Just before three o"clock in an afternoon of still, intense cold, when daylight was fading out, the narrow devious watercourse whose frozen surface had formed Willis"s trail for many a mile, brought him at last to a bend of the Peace River from which he knew he could reach a settlement within four or five days of good traveling. Therefore his arrival at this point was of more interest and importance to Willis than any ordinary camping halt. But it struck him as curious that Jan should show the interest he did show in it.
"Seems like as if that blame dog knows everything," he muttered as he saw Jan trotting to and fro over the trail, his flews sweeping the trodden snow with eager, questing gestures, his stern waving as with excitement of some sort.
"Surely there"s been no game past this way," thought Willis, "or them wolves would be on to the scent of it pretty quick."
He could hear his tireless escorts of the past week yowling a mile or more away in the rear. Having built and lighted a fire of pine-knots, he called the dogs about him to be fed. Jan seemed disinclined to answer the call, being still busily questing to and fro. Willis had to call him separately and sternly.
"You stay right here," he said, sharply. "This ain"t no place for hunting-excursions an" picnic-parties, let me tell you. You"re big an"
husky, all right, but the gentlemen out back there "d make no more o"
downing an" eatin" you than if you was a sody-cracker, so I tell ye now.
They"re fifty to one an" hungry enough to eat chips."
His ration swallowed, Jan showed an inclination to roam again, though his team-mates, with ears p.r.i.c.ked and hackles rising in answer to the wolf-calls, huddled about as near the camp-fire as they dared.
"H"m! "Tain"t jest like you to be contemplatin" sooicide, neither; but it seems you"ve got some kind of a hunch that way to-night. Come here, then," said Willis. And he proceeded to tether Jan securely to the sled, within a yard of his own sleeping-place. "If I"d my old gun here, me beauties," he growled, shaking his fist in the direction from which he had come that day, "I"d give some o" ye something to howl about, I reckon." Then to Jan, "Now you lie down there an" stay there till I loose ye."
Obediently enough Jan proceeded to scoop out his nest in the snow, and settle. But it was obvious that he labored with some unusual interest; some unseen cause of excitement.
Next morning it seemed Jan had forgotten his peculiar interest in the Peace River trail, his attention being confined strictly to the customary routine of harnessing and schooling the team.
But two hours later he did a thing that Willis had never seen him do before. He threw the team into disorder by coming to an abrupt standstill in mid-trail without any hint of an order from his master. He was sniffing hard at the trail, turning sharply from side to side, his flews in the snow, while his nostrils avidly drank in whatever it was they found there, as a parched dog drinks at a water-hole.
"Mush on there, Jan! What ye playin" at?" cried Willis.
At the word of command Jan plunged forward mechanically. But in the next moment he had halted again and, nose in the snow, wheeled sharply to the right, almost flinging on its side the dog immediately behind him in the traces.
For an instant Jim Willis wondered uncomfortably if his leader had gone mad. He had known sudden and apparently quite inexplicable cases of madness among sled-dogs, and, like most others having any considerable experience of the trail, he had more than once had to shoot a dog upon whom madness had fallen. At all events, before striding forward to the head of his team Willis fumbled under the lashings of the sled and drew out the long-thonged dog-whip which for months now he had ceased to carry on the trail, finding no use for it under Jan"s leadership of the team.
A glance now showed the cause of Jan"s abrupt unordered right turn.
Close to the trail Jim saw the fresh remains of a camp-fire beside the deep marks of a sled"s runners.
"Well, an" what of it?" said he to Jan, sharply. ""Tain"t the first time you"ve struck another man"s trail, is it? What "n the nation ails ye to be so het up about it, anyway?"
And then, with his practised trailer"s eyes he began to examine these tracks himself.
"H"m! Do seem kind o" queer, too," he muttered. "The sled"s a middlin"-heavy one, all right, only I don"t see but one dog"s track here, and that"s onusu"l. Mus" be a pretty good husky, Jan, to shift that load on his own--eh? But hold on! I reckon there"s two men slep"
here. But there"s only one man"s track on the trail, an" only one dog.
Some peculiar, I allow: but this here stoppin" and turnin" an" playin"
up is altogether outside the contrac", Jan. Clean contr"y to discipline.
Come, mush on there! D"ye hear me? Mush on, the lot o" ye."
It may be that, if he had had no reason for haste, Jim Willis would have gone farther in the matter of investigating Jan"s peculiar conduct. As it was he saw every reason against delay and no justification for close study of a trail which he was desirous only of putting behind him. As a result he carried his whip for the rest of that day, and used it more often than it had been used in all the months since he first saw Jan.
For, contrary to all habit and custom, Jan seemed to-day most singularly indifferent to his master"s wishes, and yet not indifferent, either, to these or to anything, but so much preoccupied with other matters as to be neglectful of these.
He checked frequently in his stride to sniff hard and long at the trail.
And after one or two of these checks Jim Willis sent the end of his whip-thong sailing through the keen air from his place beside the sled clear into Jan"s flank by way of reminder and indors.e.m.e.nt of his sharp, "Mush on there, Jan!"
When a halt was called for camping, as the early winter darkness set in, the unbelievable thing happened. Jan, the first dog to be loosed, took one long, ardent sniff at the trail before him and then loped on ahead with never a backward glance for master or team-mates.
"Here, you, Jan! Come in here! Come right in here! D"ye hear me? Jan!
Jan! You crazy? Come in here! Come--here!"
Jim Willis flung all his master"s authority into the harsh peremptoriness of his last call. And Jan checked in his stride as he heard it. Then the hound shook his shoulders as though a whip-lash had struck them, sniffed hard again at the trail, and went on.
Willis caused his whip to sing, and himself shouted till he was hoa.r.s.e.
Jan, the perfect exemplar of sled-dog discipline, apparently defied him.
The big hound was out of sight now.
"Well!" exclaimed Willis as he turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you"re plumb crazy. But all the same--Well, it"s got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you"re meat just the same, an", by the great Geewhillikins! you"ll be dead meat, an" digested meat at that, before you"re an hour older, my son, if I know anything o" wolves." Later, as he proceeded to thaw out his supper, "Well, I do reckon that"s a blame pity," growled Willis to his fire, by way of epitaph. And for Jim Willis that was saying a good deal.
x.x.xV
THE END OF JAN"S LONE TRAIL
With every stride in his solitary progress along that dark trail Jan"s gait and appearance took on more of cert.i.tude and of swift concentration upon an increasingly clear and definite objective.
Of the wolves in the neighborhood all save two remained, uneasily ranging the neighborhood of the trail to the rear of Willis"s camp. As it seemed to them, Jim Willis"s outfit was a sure and safe quarry. It represented meat which must, in due course, become food for them. And so they did not wish to leave it behind them, in a country bare of game.
Two venturesome speculators from the pack had, however, worked round to the front, one on either side of the trail. And these were now loping silent along, each sixty or seventy yards away, watching Jan. Jan was conscious of their presence, as one is conscious of the proximity of mosquitoes. He regarded their presence neither more nor less seriously than this. But he did not forget them. Now and again one or other of them would close in to, perhaps, twenty or thirty paces in a sweeping curve. Then Jan"s lip would writhe and rise on the side nearest the encroaching wolf, and a long, bitter snarl of warning would escape him.
"If I hadn"t got important business in hand, I"d stop and flay you for your insolence," his snarl said. "I"ll do it now, if you"re not careful.
Sheer off!"
And each time the wolf sheered off, in a sweeping curve, still keeping the lone hound under careful observation.
Wolves are very acute judges; desperate fighters for their lives and when driven by hunger, but at no time really brave. If Jan had fallen by the way, these two would have been into him like knives. While he ran, exhibiting his fine powers, and snarled, showing his fearlessness, no two wolves would tackle him, and even the full pack would likely have trailed him for miles before venturing an attack.
But, however that might be, it is a fact that Jan spared no more than the most occasional odd ends of thought for these two silent, slinking watchers of his trail. His active mind was concentrated upon quite other matters, and was becoming more and more set and concentrated, more absorbingly preoccupied with every minute of his progress.
A bloodhound judge who had watched Jan now would have known that he no longer sniffed the trail, as he ran, for guidance. The trail was too fresh for that. He could have followed it with his nose held high in the air. It was for the sheer joy it brought him that he ran now with low-hanging flews, drinking in the scent he followed. And because of the warmth of the trail, Jan followed it at the gallop, his great frame well extended to every stride.
Of a sudden he checked. It was exactly as though he had run his head into a noose on the end of a snare line made fast to one of the darkling trees which skirted his path on the right-hand side. Here the scent which he followed left the trail almost at right angles, turning into the wood.
A moment more and Jan came into full view of a camp-fire, beside which were a sled, a single dog, and two men. But Jan saw no camp-fire, nor any other thing than the track under his questing nose.
The single dog by the sled leaped to its feet with a growling bark. One of the two men stood up sharply in the firelight, ordering his dog in to heel. His eyes (full of wonder) lighted then on the approaching figure of Jan, head down; and he reached for his rifle where it lay athwart the log on which he had been sitting.
As Jan drew in, the other dog flew at his throat. Without wasting breath upon a snarl, Jan gave the husky his shoulder, with a jar which sent the poor beast sprawling into the red flickering edge of the fire. And in the same moment Jan let out a most singular cry as he reared up on his hind feet, allowing his fore paws, very gently and without pressure, to rest on the man"s chest.
His cry had something of a bark in it, but yet was not a bark. It had a good deal of a kind of crooning whine about it, but yet was not a whine.
It was just a cry of almost overpowering joy and gladness; and it was so uncannily different from any dog-talk she had ever heard, that the singed and frightened husky b.i.t.c.h by the fire stood gaping open-mouthed to harken at it.
And the man--long-practised discipline made him lay down his gun, instead of dropping it; and then he voiced an exclamation of astonishment scarcely more articulate than Jan"s own cry, and his two arms swung out and around the hound"s ma.s.sive shoulders in a movement that was an embrace.