A thousand deaths by Jack London

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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66

“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that he was cheated, and even John Fox has withdrawn the assertion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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67

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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68

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