Bâtard was a devil. This was recognized throughout the Northland. “Hell’s Spawn1” he was called by many men, but his master, Black Leclère, chose for him the shameful2 name “Bâtard.” Now Black Leclère 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 Bâtard and Black Leclère came together. The first time they met, Bâtard was a part-grown puppy, lean and hungry, with bitter eyes; and they met with snap and snarl3, and wicked looks, for Leclère’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 Bâtard and dragged him out from the squirming litter. It was certain that they divined each other, for on the instant Bâtard had buried his puppy fangs4 in Leclère’s hand, and Leclère, thumb and finger, was coolly choking his young life out of him.
“Sacredam,” the Frenchman said softly, flirting5 the quick blood from his bitten hand and gazing down on the little puppy choking and gasping6 in the snow.
Leclère 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, Leclère bought Bâtard and gave him his shameful name. And for five years the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael’s and the Yukon delta7 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.
Bâtard 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 Bâtard, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling9, bickering10, obscene, husky, full-fronted and heavy-chested, with a malign11 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 attested13 her general depravity. Much of evil and much of strength were there in these, Bâtard’s progenitors14, and, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh, he had inherited it all. And then came Black Leclère, to lay his heavy hand on the bit of pulsating15 puppy life, to press and prod16 and mould till it became a big bristling17 beast, acute in knavery18, overspilling with hate, sinister19, malignant20, diabolical21. With a proper master Bâtard might have made an ordinary, fairly efficient sled-dog. He never got the chance: Leclère but confirmed him in his congenital iniquity22.
The history of Bâtard and Leclère is a history of war—of five cruel, relentless23 years, of which their first meeting is fit summary. To begin with, it was Leclère’s fault, for he hated with understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly puppy hated only blindly, instinctively24, without reason or method. At first there were no refinements25 of cruelty (these were to come later), but simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these Bâtard had an ear injured. He never regained26 control of the riven muscles, and ever after the ear drooped27 limply down to keep keen the memory of his tormentor28. 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. Yelping30 shrilly31 from the pain of lash32 and club, he none the less contrived33 always to throw in the defiant34 snarl, the bitter vindictive35 menace of his soul which fetched without fail more blows and beatings. But his was his mother’s tenacious36 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 wailed37. His puppy yelps38 passed with his lanky39 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 hatred40; but never again, under the extremest agony, did Leclère bring from him the cry of fear nor of pain. This unconquerableness but fanned Leclère’s wrath41 and stirred him to greater deviltries.
Did Leclère give Bâtard half a fish and to his mates whole ones, Bâtard went forth42 to rob other dogs of their fish. Also he robbed caches and expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he became a terror to all dogs and masters of dogs. Did Leclère beat Bâtard and fondle Babette—Babette who was not half the worker he was—why, Bâtard threw her down in the snow and broke her hind43 leg in his heavy jaws44, so that Leclère was forced to shoot her. Likewise, in bloody45 battles, Bâtard mastered all his team-mates, set them the law of trail and forage46, 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 missionary47 at Sunrise, a newcomer in the country, who spoke48 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 Bâtard 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 Bâtard, and Bâtard, with quick wolf snap, closed his jaws like a steel trap on the man’s calf49 and crunched50 down to the bone. Whereat the man was determined51 to have his life, only Black Leclère, with ominous52 eyes and naked hunting-knife, stepped in between. The killing53 of Bâtard—ah, sacredam, that was a pleasure Leclère reserved for himself. Some day it would happen, or else—bah! who was to know? Anyway, the problem would be solved.
For they had become problems to each other. The very breath each drew was a challenge and a menace to the other. Their hate bound them together as love could never bind54. Leclère was bent55 on the coming of the day when Bâtard should wilt56 in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet. And Bâtard—Leclère knew what was in Bâtard’s mind, and more than once had read it in Bâtard’s eyes. And so clearly had he read, that when Bâtard was at his back, he made it a point to glance often over his shoulder.
Men marvelled58 when Leclère refused large money for the dog. “Some day you’ll kill him and be out his price,” said John Hamlin once, when Bâtard lay panting in the snow where Leclère had kicked him, and no one knew whether his ribs59 were broken, and no one dared look to see.
“Dat,” said Leclère, dryly, “dat is my biz’ness, M’sieu’.”
And the men marvelled that Bâtard did not run away. They did not understand. But Leclère understood. He was a man who lived much in the open, beyond the sound of human tongue, and he had learned the voices of wind and storm, the sigh of night, the whisper of dawn, the clash of day. In a dim way he could hear the green things growing, the running of the sap, the bursting of the bud. And he knew the subtle speech of the things that moved, of the rabbit in the snare61, the moody62 raven63 beating the air with hollow wing, the baldface shuffling64 under the moon, the wolf like a grey shadow gliding65 betwixt the twilight66 and the dark. And to him Bâtard spoke clear and direct. Full well he understood why Bâtard did not run away, and he looked more often over his shoulder.
When in anger, Bâtard was not nice to look upon, and more than once had he leapt for Leclère’s throat, to be stretched quivering and senseless in the snow, by the butt67 of the ever ready dogwhip. And so Bâtard learned to bide68 his time. When he reached his full strength and prime of youth, he thought the time had come. He was broad-chested, powerfully muscled, of far more than ordinary size, and his neck from head to shoulders was a mass of bristling hair—to all appearances a full-blooded wolf. Leclère was lying asleep in his furs when Bâtard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth and lone12 ear laid back, with a feline69 softness of tread. Bâtard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for a moment and looked at the bronzed bull throat, naked and knotty70, and swelling71 to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that moment he remembered his drooping72 ear, his uncounted blows and prodigious73 wrongs, and without a sound sprang on the sleeping man.
Leclère awoke to the pang74 of the fangs in his throat, and, perfect animal that he was, he awoke clear-headed and with full comprehension. He closed on Bâtard’s windpipe with both his hands, and rolled out of his furs to get his weight uppermost. But the thousands of Bâtard’s ancestors had clung at the throats of unnumbered moose and caribou75 and dragged them down, and the wisdom of those ancestors was his. When Leclère’s weight came on top of him, he drove his hind legs upwards76 and in, and clawed down chest and abdomen77, ripping and tearing through skin and muscle. And when he felt the man’s body wince78 above him and lift, he worried and shook at the man’s throat. His team-mates closed around in a snarling circle, and Bâtard, with failing breath and fading sense, knew that their jaws were hungry for him. But that did not matter—it was the man, the man above him, and he ripped and clawed, and shook and worried, to the last ounce of his strength. But Leclère choked him with both his hands, till Bâtard’s chest heaved and writhed79 for the air denied, and his eyes glazed81 and set, and his jaws slowly loosened, and his tongue protruded82 black and swollen83.
“Eh? Bon, you devil!” Leclère gurgled mouth and throat clogged84 with his own blood, as he shoved the dizzy dog from him.
And then Leclère cursed the other dogs off as they fell upon Bâtard. They drew back into a wider circle, squatting85 alertly on their haunches and licking their chops, the hair on every neck bristling and erect86.
Bâtard recovered quickly, and at sound of Leclère’s voice, tottered87 to his feet and swayed weakly back and forth.
“A-h-ah! You beeg devil!” Leclère spluttered. “Ah fix you; Ah fix you plentee, by Gar!”
Bâtard, the air biting into his exhausted88 lungs like wine, flashed full into the man’s face, his jaws missing and coming together with a metallic89 clip. They rolled over and over on the snow, Leclère striking madly with his fists. Then they separated, face to face, and circled back and forth before each other. Leclère could have drawn90 his knife. His rifle was at his feet. But the beast in him was up and raging. He would do the thing with his hands—and his teeth. Bâtard sprang in, but Leclère knocked him over with a blow of the fist, fell upon him, and buried his teeth to the bone in the dog’s shoulder.
It was a primordial91 setting and a primordial scene, such as might have been in the savage92 youth of the world. An open space in a dark forest, a ring of grinning wolf-dogs, and in the centre two beasts, locked in combat, snapping and snarling raging madly about panting, sobbing93, cursing, straining, wild with passion, in a fury of murder, ripping and tearing and clawing in elemental brutishness.
But Leclère caught Bâtard behind the ear with a blow from his fist, knocking him over, and, for the instant, stunning94 him. Then Leclère leaped upon him with his feet, and sprang up and down, striving to grind him into the earth. Both Bâtard’s hind legs were broken ere Leclère ceased that he might catch breath.
“A-a-ah! A-a-ah!” he screamed, incapable95 of speech, shaking his fist, through sheer impotence of throat and larynx.
But Bâtard was indomitable. He lay there in a helpless welter, his lip feebly lifting and writhing96 to the snarl he had not the strength to utter. Leclère kicked him, and the tired jaws closed on the ankle, but could not break the skin.
Then Leclère picked up the whip and proceeded almost to cut him to pieces, at each stroke of the lash crying: “Dis taim Ah break you! Eh? By Gar! Ah break you!”
In the end, exhausted, fainting from loss of blood, he crumpled97 up and fell by his victim, and when the wolf-dogs closed in to take their vengeance98, with his last consciousness dragged his body on top of Bâtard to shield him from their fangs.
This occurred not far from Sunrise, and the missionary, opening the door to Leclère a few hours later, was surprised to note the absence of Bâtard from the team. Nor did his surprise lessen99 when Leclère threw back the robes from the sled, gathered Bâtard into his arms and staggered across the threshold. It happened that the surgeon of McQuestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on a gossip, and between them they proceeded to repair Leclère,
“Merci, non,” said he. “Do you fix firs’ de dog. To die? Non. Eet is not good. Becos’ heem Ah mus’ yet break. Dat fo’ w’at he mus’ not die.”
The surgeon called it a marvel57, the missionary a miracle, that Leclère pulled through at all; and so weakened was he, that in the spring the fever got him, and he went on his back again. Bâtard had been in even worse plight100, but his grip on life prevailed, and the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves, during the several weeks he lay strapped101 to the floor. And by the time Leclère, finally convalescent, sallow and shaky, took the sun by the cabin door, Bâtard had reasserted his supremacy102 among his kind, and brought not only his own team-mates but the missionary’s dogs into subjection.
He moved never a muscle, nor twitched103 a hair, when, for the first time, Leclère tottered out on the missionary’s arm, and sank down slowly and with infinite caution on the three-legged stool.
“Bon!” he said. “Bon! De good sun!” And he stretched out his wasted hands and washed them in the warmth.
Then his gaze fell on the dog, and the old light blazed back in his eyes. He touched the missionary lightly on the arm. “Mon père, dat is one beeg devil, dat Bâtard. You will bring me one pistol, so, dat Ah drink de sun in peace.”
And thenceforth for many days he sat in the sun before the cabin door. He never dozed104, and the pistol lay always across his knees. Bâtard had a way, the first thing each day, of looking for the weapon in its wonted place. At sight of it he would lift his lip faintly in token that he understood, and Leclère would lift his own lip in an answering grin. One day the missionary took note of the trick.
“Bless me!” he said. “I really believe the brute105 comprehends.”
Leclère laughed softly. “Lo............