BUT Silversheene was not dead, although for five minutes he lay as still as though in the grip of the last destroyer. Ordinarily Richard Henderson would not have given way to such grief, but the whole dramatic incident had so completely unnerved him that he gave full vent to his pent-up emotions. To have Silversheene, who had disappeared two years before as suddenly as though the earth had opened and swallowed him, turn up here in the wilderness several thousand miles away from his home, and in this marvellous manner, was enough to upset any one; but the nerveracking thing was that his faithful dog had been following him for a week trying vainly to make himself known, and his master had been shooting at him every time that he showed his head and repelling all of his advances, and finally had deliberately shot him, after he had saved his master's life and by a superhuman effort dragged him from the raging river.
No wonder that Silversheene had lost heart and deliberately come into the open to be shot. If it was his master's will to kill him, he would die. He had faced the wolves for him in the old days and why not face his revolver now?
It was all as plain as the nose on your face. It all fitted together like a wonderful puzzle, now Dick had the key. Pedro had sold Silversheene for the Alaskan dog team trade and he had gone back to the wild. He had been living with the wolves when he happened upon his old master's trail and the rest of the tragic story was too pathetic for words.
All this time Dick had been lying upon the ground beside his faithful dog, passing his ears between his fingers and straightening out the long silver gray ruff about the neck, patting the beautiful head which had been so expressive. The coat was not as sleek as it had been when he last saw Silversheene, for now it was full of burdocks and briers and matted and twisted. It had always needed a lot of brushing in the summer time. As Dick glanced back along the prostrate body he noted to his unspeakable astonishment that the bushy tail was slowly lifted and gently let fall upon the ground. He watched in breathless silence and the signal was repeated. Not only twice but several times. Then a shudder ran through the motionless dog and he gave a deep sigh.
"My God, Silversheene, Silversheene, are you still alive?"
For answer the noble dog opened his eyes and lifted his head slightly and looked at his master with those handsome brown eyes which the young man knew so well.
"Oh, chum! Oh, Silversheene! You are alive. Thank God for that!"
Then very tenderly Richard examined the dog's wound and cursed himself for having not done it before.
He had been so paralyzed with the tragedy that his usual good sense and coolness had forsaken him. He now found to his great joy that the revolver bullet had barely skimmed the top of the dog's head. It had cut the skin to the skull bone, and had struck that knockout spot enough of a blow entirely to stun the dog, but it had not fractured the skull, nor injured the dog in any way beyond stunning him temporarily, although his eyesight was poor for several days.
Richard brought water in his cap and washed and dressed the wound carefully and then produced some surgeons' plaster from his kit and drew the wound together.
Silversheene was still dazed and bewildered by the accident, and it was several days before he was the old self-reliant Silversheene. Even then he seemed haunted by a great fear that he would again lose Dick. For he followed him about like a shadow and could not seem to get close enough to him. All that afternoon they spent in just loving each other and that night Silversheene slept on half of his master's blanket. Several times in the night he awoke Dick by his low growling. But Richard could see nothing to growl about, yet Silversheene did, for once again the phantom dogs of the past, his ancestors, the gray wolves were sitting in a gray circle about the outer rim of the man's campfire calling for him to come back to them. He was a wolf, not a dog. His place was with them. But with each such suggestion, the dog would snuggle closer to his master and thrust his muzzle into the man's hand. Several times that first night Dick heard him whimpering in his sleep and reached over and stroked his head.
"Poor old Silversheene," he would say, "you have had a hard time of it, but now I have you back, nothing in the world will again part us. There isn't gold enough in Alaska to buy you, old pal."
The following day after much searching they recovered the lost rifle from the river and the man and dog headed back for civilization. Richard took his time though, and prospected and hunted as they travelled, but their objective was Fairbluffs on the Tanana, two hundred miles from the great Yukon, the father of waters in Alaska.
They spent a week in Fairbluffs resting and recruiting their spirits and then went by a small steamer to Copperclaim, a small trading post at the mouth of the Tanana. Here Dick heard something of Silversheene's two years in Alaska, and especially the story of the great dog fight between Silversheene and Wolf.
"The brute! I'd like to thrash the life out of him," Dick cried, when they told him of François Dupret's cruelty and brutality.
"It isn't necessary," said his informant, and then he told Richard of how they had found François' skeleton and those of his dog team under the cliff on the ice of the great river in the spring.
"I see," said Dick. "That was why old Silversheene went back to the wild. I could not understand it. He loves all humans who are kind to him. He is a great chum. I could not understand it."
"He is also a great sled dog. There is no finer in Alaska," said the old sourdough. "Why, Scotty Ellis even tried to buy him from Gene Gordet, but he would not sell."
At the name of Scotty Ellis, Dick's adventurous spirits again rose high.
"I met Scotty Ellis last winter," he said. "I saw him win the great Alaskan sweepstake. He is a wonderful man and a prince among dog mushers. I have always wanted to be in that race myself. I was the college champion Marathon runner in the United States."
"College Marathons and that four-hundred-and-twelve-mile struggle are two different things. As different as a gentle zephyr from a hurricane," said the Alaskan.
"Yes, I know," said Dick, "but still I would like to try."
But Dick had not disclosed his whole plan which he had dreamed of all the way back to civilization. It was to build up a great dog team with old Silversheene as lead dog and train them for the Alaskan sweepstake.
Thus it happened that Silversheene and his master spent the months of September and October scouring Alaska for the most likely dogs that money could buy for that Henderson dog team. Probably the most celebrated strain of sled dogs ever bred are those raised by Scotty Ellis, the king of dog mushers, and the very best of all these were the descendants of Baldy of Nome, the most celebrated of all sled dogs. Not only were Baldy's descendants great racing dogs, but they also made good in war to a surprising degree. When the World War broke out Scotty Ellis went to France with all the good sled dogs he could muster, for use in carrying ammunition in the rough country along the battle-line. Twentyeight of Baldy's pups returned to the United States, having distinguished themselves in war. Few men can boast of such a record for their descendants.
So Richard Henderson was at once thrown in contact with the Scotty Ellis strain and finally purchased four of these dogs and three others equally good.
All were of the typical Husky type—tall, lean, deep-chested and tough as steel. They were the wolves of the wilderness, bred and trained by men to do their bidding, combining the best qualities of both dogs and wolves.
Dick made it a part of his policy in buying, not to purchase any dog of which Silversheene did not approve. So if, after proper introductions, Silversheene would have nothing to do with the prospective purchase, Dick did not buy. Silversheene was to be the dominant spirit in the team, so he wanted dogs who would work well with him.
By the last of October the team was assembled and it cost Richard a good sum of gold, but he was well satisfied. With his usual ardor, he at once set to work to discipline the team.
Richard was not long in discovering that he needed more trail hardening for the race than did the team. For, as the sourdough had said, to run for four miles in a college Marathon was quite a different thing from running four hundred odd miles upon the worst trail in Alaska. It was one thing to cover the level country with speed and quite another to run forty or fifty miles a day with one's hand resting on the gee pole of the sled. Here on the trail, there were many difficulties to be overcome in every league which did not appear upon the course. A misstep, a sprained ankle, and the race was lost. Not only that but a superhuman endurance had to be engendered. The word fatigue must be eliminated from one's vocabulary and the word tireless written in its place in large letters. In this connection Dick remembered hearing Scotty Ellis say that he never let his dogs know in the race that he was tired. So, at the end of a day's run, when he was nearly heartbroken with fatigue, he would sing and whistle and pretend it was just a jolly lark.
So day after day Richard worked as he never had worked before. For two months they put in the hardest sort of runs. Sometimes it was on the comparatively smooth ice of the Yukon, but more often cross country through gulches and over mountains that tried their endurance to the utmost.
Finally in November Dick accepted an offer to take Klondyke Jones, as he was called, on a record-breaking trip into a new and hard country. A strike had been made and Jones wished to be on the spot in the shortest possible time. The run that Henderson's Huskies and the two men made was the talk of mushers around campfires all that winter.
"Well, Henderson," said the old sourdough, "if you don't make Scotty Ellis hustle for that ten thousand next spring, then my name isn't Jones and I don't know a winning dog team when I see it."