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Page 64
A little show of temper now on Jan's part had been a thing of priceless
worth to Bill. Indeed, it was the ex-leader's one desire, its
provocation his sole objective for the moment. This it was that drew his
pointed red tongue in and out like a flame, this the tuning-fork that
gave his snarl its key; the note of insolent, jeering defiance.
"You hog! You're bloated. Ungainly beast, I can bleed you when and where
I will. Take that!" snarled Bill, as he flashed in again, tearing clean
away a little section of soft-coated fine skin from the left side of
Jan's dewlap, where Desdemona's blood in him left him but lightly
covered.
(In the bloodhound the skin is very loose and fine in texture all about
the head and flews and dewlap. In Jan it hardened quickly on the neck,
where the mat of his dense coat thickened.)
Again and again, not fewer than a dozen times in all, Bill drank deep of
sheer delight as he flashed in and out upon Jan, drawing blood every
single time, reaching bone more than once or twice, and winning back to
safety without the loss of so much as one hair.
Jan no longer snarled. He had no breath to waste. He was standing to his
fearsome punishment like a bulldog now. And like a bulldog he seemed, in
a heavy, dogged way, and almost to glory in the bitter thrusts he took.
Then Bill overstepped himself. Striving to win a second bite from the
one rush, he got the full thrust of Jan's bloody right shoulder so
shrewdly directed that Bill went down under it as corn under a sickle.
So far so good for Jan; and by good rights that thrust should have given
him his lead to victory. But the plain truth is Jan was too full of
moose-meat. He plunged down and forward for the throat-hold--appreciably
too late--and lost more than blood and fur from his flank as Bill
wheeled into action again without any apparent loss of poise, though he
had turned completely over on the snow.
Jan breathed like a bull as he resumed the defensive; and like a bull he
lowered his head with a swaying motion as though to ease his labored
breathing and drain his jaws of the spume that clogged them. He was
bleeding now from more than a dozen wounds. The frost nipped those
wounds stingingly. The hard trampled snow about his feet was flecked
with blood and foam--his life-blood, his foam. Bill remained unscathed
and to all seeming as coldly calculating as ever.
At this stage a backer of Jan (if any such reckless wight existed) might
easily have booked a hundred to one against the big hound from an
audience of experienced northland men, had any been there to see this
wonderful fray. It seemed a breathless business enough, with never a
moment for anything like reflection. But of a truth, as Jan swung his
massive head now in a gesture which added blazing coals to the fire of
triumphant hate in Bill, his mind was busy with a mort of curious
things. There were many differences between Jan and the average dog, and
this illustrated one of them. As he stood heavily swaying to Bill's
lightning attacks, he saw pictures in his busy mind through a mist of
blood; pictures that made the whole business of this fight far more
terrible for him than it would have been for most dogs.
The dominating picture Jan saw, and the one that kept forcing itself
forward upon the screen of his imagination through and over all the
others that came and went, was a picture of himself on his back in the
trampled snow. Bill's jaws were at his throat in this picture, and his
blood ebbed out, an awful tide, flooding the snow with its crimson for
as far as he could see. And then the picture moved and showed him the
satisfied, triumphant Bill, walking proudly away to the camp to his
regained leadership; and himself, Jan, stark, helpless, dead, in that
forsaken clear patch in the woods with only the cold gleam of the aurora
borealis to bear him company.
Another picture showed him the stripped framework of the moose and his
own reckless feasting there with the rest of the pack, while Bill,
pitilessly far-seeing Bill, watched them and abstained. Jan saw it all
now and gulped upon his bitterness as he realized how cunningly it had
all been planned, and just why it was that, while his enemy seemed made
of steel springs actuated by electricity, he, Jan, was heavy and clumsy
as an English house-dog.
So that was the way of this bloody business thought Jan as, swifter than
a bullet, Bill registered another visit to his streaming right shoulder.
There was no trace left now of that queer stubborn sort of bulldog glory
in the endurance of punishment which Jan had shown during the first
half-dozen attacks. His stern was still erect, bladelike, his hackles
almost as stiff as before. But the flame of his deep-hawed and now
glazing eyes had died down to a dim red smolder; his hard breathing
spared nothing for a snarl now, and his head and body movements were, if
anything, a little slower than before.
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