Books: Nomads Of The North
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James Oliver Curwood >> Nomads Of The North
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"NON, NON; you are not a devil," she cried softly, her voice
filled with a strange tremble. "O-o-ee, my SOKETAAO, I prayed,
PRAYED--and you came. Yes, on my knees each night I prayed to Our
Blessed Lady that she might have mercy on my baby, and make the
sun in heaven shine for her through all time. AND YOU CAME! And
the dear God does not send devils in answer to prayer. NON;
never!"
And Miki, as though some spirit had given him the power to
understand, rested the weight of his bruised and beaten head on
her hands.
From the edge of the forest Durant was watching. He had caught the
flash of light from the door and had seen Nanette go to the cage,
and his eyes did not leave her until she returned into the cabin.
He laughed as he went to his fire and finished making the WAHGUN
he was fastening to the end of a long pole. This WAHGUN and the
pole added to his own cleverness were saving him twelve good fox
skins, and he continued to chuckle there in the fireglow as he
thought how easy it was to beat a woman's wits. Nanette was a fool
to refuse the pelts, and Jacques was--dead. It was a most lucky
combination of circumstances for him. Fortune had surely come his
way. On LE BETE, as he called the wild dog, he would gamble all
that he possessed in the big fight. And he would win.
He waited until the light in the cabin went out before he
approached the cage again. Miki heard him coming. At a
considerable distance he saw him, for the moon was already turning
the night into day. Durant knew the ways of dogs. With them he
employed a superior reason where Le Beau had used the club and the
rawhide. So he came up openly and boldly, and, as if by accident,
dropped the end of the pole between the bars. With his hands
against the cage, apparently unafraid, he began talking in a
casual way. He was different from Le Beau. Miki watched him
closely for a space and then let his eyes rest again on the
darkened cabin window. Stealthily Durant began to take advantage
of his opportunity. A little at a time he moved the end of the
pole until it was over Miki's head, with the deadly bowstring and
its open noose hanging down. He was an adept in the use of the
WAHGUN. Many foxes and wolves, and even a bear, he had caught that
way. Miki, numbed by the cold, scarcely felt the BABICHE noose as
it settled softly about his neck. He did not see Durant brace
himself, with his feet against the running-log of the cage.
Then, suddenly, Durant lurched himself backward, and it seemed to
Miki as though a giant trap of steel had closed about his neck.
Instantly his wind was cut off. He could make no sound as he
struggled frantically to free himself. Hand over hand Durant
dragged him to the bars, and there, with his feet still braced, he
choked with his whole weight until--when at last he let up on the
WAHGUN--Miki collapsed as if dead. Ten seconds later Durant was
looping a muzzle over his closed jaws. He left the cage door open
when he went back to his sledge, carrying Miki in his arms.
Nanette's slow wits would never guess, he told himself. She would
think that LE BETE had escaped into the forest.
It was not his scheme to club Miki into serfdom, as Le Beau had
failed to do. Durant was wiser than that. In his crude and
merciless way he had come to know certain phenomena of the animal
mind. He was not a psychologist; oh the other hand brutality had
not utterly blinded him. So, instead of lashing Miki to the sledge
as Le Beau had fastened him to his improvised drag, Durant made
his captive comfortable, covering him with a warm blanket before
he began his journey eastward. He made sure, however, that there
was no flaw in the muzzle about Miki's jaws, and that the free end
of the chain to which he was still fastened was well hitched to
the Gee-bar of his sledge.
When these things were done Durant set off in the direction of
Fort O' God, and if Jacques Le Beau could have seen him then he
would have had good reason to guess at his elation. By taint of
birth and blood Durant was a gambler first, and a trapper
afterward. He set his traps that he might have the thrill of
wagering his profits, and for half a dozen successive years he had
won at the big annual dog fight at Post Fort O' God. But this year
he had been half afraid. His fear had not been of Jacques Le Beau
and Netah, but of the halfbreed away over on Red Belly Lake.
Grouse Piet was the halfbreed's name, and the "dog" that he was
going to put up at the fight was half wolf. Therefore, in the
foolish eagerness of his desire, had Durant offered two cross
foxes and ten reds--the price of five dogs and not one--for the
possession of Le Beau's wild dog. And now that he had him for
nothing, and Nanette was poorer by twelve skins, he was happy. For
he had now a good match for Grouse Piet's half wolf, and he would
chance his money and his credit at the Post to the limit.
When Miki came back to his senses Durant stopped his dogs, for he
had been watching closely for this moment. He bent over the sledge
and began talking, not in Le Beau's brutal way, but in a careless
chummy sort of voice, and with his mittened hand he patted his
captive's head. This was a new thing to Miki, for he knew that it
was not the hand of Nanette, but of a man-beast, and the softness
of his nest in the blanket, over which Henri had thrown a bear
skin, was also new. A short time ago he was frozen and stiff. Now
he was warm and comfortable. So he did not move. And Durant
exulted in his cleverness. He did not travel far in the night, but
stopped four or five miles from Nanette's cabin, and built a fire.
Over this he boiled coffee and roasted meat. He allowed the meat
to roast slowly, turning it round and round on a wooden spit, so
that the aroma of it grew thick and inviting in the air. He had
fastened his two sledge dogs fifty paces away, but the sledge was
close to the fire, and he watched the effect on Miki of the
roasting meat. Since the days of his puppyhood with Challoner a
smell like that which came from the meat had not filled Miki's
nostrils, and at last Durant saw him lick his chops and heard the
click of his teeth. He chuckled in his beard. Still he waited
another quarter of an hour. Then he pulled the meat off the spit,
cut it up, and gave a half of it to Miki. And Miki ate it
ravenously.
A clever man was Henri Durant!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
During the last few days in December all trails for ten thousand
square miles around led to Post Fort 0' God. It was the eve of
OOSKE PIPOON--of the New Year--the mid-winter carnival time of the
people of the wilderness, when from teepees and cabins far and
near come the trappers and their families to sell their furs and
celebrate for a few days with others of their kind. To this New
Year gathering men, women, and children look forward through long
and weary months. The trapper's wife has no neighbour. Her
husband's "line" is a little kingdom inviolate, with no other
human life within many miles of it; so for the women the OOSKE
PIPOON is a time of rejoicing; for the children it is the "big
circus," and for the men a reward for the labour and hardship of
catching their fur. During these few days old acquaintanceships
are renewed and new ones are made. It is here that the "news" of
the trackless wilderness is spread, the news of deaths, of
marriages, and of births; of tragic happenings that bring horror
and grief and tears, and of others that bring laughter and joy.
For the first and last time in all the seven months' winter the
people of the forests "come to town." Indian, halfbreed, "blood,"
and white man, join in the holiday without distinction of colour
or creed.
This year there was to be a great caribou roast, a huge barbecue,
at Fort O' God, and by the time Henri Durant came within half a
dozen miles of the Post the trails from north and south and east
and west were beaten hard by the tracks of dogs and men. That year
a hundred sledges came in from the forests, and with them were
three hundred men and women and children and half a thousand dogs.
Durant was a day later than he had planned to be, but he had made
good use of his time. For Miki, while still muzzled, now followed
at the end of the babiche that was tied to Henri's sledge. In the
afternoon of the third day after leaving Nanette Le Beau's cabin
Durant turned off the main-travelled trail until he came to the
shack of Andre Ribon, who kept the Factor and his people at the
Post supplied with fresh meat. Andre, who was becoming over-
anxious at Durant's delay, was still waiting when his friend came.
It was here that Henri's Indian had left his fighting dog, the big
husky. And here he left Miki, locked in Andre's shack. Then the
two men went on to the Post which was only a mile away.
Neither he nor Ribon returned that night. The cabin was empty. And
with the beginning of dusk Miki began to hear weird and strange
sounds which grew louder as darkness settled deeper. It was the
sound of the carnival at the Post--the distant tumult of human
voice mingled with the howling of a hundred dogs. He had never
heard anything like it before, and for a long time he listened
without moving. Then he stood up like a man before the window with
this fore-paws resting against the heavy sash. Ribon's cabin was
at the crest of a knoll that over-looked the frozen lake, and far
off, over the tops of the scrub timber that fringed the edge of
it, Miki saw the red glow in the sky made by a score of great camp
fires. He whined, and dropped on his four feet again. It was a
long wait between that and another day. But the cabin was more
comfortable than Le Beau's prison-cage had been. All through the
night his restless slumber was filled with visions of Nanette and
the baby.
Durant and Ribon did not return until nearly noon the next day.
They brought with them fresh meat, of which Miki ate ravenously,
for he was hungry. In an unresponsive way he tolerated the
advances of these two. A second night he was left alone in the
cabin. When Durant and Ribon came back again in the early dawn
they brought with them a cage four feet square made of small birch
saplings. The open door of this cage they drew close to the door
of the cabin, and by means of a chunk of fresh meat Miki was
induced to enter through it. Instantly the trap fell, and he was a
prisoner. The cage was already fastened on a wide toboggan, and
scarcely was the sun up when Miki was on his way to Fort O' God.
This was the big day at the carnival--the day of the caribou-roast
and the fight. For many minutes before they came in sight of Fort
O' God Miki heard the growing sound. It amazed him, and he stood
up on his feet in his cage, rigid and alert, utterly unconscious
of the men who were pulling him. He was looking ahead of them, and
Durant chuckled exultantly as they heard him growl, and his teeth
click.
"Oui, he will fight! He would fight NOW," he chuckled.
They were following the shore of a lake. Suddenly they came around
the end of a point, and all of Fort O' God lay on the rising shelf
of the shore ahead of them. The growl died in Miki's throat. His
teeth shut with a last click. For an instant his heart seemed to
grow dead and still. Until this moment his world had held only
half a dozen human beings. Now, so suddenly that he had no flash
of warning, he saw a hundred of them, two hundred, three hundred.
At sight of Durant and the cage a swarm of them began running down
to the shore. And everywhere there were wolves, so many of them
that his senses grew dazed as he stared. His cage was the centre
of a clamouring, gesticulating horde of men and boys as it was
dragged up the slope. Women began joining the crowd, many of them
with small children in their arms. Then his journey came to an
end. He was close to another cage, and in that cage was a beast
like himself. Beside this cage there stood a tall, swarthy,
shaggy-headed halfbreed who looked like a pirate. The man was
Grouse Piet, Durant's rival.
A contemptuous leer was on his thick-lipped face as he looked at
Miki. He turned, and to the group of dark-faced Indians and breeds
about him he said something that roused a guttural laugh.
Durant's face flamed red.
"Laugh, you heathen," he challenged, "but don't forget that Henri
Durant is here to take your bets!" Then he shook the two cross and
ten red foxes in the face of Grouse Piet.
"Cover them, Grouse Piet," he cried. "And I have ten times more
where they came from!"
With his muzzle lifted, Miki was sniffing the air. It was filled
with strange scents, heavy with the odours of men, of dogs, and of
the five huge caribou roasting on their spits fifteen feet over
the big fires that were built under them. For ten hours those
caribou would roast, turning slowly on spits as thick as a man's
leg. The fight was to come before the feast.
For an hour the clatter and tumult of voices hovered about the two
cages. Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse
Piet and Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter
and contempt at each other. At the end of the hour the crowd began
to thin out. In the place of men and women half a hundred dark-
visaged little children crowded about the cages. It was not until
then that Miki caught glimpses of the hordes of beasts fastened in
ones and twos and groups in the edge of the clearing. His nostrils
had at last caught the distinction. They were not wolves. They
were like himself.
It was a long time before his eyes rested steadily on the wolf-dog
in the other cage. He went to the edge of his bars and sniffed.
The wolf-dog thrust his gaunt muzzle toward him. He made Miki
think of the huge wolf he had fought one day on the edge of the
cliff, and instinctively he showed his fangs, and snarled. The
wolf-dog snarled back. Henri Durant rubbed his hands exultantly,
and Grouse Piet laughed softly.
"Oui; they will FIGHT!" said Henri again.
"Ze wolf, he will fight, oui," said Grouse Piet. "But your dog,
m'sieu, he be vair seek, lak a puppy, w'en ze fight come!"
A little later Miki saw a white man standing close to his cage. It
was MacDonnell, the Scotch factor. He gazed at Miki and the wolf-
dog with troubled eyes. Ten minutes later, in the little room
which he had made his office, he was saying to a younger man:
"I'd like to stop it, but I can't. They wouldn't stand for it. It
would lose us half a season's catch of fur. There's been a fight
like this at Fort O' God for the last fifty years, and I don't
suppose, after all, that it's any worse than one of the prize
fights down there. Only, in this case--"
"They kill," said the younger man.
"Yes, that's it. Usually one of the dogs dies."
The younger man knocked the ash out of his pipe.
"I love dogs," he said, simply. "There'll never be a fight at my
post, Mac--unless it's between men. And I'm not going to see this
fight, because I'm afraid I'd kill some one if I did."
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The caribou were roasting
brown. In two more hours the feast would begin. The hour of the
fight was at hand.
In the centre of the clearing three hundred men, women, and
children were gathered in a close circle about a sapling cage ten
feet square. Close to this cage, one at each side, were drawn the
two smaller cages. Beside one of these cages stood Henri Durant;
beside the other, Grouse Piet. They were not bantering now. Their
faces were hard and set. And three hundred pairs of eyes were
staring at them, and three hundred pairs of ears waiting for the
thrilling signal.
It came--from Grouse Piet.
With a swift movement Durant pulled up the door of Miki's cage.
Then, suddenly, he prodded him from behind with a crotched stick,
and with a single leap Miki was in the big cage. Almost at the
same instant the wolf-dog leapt from Grouse Piet's cage, and the
two faced each other in the arena.
With the next breath he drew Durant could have groaned. What
happened in the following half minute was a matter of environment
with Miki. In the forest the wolf-dog would have interested him to
the exclusion of everything else, and he would have looked upon
him as another Netah or a wild wolf. But in his present
surroundings the idea of fighting was the last to possess him. He
was fascinated by that grim and waiting circle of faces closing in
the big cage; he scrutinized it, turning his head sharply from
point to point, as if hoping to see Nanette and the baby, or even
Challoner his first master. To the wolf-dog Grouse Piet had given
the name of Taao, because of the extraordinary length of his
fangs; and of Taao, to Durant's growing horror, Miki was utterly
oblivious after that first head-on glance. He trotted to the edge
of the cage and thrust his nose between the bars, and a taunting
laugh rose out of Grouse Piet's throat. Then he began making a
circle of the cage, his sharp eyes on the silent ring of faces.
Taao stood in the centre of the cage, and not once did his reddish
eyes leave Miki. What was outside of the cage held small interest
for him. He understood his business, and murder was bred in his
heart. For a space during which Durant's heart beat like a hammer
Taao turned, as if on a pivot, following Miki's movement, and the
crest on his spine stood up like bristles.
Then Miki stopped, and in that moment Durant saw the end of all
his hopes. Without a sound the wolf-dog was at his opponent. A
bellow rose from Grouse Piet's lips. A deep breath passed through
the circle of spectators, and Durant felt a cold chill run up his
back to the roots of his hair. What happened in the next instant
made men's hearts stand still. In that first rush Miki should have
died. Grouse Piet expected him to die, and Durant expected him to
die. But in the last fractional bit of the second in which the
wolf-dog's jaws closed, Miki was transformed into a thing of
living lightning. No man had ever seen a movement swifter than
that with which he turned on Taao. Their jaws clashed. There was a
sickening grinding of bone, and in another moment they were
rolling and twisting together on the earth floor. Neither Grouse
Piet nor Durant could see what was happening. They forgot even
their own bets in the horror of that fight. Never had there been
such a fight at Fort O' God.
The sound of it reached to the Company's store. In the door,
looking toward the big cage, stood the young white man. He heard
the snarling, the clashing of teeth, and his jaws set heavily and
a dull flame burned in his eyes. His breath came in a sudden gasp.
"DAMN!" he cried, softly.
His hands clenched, and he stepped slowly down from the door and
went toward the cage. It was over when he made his way through the
ring of spectators. The fight had ended as suddenly as it had
begun, and Grouse Piet's wolf-dog lay in the centre of the cage
with a severed jugular. Miki looked as though he might be dying.
Durant had opened the door and had slipped a rope over his head,
and outside the cage Miki stood swaying on his feet, red with
blood, and half blind. His flesh was red and bleeding in a dozen
places, and a stream of blood trickled from his mouth. A cry of
horror rose to the young white man's lips as he looked down at
him.
And then, almost in the same breath, there came a still stranger
cry.
"Good God! Miki--Miki--Miki--"
Beating upon his brain as if from a vast distance, coming to him
through the blindness of his wounds, Miki heard that voice.
The VOICE! THE voice that had lived with him in all his dreams,
the voice he had waited for, and searched for, and knew that some
day he would find. The voice of Challoner, his master!
He dropped on his belly, whining, trying to see through the film
of blood in his eyes; and lying there, wounded almost unto death,
his tail thumped the ground in recognition. And then, to the
amazement of all who beheld, Challoner was down upon his knees
beside him, and his arms were about him, and Miki's lacerated
tongue was reaching for his hands, his face, his clothes.
"Miki--Miki--Miki!"
Durant's hand fell heavily upon Challoner's shoulder.
It was like the touch of a red-hot iron to Challoner. In a flash
he was on his feet, facing him.
"He's mine," Challoner cried, trying to hold back his passion.
"He's mine you--you devil!"
And then, powerless to hold back his desire for vengeance, his
clenched fist swung like a rock to Durant's heavy jaw, and the
Frenchman went to the ground. For a moment Challoner stood over
him, but he did not move. Fiercely he turned upon Grouse Piet and
the crowd. Miki was cringing at his feet again. Pointing to him,
Challoner cried loudly, so all could hear.
"He's my dog. Where this beast got him I don't know. But he's
mine. Look for yourselves! See--see him lick my hand. Would he do
that for HIM? And look at that ear. There's no other ear in all
the north cut like that. I lost him almost a year ago, but I'd
know him among ten thousand by that ear. By God!--if I had known--
-"
He elbowed his way through the breeds and Indians, leading Miki by
the rope Durant had slipped over the dog's head. He went to
MacDonnell, and told him what had happened. He told of the
preceding spring, and of the accident in which Miki and the bear
cub were lost from his canoe and swept over the waterfall. After
registering his claim against whatever Durant might have to say he
went to the shack in which he was staying at Fort 0' God.
An hour later Challoner sat with Miki's big head between his two
hands, and talked to him. He had bathed and dressed his wounds,
and Miki could see. His eyes were on his master's face, and his
hard tail thumped the floor. Both were oblivious of the sounds of
the revellers outside; the cries of men, the shouting of boys, the
laughter of women, and the incessant barking of dogs. In
Challoner's eyes there was a soft glow.
"Miki, old boy, you haven't forgotten a thing--not a dam' thing,
have you? You were nothing but an onery-legged pup then, but you
didn't forget! Remember what I told you, that I was going to take
you and the cub down to the Girl? Do you remember? The Girl I said
was an angel, and 'd love you to death, and all that? Well, I'm
glad something happened--and you didn't go. It wasn't the same
when I got back, an' SHE wasn't the same, Miki. Lord, she'd got
married, AND HAD TWO KIDS! Think of that, old scout--TWO! How the
deuce could she have taken care of you and the cub, eh? And
nothing else was the same, Boy. Three years in God's Country--up
here where you burst your lungs just for the fun of drinking in
air--changed me a lot, I guess. Inside a week I wanted to come
back, Miki. Yessir, I was SICK to come back. So I came. And we're
going to stick now, Miki. You're going with me up to that new Post
the Company has given me. From now on we're pals. Understand, old
scout, we're PALS!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was late the night of the big feast at Post Fort O' God that
MacDonnell, the factor, sent for Challoner. Challoner was
preparing for bed when an Indian boy pounded on the door of his
shack and a moment later gave him the message. He looked at his
watch. It was eleven o'clock. What could the Factor want of him at
that hour, he wondered? Flat on his belly near the warm box stove
Miki watched his new-found master speculatively as he pulled on
his boots. His eyes were wide open now. Challoner had washed from
him the blood of the terrific fight of that afternoon.
"Something to do with that devil of a Durant," growled Challoner,
looking at the battle-scarred dog. "Well, if he hopes to get YOU
again, Miki, he's barking up the wrong tree. You're MINE!"
Miki thumped his hard tail on the floor and wriggled toward his
master in mute adoration. Together they went out into the night.
It was a night of white moonlight and a multitude of stars. The
four great fires over which the caribou had roasted for the savage
barbecue that day were still burning brightly. In the edge of the
forest that ringed in the Post were the smouldering embers of a
score of smaller fires. Back of these fires were faintly outlined
the gray shadows of teepees and tents. In these shelters the three
hundred halfbreeds and Indians who had come in from the forest
trails to the New Year carnival at the Post were sleeping. Only
here and there was there a movement of life. Even the dogs were
quiet after the earlier hours of excitement and gluttony.
Past the big fires, with their huge spits still standing,
Challoner passed toward the Factor's quarters. Miki sniffed at the
freshly picked bones. Beyond these bones there was no sign of the
two thousand pounds of flesh that had roasted that day on the
spits. Men, women, children, and dogs had stuffed themselves until
there was nothing left. It was the silence of Mutai--the "belly
god"--the god who eats himself to sleep each night--that hovered
strangely over this Post of Fort O' God, three hundred miles from
civilization.
There was a light in the Factor's room, and Challoner entered with
Miki at his heels. MacDonnell, the Scotchman, was puffing moodily
on his pipe. There was a worried look in his ruddy face as the
younger man seated himself, and his eyes were on Miki.
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