AGAIN with the coming of summer Gene Gordet left his dog team with his friend the hotel-keeper and once more went into the primitive wilderness in search of gold. This bright metal seems to be to the heart of man what the magnet is to steel filings, for it draws them with almost irresistible power. For gold men have braved such hardships as are rarely chronicled. So it was in Alaska. In this mad scramble a man's life did not weigh much in the balance with the chance to "strike it rich" as they say. In the early days the gold fields were nearer to civilization, but in the time of which I write men had to take great chances and go further away from their bases.
But Gene Gordet was lucky, and he struck it rich on that second summer, for he located a rich claim not far from other rich claims on the Tanana river. Every one said that he ought to stay and work it and get the full benefit of his discovery, but Gene thought differently. There were two people calling him back to the Province of Quebec. These were a widowed mother and a sweetheart. A combination very hard to resist. So Gene succumbed to a tempting offer for his claim and sold out. This necessitated his selling all of his outfit, including his dog team.
It is one of the great tragedies in the lives of the domestic animals that they are liable to change after change because of the fact that they are property.
If a dog or a horse is in his prime and his owner has no further use for him, or circumstances make it impossible to keep him longer, he is usually passed along to another master and too often to the highest bidder. But Gene tried to see that his dog team had a good master, for after some dickering he sold the team to an Englishman named George White who was a skillful driver and promised to take good care of the dogs. Even so Gordet wanted to keep out Silversheene and take him back with him to Canada, but White would not hear of this as he said it would spoil the team.
So Gordet said good-bye to the dogs who had served him so faithfully and sailed from Valdez for Victoria. This might have worked out all right for Silversheene and his team mates had it not been for the sad failing of George White, their new master. He was sometimes addicted to drink and the night following the purchase of the team he was in his cups. In this state he was prevailed to take a hand in a poker game and lost heavily.
Finally as a last chance to retrieve his fortunes he put up his new dog team and lost to François Dupret, a gambler and a notorious Alaska bad man.
François was just the opposite of Gene Gordet. Where Gene was tall and muscular François was short and fat. His nickname by which he was always called when he was absent was "The Pig." He was very dark, probably with an Indian strain in his blood. His face was repulsive to the last degree and Silversheene's hair upon his neck arose the first time François laid his hand upon him. Instinctively the fine dog felt the degradation of the hand of this brutal man.
His eyes were small and near together, and usually red from drink. His lips were thin and cruel and his teeth usually showed in a malicious grin. He was a great gunman and always toted a .44. Like all bullies he was something of a coward, but always ready to bully the weak and the helpless.
He was especially noted as a hard driver of dogs and a team might well mourn the day he became its master.
By this time Silversheene had been moved up in the dog team until he now stood behind Wolf, the lead dog.
This had at once increased the hostility between them, but Gene had been able to control it and it helped to have two such aggressive dogs at the head of the team. François did not at once put the team into service but allowed the dogs to run and become demoralized.
Finally in October when the first snows had come and the police in the city had become insistent that François Dupret move on up the Yukon, he harnessed up his team and started on the long trip to Dawson. He was not so well known to the mounted police of Canada and he thought to carry on his gambling and other nefarious practices for the winter in that famous city.
In addition to a heavy consignment of dog feed François took a load of such commodities as he thought he might sell with profit in Dawson. When loaded, Gene had always run by the gee pole, but François always rode no matter how heavy the load, so trouble for the team at once began. He had added two new Huskies to the team and this increased the lack of harmony.
That first day under the lash of the new master was a revelation to Gordet's old dog team. François was not a good frontiersman, so everything that he did with the team went badly. He did not get his load lashed well in place and it was also topheavy, and worst of all with his own bulky form there was about a third too much weight. But for all his own shortcomings the team had to pay.
It was the only animate thing in sight so he could best vent his ill temper upon it. He did not get started until nine o'clock, so he drove mercilessly until noon to make up. A good driver of either dogs or horses occasionally gives his animals a chance to breathe and rest, but not so. The Pig. He drove the team as he would have driven an automobile. He did not get tired himself sitting upon the sled cracking his long whip and swearing at the team in Canuck, so he saw no reason why the team should.
By noon all of the team with the exception of Wolf and Silversheene were thoroughly tired. But these two dogs were seemingly made of iron. By this desperate driving François had covered twenty miles.
At noon he stopped for half an hour to make hot coffee and eat his lunch. For the first time in the history of the Gordet team they got to fighting in the harness; this was when Wolf attempted to punish Silversheene for getting over his traces.
As leader of the team Wolf was supreme, but Silversheene thought he had been all right so fought back furiously, and a lively battle ensued. François rushed upon the two dogs and with the butt of his whip soon restored order, but this was the first of many battles.
When they finally made camp that first night François had covered forty miles which is a good day's run, but he had tired the team more than Gene would have done in a week.
It was strange, too, how soon the team felt the loss of the master will of Gene. The will that had dominated them and made them go straight. The will that had made them as one dog. With the coming of the new master the team seemed to disintegrate, to go to pieces; and instead of a team it was eight individual dogs. Each pulling in his own way and doing as he wished so far as he could.
Wolf at once divined this fact and sought with all his might to keep the team intact.
It was strange how much he felt his responsibility. He seemed to know that this brute of a master could not control the team and make it work, and it was up to him.
Every ambitious dog aspires for the lead position.
Silversheene was dominant in every fiber of his being. He had come of a strain of sled dogs that had battled with snow and ice and cold, and he had inherited their dominant traits.
Silversheene had long chafed under the leadership of Wolf, yet Gene had restrained him. But now he felt that this restraint was gone, and he openly defied Wolf and hindered and balked him in the government of the team.
So it was a disorderly and rebellious dog team that sought their beds in the snow on that first night of the rule of. The Pig.
The following morning at harnessing up time Ginger was missing. Wolf finally routed him out of the snow where he had been trying to escape harnessing. This was an unheard—of thing in a sled dog. Usually the life in the traces is the greatest joy that the dog knows. He will run until he drops dead in his harness. Sled dogs have often died of a broken heart simply because they were unable to keep their places in the traces.
But not so Ginger, for he openly shirked and tried to evade his work.
Old Wolf fell upon him like a fury and punishing severely drove him whimpering to his place in the team.
Silversheene tried to defend Ginger, although he hated and despised him at heart, and he and Wolf got into another fight. At this François rushed upon them with the butt of his whip.
"By Gar! What you tam dogs t'ink! You t'ink I keep a dog-fight team. By Gar, I keep you to work. You tam fighters."
All the time he had been laying about with the butt of his whip and soon order was restored. But from that time forward open and relentless war existed between Wolf and Silversheene.
That day François once more covered forty miles, but he was merely taking it out of his fine team. With his whip and his curses he made the miles and not by the good will of the dogs.
In the old days under Gene the work had been their greatest joy. Each dog was as eager for the day's run when harnessed as Gene was to have his work well done. But now it was different.
This man did not love them. He was not just. He was not merciful but drove with his long whip and his curses.
So life went on day after day. Each morning there was the harnessing up of a team that hated the trail and wanted to shirk and get away from this heart-breaking drudgery. Each day they were driven cruelly and brutally until they often lay down in the harness and refused to move. Each night they fought like wolves over the dried fish in spite of all old Wolf could do, and after feeding time they went sullenly to their beds in the snow, or wearily to linger about the campfire. With each day the dissensions among the dogs grew and the rancor between Wolf and Silversheene increased until finally François had to put Silversheene back as the wheel dog. This almost broke Silversheene's heart and he laid it up against Wolf as another thing that he would some day punish him for.
By the end of the first week François had covered about three hundred miles. Three of the dogs had gone lame and limped painfully along in their harnesses without doing much towards pulling the load. This made the work for the rest all the harder.
Finally on the eighth day poor Billy, who was all willingness, and about the only dog who had not shirked, fell in the traces and could not rise. So after whipping him until he saw he could not get up François left him there upon the trail and proceeded without him.
For a mile they could hear his pitiful howls at being left alone. That night Billy came limping into camp after them. He had regained his wind and courage and the following morning was again back in his place.
But in the middle of the forenoon he again gave out and was once more abandoned.
This time François had the grace to shoot him and the team went forward without good-natured Billy. Billy who had stayed in the traces until his strength was spent and his ability to draw his load was gone.
With increasing discomfort for both team and driver another week dragged by. Ginger and Whirlwind had both gone lame and were little more than figureheads in the team. It is a fact that usually southland dogs cannot stand such terrific strain as can the northland Huskies. But François did not look after their feet or seek to recuperate them. He simply whipped and cursed them in all the strange cuss words of his picturesque patois.
Just two weeks from the morning on which they started, while François was trying desperately to get this snarling, fighting, discordant team in harness, Ginger suddenly went mad. He gave no evidence of what was about to happen.
But without the slightest warning he rushed headlong at Wolf. He snapped blindly this way and that and his jaws dripped froth. Wolf at once recognized the dangerous malady and fled for his life. So Ginger turned upon Silversheene and narrowly missed biting him.
But Silversheene with great presence of mind sprang aside, and as the dog rushed by caught him by the throat. Something, which was wiser than he, told him that his only safety was in holding on, so he held on grimly, although Ginger struggled frantically until François shot the afflicted dog. The team was very lucky to escape so easily. But this feat of Silversheene's so pleased François that he promoted him to the lead and put Wolf back as wheel dog.
The following morning witnessed open rebellion and defiance in François' dog team, such as spelled its immediate dissolution. Wolf refused to go to the position as wheel dog and allow Silversheene to take his position as lead.
While Silversheene refused to go back to wheel dog and let Wolf have the lead position François cursed them in all the curses available in his picturesque Canuck. He struck at them with his whip but they kept just out of reach. He threw clubs at them, and finally, in a fit of great anger, began shooting at them. This caused both dogs to run for their lives. Then François sat down on his sled and cried profusely and comforted himself with a long pull at his whiskey bottle.
This sad experience at once convinced François that he could no longer drive the team with Silversheene and Wolf in it. So he then and there laid a plan by which he could rid himself of one of the dogs and at the same time get double his price.
Finally both Wolf and Silversheene came sneaking back and after considerable coaxing they were harnessed with Wolf in the lead and Silversheene next to him. But even so they snarled and snapped at each other whenever there was opportunity.
"By Gar, you tam dogs. Pretty soon I give you all the fight you want. You growl, you fool, you bite if you want. Pretty soon, François, he feex you. You get fight enough to satisfy pretty quick."
That day François drove as far as his whip and cursing could get him and at night managed to make the small trading post of Copperclaim.
Here he proceeded to make himself comfortable at a cabin of another Canuck gambler like himself. After supper they discussed the François plan for giving his "tam dogs" fight enough to suit them. Finally the word was passed around among a dozen choice spirits and the party assembled.
They took both Wolf and Silversheene to a deserted cabin half a mile back from town. They did not want any interference with the show that they had in mind to stage.
Each man in the party put a twenty-dollar gold piece in François' hand before taking his seat for the performance. Such degrading things as this often take place right under the noses of the police of our civilized country, so is it any wonder that such things should go on in this far-away land where brutality rules?
François' plan was this: Each of the dozen coarse men had paid to see what François promised would be the tamdest dog fight that they had ever witnessed. With this in view he had brought Wolf and Silversheene to the deserted cabin to fight it out to the death, just as he knew they would if they were set upon each other by the cruel means which man's degeneracy has devised for such occasions.
Of the cold and desolate cabin feebly lit by the light of lanterns and the dozen coarse men who gathered about and of the desperate fight to the finish waged by the two fine dogs my pen refuses to write.
Such scenes are not for civilization. Suffice it to say that half an hour later they dragged Wolf forth and buried him in the snow behind the cabin, while Silversheene limped painfully back to the village behind his sorry god. Henceforth he would have Wolf's place as lead dog, but it was a question which of them was the better off. Wolf had earned his rest under the white snow where the lash of his master's whip and his curses could not disturb him.
François did not at first realize that he had diminished his small team by one dog, and that a very good one. His only thought was that he had settled the fight. It was just another illustration of the old proverb, that those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
When on the following morning François harnessed his team, he discovered that they, could not even start the sled with himself upon it. So he was obliged to sell half his load and proceed at a diminished pace.
Two miles above the post for a half mile the trail ran along the edge of a high cliff over-looking the Yukon. The snow was deep upon the river here, but along the top of the bluff the ground was nearly bare. Some of the way the cliffs fell sheer to the river by a hundred-foot drop. As they rounded a bend in the trail Silversheene, straining at his harness until he could scarcely breathe, noted the high cliffs overhanging the river, and a mad idea flashed through his brain. As they neared the cliff the idea grew clearer and brighter. Perhaps he communicated it to his team mates. Or maybe they only caught it from him intuitively. Such ideas do travel through a herd of animals or a flock of birds with lightning-like rapidity.
A flock of sea gulls wheeling and flying over the cliffs will maneuver with such precision that the light upon their outer wings as they wheel will show the same color and flash at the same second on each bird, just as though it had been one great bird with twenty pairs of wings, instead of twenty birds each with a volition of its own.
So perhaps it was thus that Silversheene's desperate idea was communicated to his team mates. Eagerly they strained up the steep until they were immediately opposite the point where the cliff hung highest and steepest over the Yukon. Then with one impulse and with a chorus of glad yelps they suddenly wheeled and dashed precipitately towards the yawning cliff. Silversheene himself was in midair over the abyss before François even dreamed of what was up. The other three dogs sprang joyously after him. For a moment the long sled toppled on the edge of the cliff. François had a fleeting vision of his danger, of the horror of the plunge to doom, of his wicked life and his immediate punishment by the team that he had driven to death. Then the sled followed the dog team in its plunge to doom.
A cloud of snow caught by the scudding wind floated out over the Yukon and then silence again settled upon the white ghastly scene. The winds kept on moaning in the scrub pines and the snows sifting and drifting and the forest freezing just as it had before the catastrophe.
If there had been any one to look over the edge of the cliff he would have discovered the gee pole still sticking up above the snow and the back end of the runners still protruding, but the rest of the sled
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and the dog team and the man were all buried in a twenty-foot drift.
An hour later the snow in a spot twenty feet away began wriggling about strangely. Then the head and the shoulders of a silver gray dog appeared, and finally the full form of Silversheene. He of all his team mates had struggled to freedom. He had gnawed his traces and tunnelled his way to the surface. But his team mates were too nearly dead with fatigue to make any such effort. They would lie there and freeze. They were too tired to move.
When he finally emerged from the snow Silversheene shook himself and looked about. Back down the river was the town. Away up the river there were probably more towns. But in the town were men, and he had seen enough of men. Across the Yukon to the north the wilderness was calling to him. The wilderness from which his ancestors had sprung. This wilderness could not be as brutal as were such men as François.
So Silversheene finally turned his nose northward and went back to the wild, to the primitive life from which the campfire of the primitive man had allured his ancestors ages before. But now the procedure was reversed. Then the campfire had drawn the gray wolf. He had wanted to know and worship the man creature. But now the man who was even more of a beast than any member of his dog team had driven him back to the wild, back from the warmth and the glow of the campfire into the dark and the cold of primitive life. Henceforth he would shun the campfires of men and their scent upon the trail. He was fleeing civilization and all it held for him.
Nature might be cruel, but she was not so cruel as men. She might be pitiless but she was just, and he could live by his sharp fangs and his wits just as his ancestors had lived before him. So Silversheene fled the haunts of men and went back to the wild with a savage joy in his dog heart which really craved the love of man and a god to worship.
His last god had been so devilish a specimen that this experience had cured him for the present of man-love. The white wolves would welcome him to their ranks, and he would again hunt and prey upon the rest of the forest dwellers. So the dog went back to the wolf and nature was glad that it was so.