Jan: A Dog and a Romance Part 19

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, h.e.l.l, 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. .h.i.t 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 las.h.i.+ng 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.

"Just mush on a yard or two, not far, Jan."

His tone was conversational. Jan gave a short, low bark; and in the same moment the five huskies flung themselves into their collars behind him.

The sled--its runners already tight frozen--creaked, jerked, and slid forward just eight feet. Jan let out a low, warning growl. The team stood still without a word from its owner.

"Say, does he talk?" asked a bystander. And then, with a chuckle: "Use a knife an' fork to his grub, Jim?"

"Oh, as to that," said Willis, "he don't need to do no talkin'. He can make any husky understand without talk; an' when that husky understands, if he won't do as Jan says, Jan'll smother him, quick an' lively."

As Jan stood now at the head of his team, awaiting final orders, he formed a picture of perfect canine health and fitness. He represented most of a northlander's ideals and dreams of what a sled-dog should be, plus certain other qualities that came to him from his breeding, and that no dog-musher would have even hoped for in a sled-dog: his immense size, for example, and his wonderful dignity and grace of form and action.

Jan never had been so superlatively fit; so instinct in every least hair of his coat, in every littlest vein of his body, with tingling life and pulsing energy. His coat crackled if a man's hand was pa.s.sed along his black saddle.

Despite the lissom grace of all his motions, Jan moved every limb with a kind of exuberant snap, as though his strength spilled over from its superabundance, and had to be expended at every opportunity to avoid surcharge. His movements formed his safety-valve, you fancied. Robbed of these, his abounding vitality would surely burst through the cage of his great body in some way, and destroy him. He walked as though the forces of gravitation were but barely sufficient to tether him down to mother earth.

"And I reckon he weighs near a hundred and sixty," said Willis; a guess the store scales proved good that night, when Jan registered exactly one hundred and fifty-seven pounds, though he carried no fat, nor an ounce of any kind of waste material.

x.x.xIV

THE PEACE RIVER TRAIL

Winter set in with unusual rigor, the temperature dropping after heavy snow to fifty below zero, and hovering between thirty and sixty below for weeks together.

Jim Willis and his sled-team lived on a practically "straight" meat diet. Jan had forgotten the taste of sun-dried salmon, and men and dogs together were living now on moose-meat chopped with an ax from the slabs and chunks that were stowed away on the sled. Willis occasionally treated himself to a dish of boiled beans, and when fortune favored he ate ptarmigan. But moose-meat was the staple for man and dogs alike.

For months the valleys they had traversed had been rich in game. But in the northland the movements of game are mysterious and unaccountable; and now, in a bleak and gloomy stretch of country north of the Caribou Mountains, they had seen no trace of life of any kind for a fortnight except wolves. And of these, by day and by night, Jim Willis had seen and heard more than he cared about. It seemed the brutes had come from country quite unlike the valleys Willis had traveled, and resembling more nearly that in which he now found himself. For these wolves were gaunt and poor, and the absence of game made them more than normally audacious. So far from seeking to avoid man and his dogs, they seemed to infest Willis's trail, ranging emptily and wistfully to his rear and upon either side as hungry sharks patrol a s.h.i.+p's wake.

The circ.u.mstances would have had little enough of significance for Willis, but for an accident which befell just before the cold snap set in. Hastening along the track of a moose he had already mortally wounded, beside one of the tributaries of the Mackenzie, Willis had had the misfortune to take a false step among half-formed ice, and he and his gun had fallen into deep water. The bigger part of a day was given to the attempted salvaging of that gun. But in the end the quest had to be relinquished.

The gun was never seen again; and, though Jim had good store of ammunition, he now had no weapon of any sort or kind, save ax and whip.

This was the reason why the presence of large packs of hungry wolves annoyed him and made him anxious to reach a Peace River station as speedily as might be. He carried a fair stock of moose-meat, but accidents might happen, and in any case, apart from the presence of hungry wolves in large numbers, no man cares to be without weapons of precision in the wilderness, for it is these which more than any other thing give him his mastery over the predatory of the wild.