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Page 57
"Ah, Snip!" said Jean, quite pleasantly. But even as he spoke so
pleasantly, the whip he had picked up sang, and its thong, doubled,
landed fair and square in Snip's face, causing that worthy to whirl back
to his place with a yowl of consternation.
Jan was just beginning to think that he had put up with enough of this
sort of thing, and that he would leave these men and their dogs
altogether, when he heard a peremptory order given by Jean and felt
himself jerked forward by means of the harness he wore. In the same
moment Blackfoot's teeth nipped one of his hocks from behind, not
savagely, but yet sharply, and he bounded forward till checked by the
proximity of Snip's stern. He had no wish to touch Snip. But Snip also
was bounding forward it seemed. So Jan thrust out his fore feet and
checked. Instantly two things happened. A whip-lash curled painfully
round his left shoulder, crossing one of his newly healed wounds. And
again came a nip at one of his hocks, a sharper nip this time, and one
that drew two spots of blood.
"Mush, Jan! Mush on there!" said Jean, firmly, but not harshly; and
again the whip curled about Jan's shoulders as, puzzled, humiliated,
hurt, and above all bewildered, he plunged forward again in the traces,
and heard Jean mutter behind him:
"Good dog, thees Jan. By gar! hee's good dog."
And that was how the new life, the working life, began for Jan, the son
of Finn and Desdemona.
XXVI
THE RULE OF TRACE AND THONG
From this point there began for Jan a life so strangely, wildly
different from anything he had ever known or suspected to exist, that
only a dog of exceptionable fiber and stamina--in character as well as
physique--could possibly have survived transition to it from the smooth
routines which Jan had so far known.
To begin with, it was a life in which all days alike were full of toil,
of ordered, unremitting work. And until it began Jan had never done an
hour's work in his life. (In England, outside the sheep-dog fraternity
and a few of the sporting breeds, all dogs spend their lives in
unordered play, uncontrolled loafing, and largely superfluous sleeping.)
The Lady Desdemona, his mother, for example, would certainly not have
lived through a month of Jan's present life; very possibly not a week.
Finn would have endured it much longer, because of his experiences in
Australia, his knowledge of the wild kindred and their ways. But even
Finn, despite his huge strength and exceptional knowledge, would not
have come through this ordeal so well as Jan did, unless it had come to
him as early in life as it came to Jan. And even then his survival would
have been doubtful. The difference between the climates of Australia and
the North-west Territory is hardly greater than the difference in stress
and hardness between Finn's life in the Tinnaburra ranges, as leader of
a dingo pack, and Jan's life in North-west Canada as learner in a
sled-team.
The physical strength of Finn the wolfhound, in whose veins ran the
unmixed blood of many generations of wolfhound champions, might have
been equal to the strain of Jan's new life. But his pride, his
courtliness, his fine gentlemanliness, would likely have been the death
of him in such a case. He would have died nobly, be sure of that. But it
is likely he would have died. Now in the case of Jan, while he had
inherited much of his sire's fine courtesy, much of his dam's noble
dignity, yet these things were not so vitally of the essence of him as
they were of his parents. They were a part of his character, and they
had formed his manners. But they were not Jan.
The essential Jan was an immensely powerful hound of mixed blood reared
carefully, trained intelligently and well, and endowed from birth with a
tremendously keen appetite for life--a keener appetite for life than
falls to the lot of any champion-bred wolfhound or bloodhound. Jan was a
gentleman rather than a fine gentleman; before either he was a hound, a
dog; and before all else he was a master and lover of his life. And
since, by the arrangements of Sergeant Moore, "Tom Smith," Jean, and
Jake, he had to take his place between Snip and Blackfoot in a
sled-team, it was well, exceedingly well, for Jan that these things were
thus and not otherwise.
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