader's one desire, its provocation his sole objective for the moment. This it was that drew his pointed red tongue in and out like a flame, this the tuning-fork that gave his snarl its key; the note of insolent, jeering defiance.

"You hog! You're bloated. Ungainly beast, I can bleed you when and where I will. Take that!" snarled Bill, as he flashed in again, tearing clean away a little section of soft-coated fine skin from the left side of Jan's dewlap, where Desdemona's blood in him left him but lightly covered.

(In the bloodhound the skin is very loose and fine in texture all about the head and flews and dewlap. In Jan it hardened quickly on the neck, where the mat of his dense coat thickened.)

Again and again, not fewer than a dozen times in all, Bill drank deep of sheer delight as he flashed in and out upon Jan, drawing blood every single time, reaching bone more than once or twice, and winning back to safety without the loss of so much as one hair.

Jan no longer snarled. He had no breath to waste. He was standing to his fearsome punishment like a bulldog now. And like a bulldog he seemed, in a heavy, dogged way, and almost to glory in the bitter thrusts he took.

Then Bill overstepped himself. Striving to win a second bite from the one rush, he got the full thrust of Jan's bloody right shoulder so shrewdly directed that Bill went down under it as corn under a sickle. So far so good for Jan; and by good rights that thrust should have given him his lead to victory. But the plain truth is Jan was too full of moose-meat. He plunged down and forward for the throat-hold--appreciably too late--and lost more than blood and fur from his flank as Bill wheeled into action again without any apparent loss of poise, though he had turned completely over on the snow.

Jan breathed like a bull as he resumed the defensive; and like a bull he lowered his head with a swaying motion as though to ease his labored breathing and drain his jaws of the spume that clogged them. He was bleeding now from more than a dozen wounds. The frost nipped those wounds stingingly. The hard trampled snow about his feet was flecked with blood and foam--his life-blood, his foam. Bill remained unscathed and to all seeming as coldly calculating as ever.

At this stage a backer of Jan (if any such reckless wight existed) might easily have booked a hundred to one against the big hound from an audience of experienced northland men, had any been there to see this wonderful fray. It seemed a breathless business enough, with never a moment for anything like reflection. But of a truth, as Jan swung his massive head now in a gesture which added blazing coals to the fire of triumphant hate in Bill, his mind was busy with a mort of curious things. There were many differences between Jan and the average dog, and this illustrated one of them. As he stood heavily swaying to Bill's lightning attacks, he saw pictures in his busy mind through a mist of blood; pictures that made the whole business of this fight far more terrible for him than it would have been for most dogs.

The dominating picture Jan saw, and the one that kept forcing itself forward upon the screen of his imagination through and over all the others that came and went, was a picture of himself on his back in the trampled snow. Bill's jaws were at his throat in this picture, and his blood ebbed out, an awful tide, flooding the snow with its crimson for as far as he could see. And then the picture moved and showed him the satisfied, triumphant Bill, walking proudly away to the camp to his regained leadership; and himself, Jan, stark, helpless, dead, in that forsaken clear patch in the woods with only the cold gleam of the aurora borealis to bear him company.

Another picture showed him the stripped framework of the moose and his own reckless feasting there with the rest of the pack, while Bill, pitilessly far-seeing Bill, watched them and abstained. Jan saw it all now and gulped upon his bitterness as he realized how cunningly it had all been planned, and just why it was that, while his enemy seemed made of steel springs actuated by electricity, he, Jan, was heavy and clumsy as an English house-dog.

So that was the way of this bloody business thought Jan as, swifter than a bullet, Bill registered another visit to his streaming right shoulder. There was no trace left now of that queer stubborn sort of bulldog glory in the endurance of punishment which Jan had shown during the first half-dozen attacks. His stern was still erect, bladelike, his hackles almost as stiff as before. But the flame of his deep-hawed and now glazing eyes had died down to a dim red smolder; his hard breathing spared nothing for a snarl now, and his head and body movements were, if anything, a little slower than before.

And in and out among the vivid pictures in his mind of immediate local happenings came swiftly passing little silhouettes of people and happenings farther away in point of time and distance. He saw Dick Vaughan, in scarlet tunic and yellow-striped breeches, sitting on a box with his, Jan's, head between his knees, his hands fondling the long ears that now were so terribly torn and bloody. He saw the great, gray, lordly Finn pacing gravely beside the Master and Betty Murdoch on the Downs at Nuthill; himself trotting to and fro between Betty and the noble hound that sired him. He heard Dick Vaughan's long, throbbing whistle, and then the old familiar call:

"Jan, boy! Ja--an!"

And as he heard this call he had never once failed to answer, some subtle force at work in Jan loosed the cord that had seemed to hold him fettered to the heavy aftermath of his greed that night. His heart swelled within him in answer to the sovereign's call, till it seemed to send new blood, hot and compelling, racing through all his veins into the last least crevices of his remotest members. His massive head ceased to sway. It was uplifted in the moment that a roaring baying cry escaped him; he knew not how or why. And that was the moment called psychological. For it was the instant of a new and different attack from Bill, this tremendous moment of Jan's real awakening.

For some minutes now, while he flashed in and out, bleeding his prey in preparation for the final assault, Bill had noted with infinite cold joy that swaying motion of Jan's great head. He knew it well for the gesture of the baited creature, and as the head swung lower the flames of Bill's hate shot higher and ever higher; for this lower swaying, as he knew, was the signal of the end for which he had striven so cunningly and long.

At the moment that Jan heard Dick's call, Bill drew up his muscles for administration of the final thrust. (The bull had bled sufficiently. Now for the steel in the nape.) Bill leaped, red froth flying from his bared fangs. As he leaped, Jan's strange baying roar smote upon his senses with a chill foreboding. He knew nothing of the call that had loosed from its lethargy the essential Jan. But the roar spoke of doom and Bill flinched; wavered in his attack, as a horse will momentarily waver at a high leap. That peril might have passed. But it was part of a double blunder. The leap had been wrongly conceived. It had come too soon. And now the leaper balked, conscious of error; conscious also, dimly, of some terrific change in Jan, heralded by his awe-inspiring cry.

Bill jarred down to earth, short of his mark, his feet ill placed, his world awry. And in that instant the big hound was upon him like a bolt from heaven: the strangest attack surely that ever dog faced, or so it must have seemed to stricken Bill, the northland fighter for the killing throat-hold, who never had seen the famous killing grip that was always used by Jan's tall sire, Finn the wolfhound.

Jan came down upon Bill as though from the clouds. (He stood a full four inches higher than Bill.) His huge jaws, stretched to cracking-point, took Bill where the base of the skull meets the spinal cord. One jaw on either side that rope of life, they drove down; through the matted armor of Bill's coat, through skin and flesh, and on to their ultimate destination, under the crushing pressure of a hundred and forty pounds of steel-like muscle, bone, and sinew, the invincible product of the trail-life developed upon a foundation of scientifically attained health and strength.

Bill, the fearless and unbeaten, now screamed aloud; not for mercy, but in mortal pain. His tense body squirmed, convulsed, under Jan's great weight like a thing galvanized by electricity.

Jan's jaws sank deeper.

Bill snapped at the bloody snow in his frenzy, actually breaking his own fangs.

Jan's jaws sank deeper.

A long horrible shudder passed through the squirming body of Bill. And Jan's jaws sank a little deeper. Then with a dreadful sucking sound and a sharp gasp for breath, those jaws parted and were withdrawn; for Bill's long fight and his life were ended now, and Jan was quite alone in that desolate place.

XXX

REAL LEADERSHIP

The thrifty Jean was far from pleased when, on the morning after his lucky moose-shot, he found that the sled-team was short of one dog. As it happened, Jake was the first to note the absence of Bill, the ex-leader; and while he looked this way and that for the missing dog, Jean, by a thought process which went a little farther, called Jan to him and proceeded to look over the big hound.

"You don't need to look for no Beel," he said, grimly, to Jake. "Look thees Jan, here. By gar! that was some fight, now I'm telling you. See that, an' thees. Look that ear. See thees shoulder. By gar! that Beel he fight good an' hard. But when he fight Jan, tha's the feenish--for Beel."

Jake and Jean together made the best job they could of patching up Jan's wounds a little against the frost and the rub of trace and breast-band.

"Good dog, too, that blame Bill," mused Jake.

"Sure, he was good dog, very good dog; by gar! yes," agreed Jean. "But thees Jan, hee's best of all dogs. No good for Beel to fight heem. Only he was too blame full o' moose-meat, he don' lose no blood to Beel, you bet. That why Beel he don' eat las' night. Seeck? No. He too cunning, that Beel." A long pause, while Jean spat out chewed tobacco and juice over one of Jan's worst wounds, with a view to its antiseptic and healing properties. And then, on a grunting sigh: "Ah, well, I reckon that makes Jan's price five hunderd. That blame Beel, he worth two hunderd any day."

So, by Jean's simple commercial method, the big hound's wounds and the previous night's great fight were best summed up by reckoning that they added two hundred dollars to Jan's market price. And, all things considered, he was very likely right; for there could be no sort of doubt about it, the episode had taught Jan lessons he never would forget; it had advanced his education hugely and added a big slice to the sum of his knowledge of the wild northland life. Therefore it had made him the more fit to survive in the north; and hence it must have added to his value.

Dogs may not do much talking one with another, as humans understand talk; but their methods of intercourse suffice them. Just as Jean saw no need to hunt for the missing Bill, once he had looked over Jan's wounds, so every dog in the team knew perfectly well why Bill was not of their number that morning. They asked no questions; but they knew. The thing was indelibly recorded in their minds. Bill, who had mastered them, had disputed Jan's mastery. And now Bill was no more. They would not forget.

But all the same, their deductive powers were far from perfect. They saw in Jan a leader who could not hide the soreness and stiffness caused by his many wounds. They, for their part, were feeling rather like indiscreet workmen after a public holiday that has been too recklessly enjoyed. They had no headache, but were feeling fat and lazy; and, noting the stiffness of Jan's movements, they slouched and shirked, and caused delays over the making of a start that morning.

"H'm! Too much moose-meat. Thees will be a short day," growled Jean, as he reached out for his whip before proceeding farther with the harnessing. Only the stiff-legged leader was in his place; the rest lay dotted about with lolling tongues, bent on loafing.

Jan saw Jean go for his whip. But it was no fear of the lash that moved him to action. He had been desperately conscious for a good many hours of his stiffness and weariness, and had hoped his services as policeman of the team would not have been needed that morning. Now, in a flash, he comprehended the true position. And he knew the sled was now twice its previous weight. He looked across at Jean, and gave a short, low bark, which meant:

"Don't you trouble about your whip. This is my job. Don't suppose I've forgotten it, or that this team is going to be any the weaker for Bill's loss. Devil a bit of it."

And with that Jan tossed aside his stiffness and flew around among his six team-mates, the very incarnation of masterful leadership. Not one dog, not even old Blackfoot, escaped him; and if their leader began the day's work as a sorely wounded dog, it was certain that each dog behind him began it with one sore spot to occupy his mind withal. Inside of one minute he had the six of them standing alertly to attention in their respective places, waiting for their harness and itching to be off; not by reason of any sudden access of virtue or industry in them, but because the leader they had thought too sore and stiff to accomplish much that day was pacing sternly up and down their rank, with fangs bared, and the hint of a snarl in every breath he drew; ready, and apparently rather anxious, to visit condign punishment upon the first dog who should stir one paw a single inch from its proper place.

"Five hunderd!" shouted Jean, with his broad, cheery grin. "By gar! tha' Jan hee's worth ten hunderd of any man's money for team-leadin'. Yes, _sir_; an' you can say I said so. I don't care where the nex' come from; tha' Jan, hee's masterpiece."

Jake readily admitted, when, over their pipes that night, he and Jean came to review the day's run, that the team had worked better this day than on any previous day in the past month.

"With double load, an' one dog short," Jean reminded him.

"That's so," said Jake. "I guess that moose-meat's put good heart into them."

"Ah! moose-meat, hee's all right; good tack, for sure," said Jean. "But tha's not moose-meat mushed them dogs on so fast an' trim to-day. No, _sir_. Tha's Jan--bes' dog-musher in 'Merica to-day, now I'm tellin' you. He don' got Beel to upset things to-day, and, by gar! you see how he make them other dogs mush. You don't need no wheep, don't need no musher, so's you got Jan a-leadin', now I'm tellin' you."

Jan imbued each of the other dogs with a portion of his own inexhaustible pride in the team's perfect working. Ready to start in the morning he would stand in the lead, pawing eagerly at the snow, his head turning swiftly from side to side as he looked round to make sure his followers were in order, and in his anxiety to catch the first breath of the command to "Mush on there!"

And when the word came, with what a will those seven dogs bowed to their work! How furiously their hard pads scrabbled at the trail, to overcome the first inertia of the laden sled, before it gained the gliding momentum which they would never allow it to lose for an instant until the order came to halt! If any dog put one ounce less than the pressure he was capable of exerting into his breast-band, Jan knew it that instant, more surely than the watching man behind; and would let out a sharp, low-sounding bark. And very well each dog in the team knew what that bark meant. They feared it more than Jean's thong. For Jan had taught them to know that this bark gave warning of a shrewder blow to come than any whip could give; and a blow from which there would be no possible escape. Men-folk might sometimes forget a promised cuff. Jan was never known to forget a promised bite; and if twelve hours should elapse between promise and payment, so much the worse for the payee; for Jan had a system of his own for the reckoning of compound interest, the efficacy of which, at one time or another, each dog in the team had tested, and found deadly.

Yes, in the fortnight that followed the shooting of the moose and the disappearance of Bill the sled-team driven by Jean and Jake was perhaps the finest and the most efficient in all that white world of hard-bitten, hard-trained, hard-working men and dogs. And, by that token, there was no happier team living, and none in better condition. There are not many teams, of course, whose members eat moose-flesh every day. But quite apart from the substantial addition to their dietary which Jean's lucky moose-shot brought, his sled-team was superbly fit and efficient, because it was perfectly led and perfectly disciplined.

And then came all the strange confusion of the noisy mining town and the end of this particular phase of Jan's life.

XXXI

THE COST OF INCOMPETENCE

Jan's private impressions of the northern mining town were, first, that it was the most horrible place he had ever seen; second, that it was perhaps the most interesting place he had ever seen; and, third and lastly, that it was a very good place to get away from, and that he would be pleased to exchange its complex interests for the clean, arduous stress and strain of the trail.

Jan spent less than a week in the town; but into that week was packed perhaps rather more than the allowance of new impressions and excitement of one sort and another that go to make up the record of her first season in town for the average human débutante. The cynic might protest that many a modern débutante is as certainly put up for sale to the highest bidder of the town season as Jan was. Well, at least the thing is a good deal more carefully wrapped up and veiled, and a great deal more time is given to it.

Jean was very firmly set in his determination not to part with Jan for a cent under five hundred dollars. (Had not Jan cost him two hundred dollars on the night of Bill's disappearance?) Had there been any really knowledgeable judges of dogs in the town just then who needed a dog, they would hardly have quarreled with his owner over Jan's price. But it happened there were none. And the result was that Jan had to be put through his paces five separate times for the benefit of five separate prospective purchasers, not one of whom was really capable of appreciating his superlative quality, before the five hundred dollars demanded did eventually find its way into Jean's pouch and he was called upon to part with his leader. He intended to give Snip the leadership of his team now, because Snip was a curiously remorseless creature; and to buy a husky as cheaply as might be to take the trace ahead of Blackfoot--kindliest of wheelers.

Jean's parting with Jan was characteristic of the man. He had conceived an admiring and prideful affection for the big hound, and had liefer died than allow this to be shown to any other man. His pride in his dog's ability, his full appreciation of the animal's many points--yes, he would show these, and very insistently, to any man. But for his perfectly genuine affection; that, as he understood it, was a culpable weakness which no living soul must be permitted to suspect--no, not even Jan himself. And that was where Jean fooled himself. For his occasional blows and frequent curses did not in the least deceive Jan, who was perfectly well aware of Jean's fondness for him, and, to a considerable extent, reciprocated the feeling. He did not love Jean; but he liked the man, and trusted and respected him for his all-round ability and competence.

"Ye--es," said Jean, slowly, to the moneyed _chechaquo_ who had purchased Jan, "tha' Jan, hee's ther bes' lead dog ever I see, an' I've handled some. But ef you take my word, Mister Beeching, you won' ask Jan to take no other place than lead in your team. Eef you do, your leader 'll hear about it, en he might lose some hide over it, too, I guess. But tha' Jan, hee's a great lead dog, all right, an' I'm tellin' you. Well, so long, boss; I'll be gettin' along. Git back there, you, Jan! By gar! you stay right there now, when I say so. What 'n hell d'you want follerin' me? Git back!"

That was how Jean bade Jan good-by. Jan, scenting trouble vaguely, was determined to stick to Jean, and thought he went about it craftily enough. But Jean caught him each time, and kicked him back to the place where the _chechaquo_ stood, cuffing him roughly over the head by way of final salutation.

"I'll larn ye to foller me," he said, sourly.

"Mighty little _he_ cares for his dogs!" thought the tenderfoot; and he turned (with his more delicate sentiments) to caress Jan's head. But Jan abruptly lowered his head to avoid the touch; though, obedient now to Jean, the proved master, he remained where he had been told to stay.

But these things happened within twenty-four hours of Jan's departure from that town. In the days immediately preceding this one of his parting from Jean he had roamed the town at large with Blackfoot, Snip, and the others of his team, observing, making acquaintances, fending off attacks, administering punishment, and swaggering with the best among a great company of sled-dogs of all sorts and sizes and in every varying grade of condition, from fatted and vainglorious sleekness to downright emaciation. For there were dogs here who, having recently shared cruelly hard times with their men, would require weeks of recuperation to make them fit for the rigors of the trail. Some of this latter sort were for sale, and could be bought for a tenth of Jan's price, or less. Others, again, were "resting," as the actors say, while their impoverished masters worked at some other craft to earn money enough to give them back the freedom of the trail.