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Page 55
The first light snow of the season began to flutter down from out a
surprisingly clear sky, as Jan settled down in the buckboard, his chain
passed down through a hole and secured to the step outside, an
arrangement which struck Jan as highly unnecessary, since it kept his
head so low that he could not stand up in the wagon. However, Overalls
and the man in the fur cap (who had signed his name as Tom Smith) seemed
to think it all right, and so friendly Jan, his mind full of thoughts of
Dick Vaughan, accommodated himself docilely to the position, and was
soon quite a number of miles away from Lambert's Siding.
When the Buck's Crossing wagon arrived there an hour or so later, its
driver seemed surprised that there was no dog for him to carry with
Sergeant Vaughan's kit. But he was not a man given to speculation. He
just grunted, expectorated, and said, shortly:
"Well, I guess that's right, then. Muster made some other arrangement;
an' it's just as well, for I'm late an' I've got to have my near front
wheel off an' doctor it a bit, so I won't make the Crossin' till midday
to-morrow, I reckon. I'll be campin' at Lloyd's to-night."
Overalls just nodded as he took the wagoner's signature for Sergeant
Vaughan's kit; and without another thought both men dismissed from their
rather vacant minds (as was perfectly natural, no doubt) all further
thought of a matter which did not concern them, despite its
life-and-death importance to the son of Finn and Desdemona.
After perhaps an hour and a half, the buckboard was pulled up in a
fenced yard beside a small homestead. Here Jan parted with the man in
the fur cap and never set eyes upon him again. His chain was now taken
by a different sort of man; a very lean, spare, hard-bitten little man,
with bright dark eyes and a leather-colored face. He thanked the
fur-capped man for having kindly brought Jan along. Fur-cap deprecated
thanks, but accepted a dollar. And then the leather-faced man led Jan
away. They walked for perhaps a couple of miles, and then they were
joined by another man, who called the first man Jean, so that Jan looked
up quickly, thinking he had been addressed.
"Hees name Jan," explained the first man, casually, pointing to Jan's
collar.
"H'm! That so? Better get rid o' that collar, Jean, eh?"
From a bag in the buggy in which they had found the second man,
wire-cutters were produced, and Jan's collar cut in sunder and removed,
after a leather collar had been buckled on in its place and the chain
attached to that. Jan had a vague feeling of uneasiness about this
operation; but only a vague feeling. Like all other animal-folk, he had
long ago arrived at the conclusion that men-folk frequently did quite
unaccountable things; that a dog would have no rest in life if he set
himself to puzzle out a reason for everything he saw the sovereign
people do. Captain Arnutt had locked that collar about his neck, and a
very silly, stiff, and awkward contraption he had thought it. Now
another man, equally without apparent rhyme or reason, took it off and
substituted a leathern collar with a queer, fishy, gamy sort of smell.
Well, it would make little odds to Jan; if only these people would hurry
up about taking him to his own man.
Thinking of that, Jan quite gladly made the best of the very cramped
quarters given him in the buggy, though he grew desperately tired of
those same quarters before night fell and he was transferred to the more
roomy dog-box of a Canadian Northern train. Without doubt the train
would take him direct to Dick. (Until the previous day, his sole
experience of trains in Canada had been closely connected with Dick.) So
confident was Jan of this, that he bent himself quite cheerfully to the
task of tearing and eating the lump of meat given him by Jean before the
train started. Evidently this Jean was a friendly, well-disposed sort of
a person, and in any case any man at all engaged in taking Jan to Dick
Vaughan deserved ready obedience and respect.
In some such way Jan reflected what time the C.N.R. train by which he
traveled rumbled swiftly along its course for Edmonton; and Dick
Vaughan, away back in Buck's Crossing, wondered what might be delaying
the wagoner from Lambert's Siding; the wagoner he was not to see before
the middle of the next day, and then only to learn that the man knew
nothing of Jan's whereabouts.
When Jan left that train in the big crowded depot at Edmonton next day,
winter had descended upon the greater part of North America. The change
was the more marked for Jan by reason that snow had come to Edmonton a
full day earlier than it came to Lambert's Siding. Jan had seen snow
before on the Sussex Downs; but that had been a kind of snow quite
different from this. That snow had been soft and clammy. This was crisp
and dry as salt. Also the air was colder than any air Jan had ever
known, though mild enough for northern winter air, seeing that the
thermometer registered only some five and twenty degrees of frost. And
the sun shone brightly. There was no wind. It was an air rich in
kindling, stimulating properties; an air that made life, movement, and
activity desirable for all, and optimistic determination easy and
natural for most folk.
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