head upon his arm, and slept.
Fifty yards away, head resting on knees, and with his back to John
Fox, Snettishane likewise slept, gently conquered by the quietude
of the night. An hour slipped by and then he awoke, and, without
lifting his head, set the night vibrating with the hoarse gutturals
of the raven call.
The Factor roused, not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but
with the swift and comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the
savage. In the night-light he made out a dark object in the midst
of the grass and brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak
began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. The crickets ceased from
their sing-song chant, the wildfowl from their squabbling, and the
raven croak broke midmost and died away in gasping silence.
John Fox ran to the spot and reached for the thing he had killed,
but his fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair and he turned
Snettishane’s face upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun
scattered at fifty yards, and he knew that he had peppered
Snettishane across the shoulders and in the small of the back. And
Snettishane knew that he knew, but neither referred to it
“What dost thou here?” the Factor demanded. “It were time old
bones should be in bed.”
But Snettishane was stately in spite of the bird-shot burning under
his skin.
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“Old bones will not sleep,” he said solemnly. “I weep for my
daughter, for my daughter Lit-lit, who liveth and who yet is dead,
and who goeth without doubt to the white man’s hell.”
“Weep henceforth on the far bank, beyond ear-shot of the Fort,”
said John Fox, turning on his heel, “for the noise of thy weeping
is exceeding great and will not let one sleep of nights.”
“My heart is sore,” Snettishane answered, “and my days and nights
be black with sorrow.”
“As the raven is black,” said John Fox.
“As the raven is black,” Snettishane said.
Never again was the voice of the raven heard by the river bank.
Lit-lit grows matronly day by day and is very happy. Also, there
are sisters to the sons of John Fox’s first wife who lies buried in
a tree. Old Snettishane is no longer a visitor at the Fort, and
spends long hours raising a thin, aged voice against the filial
ingratitude of children in general and of his daughter Lit-lit in
particular. His declining years are embittered by the knowledge
that he was cheated, and even John Fox has withdrawn the assertion
that the price for Lit-lit was too much by ten blankets and a gun.
BATARD
Batard was a devil. This was recognized throughout the Northland.
“Hell’s Spawn” he was called by many men, but his master, Black
Leclere, chose for him the shameful name “Batard.” Now Black
Leclere was also a devil, and the twain were well matched. There
is a saying that when two devils come together, hell is to pay.
This is to be expected, and this certainly was to be expected when
Batard and Black Leclere came together. The first time they met,
Batard was a part-grown puppy, lean and hungry, with bitter eyes;
and they met with snap and snarl, and wicked looks, for Leclere’s
upper lip had a wolfish way of lifting and showing the white, cruel
teeth. And it lifted then, and his eyes glinted viciously, as he
reached for Batard and dragged him out from the squirming litter.
It was certain that they divined each other, for on the instant
Batard had buried his puppy fangs in Leclere’s hand, and Leclere,
thumb and finger, was coolly choking his young life out of him.
“SACREDAM,” the Frenchman said softly, flirting the quick blood
from his bitten hand and gazing down on the little puppy choking
and gasping in the snow.
Leclere turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the Sixty Mile Post.
“Dat fo’ w’at Ah lak heem. ‘Ow moch, eh, you, M’sieu’? ‘Ow moch?
Ah buy heem, now; Ah buy heem queek.”
And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Leclere
bought Batard and gave him his shameful name. And for five years
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the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael’s and
the Yukon delta to the head-reaches of the Pelly and even so far as
the Peace River, Athabasca, and the Great Slave. And they acquired
a reputation for uncompromising wickedness, the like of which never
before attached itself to man and dog.
Batard did not know his father–hence his name–but, as John Hamlin
knew, his father was a great grey timber wolf. But the mother of
Batard, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling, bickering,
obscene, husky, full-fronted and heavy-chested, with a malign eye,
a cat-like grip on life, and a genius for trickery and evil. There
was neither faith nor trust in her. Her treachery alone could be
relied upon, and her wild-wood amours attested her general
depravity. Much of evil and much of strength were there in these,
Batard’s progenitors, and, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh,
he had inherited it all. And then came Black Leclere, to lay his
heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy life, to press and prod
and mould till it became a big bristling beast, acute in knavery,
overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical. With a
proper master Batard might have made an ordinary, fairly efficient
sled-dog. He never got the chance: Leclere but confirmed him in
his congenital iniquity.
The history of Batard and Leclere is a history of war–of five
cruel, relentless years, of which their first meeting is fit
summary. To begin with, it was Leclere’s fault, for he hated with
understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly
puppy hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method.
At first there were no refinements of cruelty (these were to come
later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these
Batard had an ear injured. He never regained control of the riven
muscles, and ever after the ear drooped limply down to keep keen
the memory of his tormentor. And he never forgot.
His puppyhood was a period of foolish rebellion. He was always
worsted, but he fought back because it was his nature to fight
back. And he was unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of
lash and club, he none the less contrived always to throw in the
defiant snarl, the bitter vindictive menace of his soul which
fetched without fail more blows and beatings. But his was his
mother’s tenacious grip on life. Nothing could kill him. He
flourished under misfortune, grew fat with famine, and out of his
terrible struggle for life developed a preternatural intelligence.
His were the stealth and cunning of the husky, his mother, and the
fierceness and valour of the wolf, his father.
Possibly it was because of his father that he never wailed. His
puppy yelps passed with his lanky legs, so that he became grim and
taciturn, quick to strike, slow to warn. He answered curse with
snarl, and blow with snap, grinning the while his implacable
hatred; but never again, under the extremest agony, did Leclere
bring from him the cry of fear nor of pain. This unconquerableness
but fanned Leclere’s wrath and stirred him to greater deviltries.
Did Leclere give Batard half a fish and to his mates whole ones,
Batard went forth to rob other dogs of their fish. Also he robbed
caches and expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he
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became a terror to all dogs and masters of dogs. Did Leclere beat
Batard and fondle Babette–Babette who was not half the worker he
was–why, Batard threw her down in the snow and broke her hind leg
in his heavy jaws, so that Leclere was forced to shoot her.
Likewise, in bloody battles, Batard mastered all his team-mates,
set them the law of trail and forage, and made them live to the law
he set.
In five years he heard but one kind word, received but one soft
stroke of a hand, and then he did not know what manner of things
they were. He leaped like the untamed thing he was, and his jaws
were together in a flash. It was the missionary at Sunrise, a
newcomer in the country, who spoke the kind word and gave the soft
stroke of the hand. And for six months after, he wrote no letters
home to the States, and the surgeon at McQuestion travelled two
hundred miles on the ice to save him from blood-poisoning.
Men and dogs looked askance at Batard when he drifted into their
camps and posts. The men greeted him with feet threateningly
lifted for the kick, the dogs with bristling manes and bared fangs.
Once a man did kick Batard, and Batard, with quick wolf snap,
closed his jaws like a steel trap on the man’s calf and crunched