Nomads of the North: A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars

by James Oliver Curwood

A WHITE MAN'S DOG!

Her soul thrilled. Once—a long time ago—he had known a master with a white heart, just as she had known a girlhood in which the flowers bloomed and the birds sang. She tried to look back, but she could not see very far. She could not vision that day, less than a year ago, when Miki, an angular pup, came down out of the Farther North with Challoner; she could not vision the strange comradeship between the pup and Neewa, the little black bear cub, nor that tragic day when they had fallen out of Challoner's canoe into the swift stream that had carried them over the waterfall and into the Great Adventure which had turned Neewa into a grown bear and Miki into a wild dog. But in her heart she FELT the things which she could not see. Miki had not come by chance. Something greater than that had sent him.

She rose quietly, so that she would not waken the baby in the crib, and opened the door. The moon was just rising over the forest and through the glow of it she went to the cage. She heard the dog's joyous whine, and then she felt the warm caress of his tongue upon her bare hands as she thrust them between the sapling bars.

"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.