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Page 82
"I couldn't find that the brute had bitten any of the others, but next
day two of 'em suddenly went clean off, and they certainly did bite
another pair before I shot them. Next day I had to kill the other pair,
and was expecting every minute to see the bitch, the only one left,
break out. However, she seems to have escaped it."
Dick said nothing of the weary subsequent days in which he himself had
toiled hour after hour in the traces, ahead of his one dog, with a
maniac wrapped in rugs and lashed on the sled-pack. But Jim Willis
needed no telling. He saw the trace-marks all across the chest and
shoulders of Dick's coat, and he knew without any telling all about the
corresponding mark that must be showing on Dick's own skin.
"Well, say," he remarked, admiringly, "but you do seem to 've bin up
against it good an' hard."
Very briefly, and as though the matter barely called for mention, Dick
explained, in answer to an inquiry, why he had to make a dead burden of
the madman.
It seemed that when first his team had been reduced to one rather
undersized dog he did arrange for his charge to walk. And within an
hour, having cunningly awaited his opportunity, the demented creature
had leaped upon him from behind, exactly as a wolf might, and fastened
his teeth in Dick's neck. That, though Dick said little of it, had been
the beginning of a strange and terrible struggle, of which the sole
observer was a single sled-dog.
To and fro in the trampled snow the men had swayed and fought for fully
a quarter of an hour before Dick had finally mastered the madman and
bound him hand and foot. He was a big man, of muscular build, and
madness had added hugely to his natural capabilities as a fighter. Dick
Vaughan's bandaged neck, and his right thumb, bitten through to the
bone, would permanently carry the marks of this poor wretch's ferocity
in that lonely struggle on the trail.
"Don't seem right, somehow," was Jim Willis's comment. "I guess I'd have
had to put a bullet into him."
"Ah no; that wouldn't do at all," said Dick.
He did not attempt to explain just why; and perhaps he hardly could have
done so had he tried, for that would have involved some explanation of
the pride and the traditions of the force in which he served, and those
are things rarely spoken of by those who understand them best and are
most influenced by them.
"And where might you be making for now?" asked Jim.
"Well, I'm bound for Edmonton. But since I got down to this one little
husky I'd thought of making Fort Vermilion, to see if I could raise a
team there."
"Aye. Well, I was bound for steel at Edmonton, too, an' I've bin
reckoning on some such a place as Fort Vermilion since I lost my gun,"
said Jim. "I'm wholly tired o' makin' trail for these gentlemen
behind"--the howling of the wolves was still to be heard pretty
frequently--"without a shootin'-iron of any kind at all."
"It seems to me we're pretty well met, then," said Dick, with a smile,
"for I want what you've got, and you want what I've got."
"Well, I was kind o' figurin' on it that sort of a way myself," admitted
Jim. "If it suits you, I guess we can make out to rub along on your Jan
an' my dogs right through to Edmonton."
In the end the order of the march was arranged thus: two of Jim Willis's
dogs, with Jan to lead them, were harnessed to Dick's sled, with the
madman and Dick's rugs for its load. The remainder of Dick's pack was
loaded on Jim's sled and drawn by Jim's other three dogs, aided by the
sole survivor of Dick's team. And in this order a start was made on the
five-hundred-mile run to Edmonton.
From the first Jim showed frankly that there was to be no question as to
Jan's ownership. He told how Jock, back there on the edge of the North
Pacific, had informed him as to Jan's name and identity from a picture
seen in a newspaper. Then Dick broached the question of how much he was
to pay for Jan, seeing clearly how just was the other man's claim as
lawful owner of the hound. Jim laughed quietly at this.
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