IT was late May, and spring had at last come to the arctic lands of the Yukon. It was even more welcome because it had been so long in coming. But it did not come as gradually as it did in the southland, for here there were eighteen hours of sunlight to warm the heart of the old earth and again send the life-giving sap coursing on its way.
The mighty river had first felt the touch of spring at its very source. There are three rivers in the world whose courses seem contrary to all reason and to the laws of nature. Such are the Mackenzie, the Lena, and the Yukon.
In order to have the spring breaking-up go on as peacefully as possible a river should break up at the mouth, then the ice will go out in a happy progression. But not so these three outlaws among rivers. For, from the first moment that the Yukon begins to break up at its source, and finally pours its raging current into Lake Bennett, until it goes foaming into the Pacific, there is trouble all the way. All the way the water and the jamming ice pound along. Thundering, grinding, smashing, gnawing, breaking, almost like a mighty glacier all the way (each spring) the Yukon does battle with everything in its way. It is a mighty and majestic sight, but most destructive. But in other ways spring comes gently in Alaska. One of the first migrants to arrive from the South is the white arctic goose driving its wedge-shaped flying machine through the soft spring sky. This first spring arrival is quickly followed by others and soon the primeval woods are vocal with bird songs. The great piliated woodpecker is calling in his strident cackle, while he pounds away upon a rotten limb like a veritable woodchopper. The white-throated sparrow is there and the chickadee. Squirrels chatter in the tree tops or scamper in the underbrush. The ptarmigan is searching out a place for her new nest. The beaver has come out of his winter quarters and is roaming up and down the streams. Along the great tundra, the mighty herds of barren-ground caribou are stirring restlessly, while wonderful wild flowers bloom on every hillside.
It is very strange what magic the long perpetual sunshine of the continuous summer can do. Flowers which are a rarity in the United States bloom in lavish profusion here within sight of the snowcapped peaks. Many of our favorites, such as the forget-me-not and the gentian, are found filling acres of the lowlands with solid colors, colors deeper and richer than any ever seen in the southland. Wild strawberries of delicious flavor may be had for the picking in the deep valleys with the snowcapped peaks, cool in the distance.
Silversheene and his mate, Gray Wolf, were both glad that spring had at last come. They rejoiced with all the other wild kindred. Silversheene himself was lying in the sunlight, sleeping on a hillside near the head waters of the Tanana, thousands of miles away from those who had loved him in the old days. The sun was warm, the sounds about him were joyous, and Silversheene himself was glad after his kind. His mate, Gray Wolf, was nursing six likely wolf-dog puppies inside their burrow, the entrance to which Silversheene was guarding. This was their second litter, for over a year had now passed since Silversheene had killed the leader of the gray pack in that desperate battle to the death, and had himself taken the leadership. Both litters had been born in this good burrow which was a natural den in the rocks on the hillside. They had discovered it together that first spring.
It was a long way back from the Yukon and where men rarely penetrated. True, occasionally an adventurous prospector came hither, drawn by the strange lure of gold, but he did not molest them. Sometimes they had gone back and hung for a time on the outskirts of civilization, but this had been that they might prey on men and their belongings.
It had been a strange life into which Siversheene had been driven. At first, he had often dreamed of the old life, of Dick and Hilda, but to-day as he lay sleeping by the mouth of his den, with his wolf mate and the six pups inside, civilization and all that it had held for him seemed very far away.
Two influences had brought this about. The first had been the gray wolf mate, and the second the five blind helpless pups that Ke had fed and guarded that first year of the primitive life. No wolf ever provided more lavishly for his young than had Silversheene. He had stalked the sitting ptarmigan for them and had brought her home still warm. He had caught squirrels after hours of patient waiting. He had surprised the beaver in his woodcutting and brought home more than one sleek-coated dam-builder for the young wolves' dinner. Water-fowl had also been to their liking. Then, when they were old enough, he had brought them forth and trained them in the ways of the wild. He had taught them each scent and explained by dog signs its meaning, which they learned intuitively. He had told them which scent to stalk and which to avoid. He had played with them and seen them grow until in the autumn they had been nearly as large as theirdam. Then he had taken them all away to the west to the great tundra, and there they had hunted caribou. Then when this sport proved tiresome they had headed back to the head waters of the Tanana just in time to meet the southern migrations of the great Alaskan moose. Silversheene had taught his little pack how to cut out the calves from the rest of the herd and how finally to pull them down. They had even killed a two-year-old cow together with her calf. Finally, when the deep snows came, they hunted snowshoe rabbits as a pack. This was the greatest fun of all. To run the fleet-footed white denizen of the silences and finally catch and kill him, was their keenest sport.
Silversheene, with his knowledge of men and their ways, had led his little pack with great skill. They had foraged in the very camps of prospectors and escaped with their supplies unharmed. They had robbed the traps of the half-breed and Indian trappers with impunity. They had attacked the mongrel packs of Huskies which followed the small bands of Indians and had killed many of them.
Silversheene himself knew firearms, and he taught his pack to shun a man with a gun. He knew traps of all sorts and poison. He knew men and their trails. Several times they had trailed a dog team through the wilderness for several days.
Often they were able to lure away the team of dogs, kill, and eat them. This was a strange practice for Silversheene, the king of sled dogs. But he was, for the time being, Silversheene the wolf. The savage instincts of his nature were in full play. He was living the life which is war continually. Kill or be killed, was the motto of this world in which he now found himself, and he saw to it that he was not the under dog, or under wolf.
Yet often in his sleep he still dreamed of Dick and Hilda and often in his waking moments he longed with all his being for a gentle hand on his head and a soft word from those voices which had been such sweet music to his ears. But all these things were thousands of miles away. Only in his dreams and his memories did Silversheene ever touch noses with the gentler things of his past life. To all intents and purposes for the time being he was a wolf, the scourge of civilization. Yet he had once been a good dog, loving, gentle and faithful, defending his friends even with his very life. A brute of a man and brutal circumstances had driven him back to the first state of his forbears.
The great tragedy of Silversheene's wolf life came to him one warm day in August. It was about noon and he was lying at the entrance of his burrow dozing. The winter life was so strenuous and the summer life so luxuriant in comparison that Silversheene had formed the habit of sleeping much in the summer. He was not really asleep, but on the borderland between sleeping and waking.
His mate, Gray Wolf, and the six wolf dogs were somewhere in the valley below stalking muskrats along the banks of the Tanana. Suddenly Silversheene sprang up with an angry snarl and the hackles on his neck went up.
The thing that had aroused him was most unusual in this forsaken country, a sound that he had not heard in many months. Clear and unmistakable on the summer air, a rifle shot had rung out. Silversheene looked first up the valley and then down, and finally started for the river at his best pace, yet he proceeded with caution. Once he would not have dreaded such a sound, but now he was a wolf, an outlaw to civilization.
He had proceeded a score of rods when he met the wolf dog puppies scurrying for the burrow and they were closely followed by Gray Wolf. She was blowing blood from her nose at each breath and staggering and almost falling every few rods as she ran.
Silversheene placed himself at her side and they proceeded to the burrow, going side by side just as they had on that first winter day when he had trotted away with her to become her mate.
At the mouth of the burrow she staggered again and fell, and there she lay blowing her life away through her widely distended nostrils in a steady stream of bright blood. The wolf dog pups crowded about her in great excitement, but Silversheene drove them hurriedly into the burrow and himself stood over his dying mate. Frantically he licked the blood from her nostrils, but it was no use, it still flowed steadily. He covered her face with kisses and laid his cheek against hers. First he licked one side of the face, and then the other.
She wagged her tail feebly, then sighed deeply and without a struggle stretched out dead on the hillside close to the mouth of the wolf den.
Silversheene licked frantically at her face and showered her with kisses, of a dog sort, but he could not bring her back. Seeing that it was useless, he finally lay down by her side with his head between his paws in inconsolable grief. Occasionally he would arise and walk slowly around her, but would soon lie down again by her side.
Once, when one of the wolf dog pups showed his head at the mouth of the burrow, Silversheene drove him back with great ferocity. Then he lay all the afternoon and far into what would have been the night, but the sun still shone. Finally, after many hours had passed he sat up and looked miserably about him. After a while he lifted up his voice to heaven and howled dismally. One by one the pups came forth and joined their voices to his, although they did not know what it was all about.
Finally, when he had fully vented his grief in the only language of the dog heart, he drove the pups back into the den and told them in a language which they understood to stay where they were until he returned. Then, with head up and nostrils wide for every scent, he set out to find and destroy the slayer of his mate. He soon reached the bank of the river and almost immediately scented the trail of a man.
It was not the trail of an Indian, or of an Eskimo, but of a white man. After testing the trail first upstream and then down Silversheene decided that it led upstream and followed it eagerly. But as he followed this trail of the white man and occasionally got the scent more plainly, a strange sense stirred within him. It was faint at first but it grew stronger and stronger. For the trail of the white man brought back all the details of the white civilization.
Things he thought he had forgotten came surging through his mind. First his puppyhood days in the Adirondacks came back to him. He remembered Hilda Converse with a strange pang. Then he recalled as though it were yesterday his meeting with Richard Henderson and their long ride over the continent in the Henderson car; the pleasant days and weeks with Dick; the lost sheep and his joy at seeing Dick again; his betrayal by Pedro Garcia; the man with the club; Gene Gordet; and, finally, François Dupret.
At the thought of this sinister figure he growled softly and quickened his pace on the man trail. Perhaps it was François who had shot his wolf mate. But no. He was dead and his bones had been picked by the pack. The thought of François swung the pendulum back to the primitive life and sent him back to the wild. Man had betrayed him. He was a wolf.
And as he ran, the wolves who had been his ancestors, the shades of the wolves he had been, seemed to join in the man chase and spur him on. They raced madly by his side, he heard their hunting cry, the sound of menace to man.
Also the primitive man seemed to be with him in his chase of the civilized man. He was the man with short legs and long arms and with hair upon his body, the man who made strange sounds for language and who himself was little more than an animal. He also spurred him on in the chase of the white civilized man.
So the mind of poor Silversheene shifted and changed as he pursued the trail of the slayer of his mate. He would not give up. He would find the man sleeping by his campfire. He would creep up and spring upon him and kill him.
Then a terrible thought filtered through his mind. Supposing it might be Gene Gordet, his god, who had killed Gray Wolf. Good men killed wolves. They were outlaws. The thought was not very clear in his mind, yet it arrested him. The slayer of Gray Wolf might be a friend. One whom he had known in the old days. There was something about the trail that reminded him of those old days. He could not shake it off. The trail was that of one he knew. He felt sure of it.
So Silversheene raced along the trail, sometimes losing it for hours, yet always finding it again. The six wolf pups were forgotten. In fact, he never saw them again. They were old enough to take care of themselves. But this trail was calling for him to follow.
There was something at the end of the trail that he must fight. But if it was a friend could he fight? He was a dog.
He had been reared by a girl away in the Adirondack mountains. Men had befriended him. He had loved men and women with all the love of his dog heart. Could he kill a man, even though he had killed his wolf mate?
Of course, Silversheene's thoughts were not so definite as this. He was simply torn by two conflicting emotions. The civilization was calling to him with all the voices of the past, and the wilderness was also calling, just as it had for the past year and a half. Which call should he obey? It was the old struggle of the primitive and the civilized. The fight of the barbarian against the civilized man. But now the object of the struggle was just a lonely, perplexed dog who swung like a pendulum between the two conditions, while he followed the trail of the man who had slain his wolf mate. Yet at heart he was a good dog and man was his god.