|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 59
XXVII
MUTINY IN THE TEAM
Jean made sure he would sell Jan at Fort Frontenac. And that he did not
was due to accidental causes over which he had no control.
Jean asked three hundred dollars. The would-be buyer--a man pretty
nearly as able as Jean himself in northland craft--had only two hundred
in cash; but possessed, besides, an invincible objection to owing or
borrowing. (Resembling Jean in his knowledge of the wild, he was
curiously different in most other ways, having a good deal of sentiment
and a keen, almost conventional sense of honor.)
"He's worth three hundred, all right," said the man--who hailed from New
England--when he had seen Jan at work.
"You bet," said Jean, laconically.
"But I just haven't got the money, or he'd be my dog."
Jean grinned. "Ah, well, eet's money talks," said he. And on that they
parted; for this last talk between them came when Jean's team was
pulling out for the north-west, after a profitable little rest-time in
which Jean had exchanged a little rubbish for a lot of good food and a
quite considerable wad of dollars.
But Jean did, on occasion, make mistakes; not vital mistakes, but slips
that might injure his pocket. He made one when he put Jan in the lead,
and named Bill wheeler, in place of Blackfoot. Jean wanted to make a
completely educated dog of Jan as soon as might be. But he did not want
to lose Bill--a very useful dog--nor yet to injure Blackfoot's health
and efficiency. Bill, as leader reduced to wheeling, made Blackfoot's
life a hell upon earth for the kindly wise old dog with Newfoundland
blood in him; and that, of course, was not good for Blackfoot.
But this was not the worst of it. As recognized leader of the team, Bill
could endure Jan's officious zeal, and even make shift to suffer the big
hound's real supremacy, while by craft he could avoid a conflagration.
So far, then, Bill had remained a force making for discipline and the
working efficiency of the team. As wheeler, he became at one stride a
crafty and embittered mutineer, aiming primarily at Jan's discomfiture,
and generally at the disruption of the team as a compact entity. When
not occupied in working off his vindictive spleen upon poor Blackfoot,
whose hind quarters he gashed at every opportunity, Bill concentrated
all his notable energies upon stirring up disorder, indiscipline,
confusion, and strife among his mates.
Jean flogged Bill pretty severely; and in the interval he said:
"Tha's all right, Bill. Jan 'll lick all thees outer you, bimeby."
And that was where Jean's mistake lay. Jan could safely be trusted to
lick pretty well anything into, or out of, the rest of the team; but
there was that in Bill, the ex-leader, which no power on earth would
lick out of him. He knew it; and Jan knew it. And that was where, in
this one matter, they both saw a little farther than the astute Jean.
The thing of it was that what they saw did not trouble either of them.
They were content to bide the issue. But had he known of it, Jean would
not have been at all content with anything of the sort. Far from it.
In any event, the issue involved loss for Jean, since, as both dogs well
knew, it meant death for Jan or for Bill. They were quite content in
their knowledge. But Jean could not conceivably have found content in
any prospect involving himself in monetary loss; for that would have
been contrary to the only guiding principles he knew. Pride in his own
unfailing knowledge of dogs and life in the north helped to make Jean
establish Jan as leader of the team. But if he could have foreseen
monetary loss in the arrangement, his pride had assuredly been called
down and Bill re-established in the lead.
Jean saw that Jan made an exceptionally fine leader. There was no sort
of doubt about it. He set a tremendously high working standard, and
hustled the team into accepting it by the exercise of an almost
uncannily far-seeing severity. Nothing escaped him, least of all a hint
of any kind of shirking. He was quicker than Jean's whip, more sure, and
more compelling. But while Jean saw all this, and more, with genuine
admiration for Jan, and for his own astuteness in foretelling this
exceptional capacity and acquiring ownership of the hound, he also saw,
with angry puzzlement, that his team was falling off in condition and in
efficiency as a unit.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|