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Page 65
And in and out among the vivid pictures in his mind of immediate local
happenings came swiftly passing little silhouettes of people and
happenings farther away in point of time and distance. He saw Dick
Vaughan, in scarlet tunic and yellow-striped breeches, sitting on a box
with his, Jan's, head between his knees, his hands fondling the long
ears that now were so terribly torn and bloody. He saw the great, gray,
lordly Finn pacing gravely beside the Master and Betty Murdoch on the
Downs at Nuthill; himself trotting to and fro between Betty and the
noble hound that sired him. He heard Dick Vaughan's long, throbbing
whistle, and then the old familiar call:
"Jan, boy! Ja--an!"
And as he heard this call he had never once failed to answer, some
subtle force at work in Jan loosed the cord that had seemed to hold him
fettered to the heavy aftermath of his greed that night. His heart
swelled within him in answer to the sovereign's call, till it seemed to
send new blood, hot and compelling, racing through all his veins into
the last least crevices of his remotest members. His massive head ceased
to sway. It was uplifted in the moment that a roaring baying cry escaped
him; he knew not how or why. And that was the moment called
psychological. For it was the instant of a new and different attack from
Bill, this tremendous moment of Jan's real awakening.
For some minutes now, while he flashed in and out, bleeding his prey in
preparation for the final assault, Bill had noted with infinite cold joy
that swaying motion of Jan's great head. He knew it well for the gesture
of the baited creature, and as the head swung lower the flames of Bill's
hate shot higher and ever higher; for this lower swaying, as he knew,
was the signal of the end for which he had striven so cunningly and
long.
At the moment that Jan heard Dick's call, Bill drew up his muscles for
administration of the final thrust. (The bull had bled sufficiently. Now
for the steel in the nape.) Bill leaped, red froth flying from his bared
fangs. As he leaped, Jan's strange baying roar smote upon his senses
with a chill foreboding. He knew nothing of the call that had loosed
from its lethargy the essential Jan. But the roar spoke of doom and Bill
flinched; wavered in his attack, as a horse will momentarily waver at a
high leap. That peril might have passed. But it was part of a double
blunder. The leap had been wrongly conceived. It had come too soon. And
now the leaper balked, conscious of error; conscious also, dimly, of
some terrific change in Jan, heralded by his awe-inspiring cry.
Bill jarred down to earth, short of his mark, his feet ill placed, his
world awry. And in that instant the big hound was upon him like a bolt
from heaven: the strangest attack surely that ever dog faced, or so it
must have seemed to stricken Bill, the northland fighter for the killing
throat-hold, who never had seen the famous killing grip that was always
used by Jan's tall sire, Finn the wolfhound.
Jan came down upon Bill as though from the clouds. (He stood a full four
inches higher than Bill.) His huge jaws, stretched to cracking-point,
took Bill where the base of the skull meets the spinal cord. One jaw on
either side that rope of life, they drove down; through the matted armor
of Bill's coat, through skin and flesh, and on to their ultimate
destination, under the crushing pressure of a hundred and forty pounds
of steel-like muscle, bone, and sinew, the invincible product of the
trail-life developed upon a foundation of scientifically attained health
and strength.
Bill, the fearless and unbeaten, now screamed aloud; not for mercy, but
in mortal pain. His tense body squirmed, convulsed, under Jan's great
weight like a thing galvanized by electricity.
Jan's jaws sank deeper.
Bill snapped at the bloody snow in his frenzy, actually breaking his own
fangs.
Jan's jaws sank deeper.
A long horrible shudder passed through the squirming body of Bill. And
Jan's jaws sank a little deeper. Then with a dreadful sucking sound and
a sharp gasp for breath, those jaws parted and were withdrawn; for
Bill's long fight and his life were ended now, and Jan was quite alone
in that desolate place.
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