CHAPTER XV THE ESQUIMAUX HORSE

CHAPTER XV

THE ESQUIMAUX HORSE

"Plus je connais les hommes, plus j'aime les chiens."

It doesn't look hard to drive a dog-team, but just you try it. In moments of passion, the first few days after their acquisition, the Colonel and the Boy wondered why they had complicated a sufficiently difficult journey by adding to other cares a load of fish and three fiends.

"Think how well they went for Peetka."

"Oh yes; part o' their cussedness. They know we're green hands, and they mean to make it lively."

Well, they did. They sat on their haunches in the snow, and grinned at the whip-crackings and futile "Mush, mush!" of the Colonel. They snapped at the Boy and made sharp turns, tying him up in the traces and tumbling him into the snow. They howled all night long, except during a blessed interval of quiet while they ate their seal-skin harness. But man is the wiliest of the animals, and the one who profits by experience. In the end, the Boy became a capital driver; the dogs came to know he "meant business," and settled into submission. "Nig," as he called the bully dog for short, turned out "the best leader in the Yukon."

They were much nearer Kaltag than they had realised, arriving after only two hours' struggle with the dogs at the big Indian village on the left bank of the river. But their first appearance here was clouded by Nig's proposal to slay all the dogs in sight. He was no sooner unharnessed than he undertook the congenial job. It looked for a few minutes as if Peetka's bully dog would chew up the entire canine population, and then lie down and die of his own wounds. But the Kaltags understood the genus Siwash better than the white man, and took the tumult calmly.

It turned out that Nig was not so much bloodthirsty as "bloody-proud"--one of those high souls for ever concerned about supremacy. His first social act, on catching sight of his fellow, was to howl defiance at him. And even after they have fought it out and come to some sort of understanding, the first happy thought of your born Leader on awakening is to proclaim himself boss of the camp.

No sooner has he published this conviction of high calling than he is set upon by the others, punishes them soundly, or is himself vanquished and driven off. Whereupon he sits on his haunches in the snow, and, with his pointed nose turned skyward, howls uninterruptedly for an hour or two, when all is forgiven and forgotten--till the next time.

Order being restored, the travellers got new harness for the dogs, new boots for themselves, and set out for the white trading post, thirty miles above.

Here, having at last come into the region of settlements, they agreed never again to overtax the dogs. They "travelled light" out of Nulato towards the Koyukuk.

The dogs simply flew over those last miles. It was glorious going on a trail like glass.

They had broken the back of the journey now, and could well afford, they thought, to halt an hour or two on the island at the junction of the two great rivers, stake out a trading post, and treat themselves to town lots. Why town lots, in Heaven's name! when they were bound for Minóok, and after that the Klondyke, hundreds of miles away? Well, partly out of mere gaiety of heart, and partly, the Colonel would have told you gravely, that in this country you never know when you have a good thing. They had left the one white layman at Nulato seething with excitement over an Indian's report of still another rich strike up yonder on the Koyukuk, and this point, where they were solemnly staking out a new post, the Nulato Agent had said, was "dead sure to be a great centre." That almost unknown region bordering the great tributary of the Yukon, haunt of the fiercest of all the Indians of the North, was to be finally conquered by the white man. It had been left practically unexplored ever since the days when the bloodthirsty Koyukons came down out of their fastnesses and perpetrated the great Nulato massacre, doing to death with ghastly barbarity every man, woman, and child at the post, Russian or Indian, except Kurilla, not sparing the unlucky Captain Barnard or his English escort, newly arrived here in their search for the lost Sir John Franklin. But the tables were turned now, and the white man was on the trail of the Indian.

While the Colonel and the Boy were staking out this future stronghold of trade and civilisation it came on to snow; but "Can't last this time o' year," the Colonel consoled himself, and thanked God "the big, unending snows are over for this season."

So they pushed on. But the Colonel seemed to have thanked God prematurely. Down the snow drifted, soft, sticky, unending. The evening was cloudy, and the snow increased the dimness overhead as well as the heaviness under foot. They never knew just where it was in the hours between dusk and dark that they lost the trail. The Boy believed it was at a certain steep incline that Nig did his best to rush down.

"I thought he was at his tricks," said the Boy ruefully some hours after. "I believe I'm an ass, and Nig is a gentleman and a scholar. He knew perfectly what he was about."

"Reckon we'll camp, pardner."

"Reckon we might as well."

After unharnessing the dogs, the Boy stood an instant looking enviously at them as he thawed out his stiff hands under his parki. Exhausted and smoking hot, the dogs had curled down in the snow as contented-looking as though on a hearth-rug before a fire, sheltering their sharp noses with their tails.

"Wish I had a tail to shelter my face," said the Boy, as if a tail were the one thing lacking to complete his bliss.

"You don't need any shelter _now_," answered the Colonel.

"Your face is gettin' well--" And he stopped suddenly, carried back to those black days when he had vainly urged a face-guard. He unpacked their few possessions, and watched the Boy take the axe and go off for wood, stopping on his way, tired as he was, to pull Nig's pointed ears. The odd thing about the Boy was that it was only with these Indian curs--Nig in particular, who wasn't the Boy's dog at all--only with these brute-beasts had he seemed to recover something of that buoyancy and ridiculous youngness that had first drawn the Colonel to him on the voyage up from 'Frisco. It was also clear that if the Boy now drew away from his pardner ever so little, by so much did he draw nearer to the dogs.

He might be too tired to answer the Colonel; he was seldom too tired to talk nonsense to Nig, never too tired to say, "Well, old boy," or even "Well, _pardner_," to the dumb brute. It was, perhaps, this that the Colonel disliked most of all.

Whether the U.S. Agent at Nulato was justified or not in saying all the region hereabouts was populous in the summer with Indian camps, the native winter settlements, the half-buried ighloo, or the rude log-hut, where, for a little tea, tobacco, or sugar, you could get as much fish as you could carry, these welcome, if malodorous, places seemed, since they lost the trail, to have vanished off the face of the earth. No question of the men sharing the dogs' fish, but of the dogs sharing the men's bacon and meal. That night the meagre supper was more meagre still that the "horses" might have something, too. The next afternoon it stopped snowing and cleared, intensely cold, and that was the evening the Boy nearly cried for joy when, lifting up his eyes, he saw, a good way off, perched on the river bank, the huts and high caches of an Indian village etched black against a wintry sunset--a fine picture in any eye, but meaning more than beauty to the driver of hungry dogs.

"Fish, Nig!" called out the Boy to his Leader. "You hear me, you Nig? _Fish_, old fellow! Now, look at that, Colonel! you tell me that Indian dog doesn't understand English. I tell you what: we had a mean time with these dogs just at first, but that was only because we didn't understand one another."

The Colonel preserved a reticent air.

"You'll come to my way of thinking yet. The Indian dog--he's a daisy."

"Glad you think so." The Colonel, with some display of temper, had given up trying to drive the team only half an hour before, and was still rather sore about it.

"When you get to _understand_ him," persisted the Boy, "he's the most marvellous little horse ever hitched in harness. He pulls, pulls, pulls all day long in any kind o' weather--"

"Yes, pulls you off your legs or pulls you the way you don't want to go."

"Oh, that's when you rile him! He's just like any other American gentleman: he's got his feelin's. Ain't you got feelin's, Nig? Huh! rather. I tell you what, Colonel, many a time when I'm pretty well beat and ready to snap at anybody, I've looked at Nig peggin' away like a little man, on a rotten trail, with a blizzard in his eyes, and it's just made me sick after that to hear myself grumblin'. Yes, sir, the Indian dog is an example to any white man on the trail." The Boy seemed not to relinquish the hope of stirring the tired Colonel to enthusiasm. "Don't you like the way, after the worst sort of day, when you stop, he just drops down in the snow and rolls about a little to rest his muscles, and then lies there as patient as anything till you are ready to unharness him and feed him?"

"--and if you don't hurry up, he saves you the trouble of unharnessing by eating the traces and things."

"Humph! So would you if that village weren't in sight, if you were sure the harness wouldn't stick in your gizzard. And think of what a dog gets to reward him for his plucky day: one dried salmon or a little meal-soup when he's off on a holiday like this. Works without a let-up, and keeps in good flesh on one fish a day. Doesn't even get anything to drink; eats a little snow after dinner, digs his bed, and sleeps in a drift till morning."

"When he doesn't howl all night."

"Oh, that's when he meets his friends, and they talk about old times before they came down in the world."

"Hey?"

"Yes; when they were wolves and made us run instead of our making them. Make any fellow howl. Instead of carrying our food about we used to carry theirs, and run hard to keep from giving it up, too."

"Nig's at it again," said the Colonel. "Give us your whip."

"No," said the Boy; "I begin to see now why he stops and goes for Red like that. Hah! Spot's gettin it, too, this time. They haven't been pullin' properly. You just notice: if they aren't doin' their share Nig'll turn to every time and give 'em 'Hail, Columbia!' You'll see, when he's freshened 'em up a bit we'll have 'em on a dead run." The Boy laughed and cracked his whip.

"They've got keen noses. _I_ don't smell the village this time. Come on, Nig, Spot's had enough; he's sorry, good and plenty. Cheer up, Spot! Fish, old man! You hear me talkin' to you, Red? _Fish!_ Caches full of it. Whoop!" and down they rushed, pell-mell, men and dogs tearing along like mad across the frozen river, and never slowing till it came to the stiff pull up the opposite bank.

"Funny I don't hear any dogs," panted the Boy.

They came out upon a place silent as the dead--a big deserted village, emptied by the plague, or, maybe, only by the winter; caches emptied, too; not a salmon, not a pike, not a lusk, not even a whitefish left behind.

It was a bitter blow. They didn't say anything; it was too bad to talk about. The Colonel made the fire, and fried a little bacon and made some mush: that was their dinner. The bacon-rinds were boiled in the mush-pot with a great deal of snow and a little meal, and the "soup" so concocted was set out to cool for the dogs. They were afraid to sleep in one of the cabins; it might be plague-infected. The Indians had cut all the spruce for a wide radius round about--no boughs to make a bed. They hoisted some tent-poles up into one of the empty caches, laid them side by side, and on this bed, dry, if hard, they found oblivion.

The next morning a thin, powdery snow was driving about. Had they lost their way in the calendar as well as on the trail, and was it December instead of the 29th of March? The Colonel sat on the packed sled, undoing with stiff fingers the twisted, frozen rope. He knew the axe that he used the night before on the little end of bacon was lying, pressed into the snow, under one runner. But that was the last thing to go on the pack before the lashing, and it wouldn't get lost pinned down under the sled. Nig caught sight of it, and came over with a cheerful air of interest, sniffed bacon on the steel, and it occurred to him it would be a good plan to lick it.

A bitter howling broke the stillness. The Boy came tearing up with a look that lifted the Colonel off the sled, and there was Nig trying to get away from the axe-head, his tongue frozen fast to the steel, and pulled horribly long out of his mouth like a little pink rope. The Boy had fallen upon the agonized beast, and forced him down close to the steel. Holding him there between his knees, he pulled off his outer mits and with hands and breath warmed the surface of the axe, speaking now and then to the dog, who howled wretchedly, but seemed to understand something was being done for him, since he gave up struggling. When at last the Boy got him free, the little horse pressed against his friend's legs with a strange new shuddering noise very pitiful to hear.

The Boy, blinking hard, said: "Yes, old man, I know, that was a mean breakfast; and he patted the shaggy chest. Nig bent his proud head and licked the rescuing hand with his bleeding tongue.

"An' you say that dog hasn't got feelin's!"

They hitched the team and pushed on. In the absence of a trail, the best they could do was to keep to the river ice. By-and-bye:

"Can you see the river bank?"

"I'm not sure," said the Boy.

"I thought you were going it blind."

"I believe I'd better let Nig have his head," said the Boy, stopping; "he's the dandy trail-finder. Nig, old man, I takes off my hat to you!"

They pushed ahead till the half-famished dogs gave out. They camped under the lee of the propped sled, and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

The next morning dawned clear and warm. The Colonel managed to get a little wood and started a fire. There were a few spoonfuls of meal in the bottom of the bag and a little end of bacon, mostly rind. The sort of soup the dogs had had yesterday was good enough for men to-day. The hot and watery brew gave them strength enough to strike camp and move on. The elder man began to say to himself that he would sell his life dearly. He looked at the dogs a good deal, and then would look at the Boy, but he could never catch his eye. At last: "They say, you know, that men in our fix have sometimes had to sacrifice a dog."

"Ugh!" The Boy's face expressed nausea at the thought.

"Yes, it is pretty revolting."

"We could never do it."

"N-no," said the Colonel.

The three little Esquimaux horses were not only very hungry, their feet were in a bad condition, and were bleeding. The Boy had shut his eyes at first at the sight of their red tracks in the snow. He hardly noticed them now.

An hour or so later: "Better men than we," says the Colonel significantly, "have had to put their feelings in their pockets." As if he found the observation distinctly discouraging, Nig at this moment sat down in the melting snow, and no amount of "mushing" moved him.

"Let's give him half an hour's rest, Colonel. Valuable beast, you know--altogether best team on the river," said the Boy, as if to show that his suggestion was not inspired by mere pity for the bleeding dogs. "And you look rather faded yourself, Colonel. Sit down and rest."

Nothing more was said for a full half-hour, till the Colonel, taking off his fur hat, and wiping his beaded forehead on the back of his hand, remarked: "Think of the Siege of Paris."

"Eh? What?" The Boy stared as if afraid his partner's brain had given way.

"When the horses gave out they had to eat dogs, cats, rats even. Think of it--rats!"

"The French are a dirty lot. Let's mush, Colonel. I'm as fit as a fiddle." The Boy got up and called the dogs. In ten minutes they were following the blind trail again. But the sled kept clogging, sticking fast and breaking down. After a desperate bout of ineffectual pulling, the dogs with one mind stopped again, and lay down in their bloody tracks.

The men stood silent for a moment; then the Colonel remarked:

"Red is the least valuable"--a long pause--"but Nig's feet are in the worst condition. That dog won't travel a mile further. Well," added the Colonel after a bit, as the Boy stood speechless studying the team, "what do you say?"

"Me?" He looked up like a man who has been dreaming and is just awake. "Oh, I should say our friend Nig here has had to stand more than his share of the racket."

"Poor old Nig!" said the Colonel, with a somewhat guilty air. "Look here: what do you say to seeing whether they can go if we help 'em with that load?"

"Good for you, Colonel!" said the Boy, with confidence wonderfully restored. "I was just thinking the same."

They unlashed the pack, and the Colonel wanted to make two bundles of the bedding and things; but whether the Boy really thought the Colonel was giving out, or whether down in some corner of his mind he recognised the fact that if the Colonel were not galled by this extra burden he might feel his hunger less, and so be less prone to thoughts of poor Nig in the pot--however it was, he said the bundle was his business for the first hour. So the Colonel did the driving, and the Boy tramped on ahead, breaking trail with thirty-five pounds on his back. And he didn't give it up, either, though he admitted long after it was the toughest time he had ever put in in all his life.

"Haven't you had about enough of this?" the Colonel sang out at dusk.

"Pretty nearly," said the Boy in a rather weak voice. He flung off the pack, and sat on it.

"Get up," says the Colonel; "give us the sleepin'-bag." When it was undone, the Norfolk jacket dropped out. He rolled it up against the sled, flung himself down, and heavily dropped his head on the rough pillow. But he sprang up.

"What? Yes. By the Lord!" He thrust his hand into the capacious pocket of the jacket, and pulled out some broken ship's biscuit. "Hard tack, by the living Jingo!" He was up, had a few sticks alight, and the kettle on, and was melting snow to pour on the broken biscuit. "It swells, you know, like thunder!"

The Boy was still sitting on the bundle of "trade" tea and tobacco. He seemed not to hear; he seemed not to see the Colonel, shakily hovering about the fire, pushing aside the green wood and adding a few sticks of dry.

There was a mist before the Colonel's eyes. Reaching after a bit of seasoned spruce, he stumbled, and unconsciously set his foot on Nig's bleeding paw. The dog let out a yell and flew at him. The Colonel fell back with an oath, picked up a stick, and laid it on. The Boy was on his feet in a flash.

"Here! stop that!" He jumped in between the infuriated man and the infuriated dog.

"Stand back!" roared the Colonel.

"It was your fault; you trod--"

"Stand back, damn you! or you'll get hurt."

The stick would have fallen on the Boy; he dodged it, calling excitedly, "Come here, Nig! Here!"

"He's my dog, and I'll lamm him if I like. You--" The Colonel couldn't see just where the Boy and the culprit were. Stumbling a few paces away from the glare of the fire, he called out, "I'll kill that brute if he snaps at me again!"

"Oh yes," the Boy's voice rang passionately out of the gloom, "I know you want him killed."

The Colonel sat down heavily on the rolled-up bag. Presently the bubbling of boiling snow-water roused him. He got up, divided the biscuit, and poured the hot water over the fragments. Then he sat down again, and waited for them to "swell like thunder." He couldn't see where, a little way up the hillside, the Boy sat on a fallen tree with Nig's head under his arm. The Boy felt pretty low in his mind. He sat crouched together, with his head sunk almost to his knees. It was a lonely kind of a world after all. Doing your level best didn't seem to get you any forrader. What was the use? He started. Something warm, caressing, touched his cold face just under one eye. Nig's tongue.

"Good old Nig! You feel lonesome, too?" He gathered the rough beast up closer to him.

Just then the Colonel called, "Nig!"

"Sh! sh! Lie quiet!" whispered the Boy.

"Nig! Nig!"

"Good old boy! Stay here! He doesn't mean well by you. _Sh!_ quiet! _Quiet_, I say!"

"Nig!" and the treacherous Colonel gave the peculiar whistle both men used to call the dogs to supper. The dog struggled to get away, the Boy's stiff fingers lost their grip, and "the best leader in the Yukon" was running down the bank as hard as he could pelt, to the camp fire--to the cooking-pot.

The Boy got up and floundered away in the opposite direction. He must get out of hearing. He toiled on, listening for the expected gunshot--hearing it, too, and the yawp of a wounded dog, in spite of a mitten clapped at each ear.

"That's the kind of world it is! Do your level best, drag other fellas' packs hundreds o' miles over the ice with a hungry belly and bloody feet, and then--Poor old Nig!--'cause you're lame--poor old Nig!" With a tightened throat and hot water in his eyes, he kept on repeating the dog's name as he stumbled forward in the snow. "Nev' mind, old boy; it's a lonely kind o' world, and the right trail's hard to find." Suddenly he stood still. His stumbling feet were on a track. He had reached the dip in the saddle-back of the hill, and--yes! this was the _right_ trail; for down on the other side below him were faint lights--huts--an Indian village! with fish and food for everybody. And Nig--Nig was being--

The Boy turned as if a hurricane had struck him, and tore back down the incline--stumbling, floundering in the snow, calling hoarsely: "Colonel, Colonel! don't do it! There's a village here, Colonel! Nig! Colonel, don't do it!"

He dashed into the circle of firelight, and beheld Nig standing with a bandaged paw, placidly eating softened biscuit out of the family frying-pan.

It was short work getting down to the village. They had one king salmon and two white fish from the first Indian they saw, who wanted hootch for them, and got only tabak.

In the biggest of the huts, nearly full of men, women, and children, coughing, sickly-looking, dejected, the natives made room for the strangers. When the white men had supped they handed over the remains of their meal (as is expected) to the head of the house. This and a few matches or a little tobacco on parting, is all he looks for in return for shelter, room for beds on the floor, snow-water laboriously melted, use of the fire, and as much wood as they like to burn, even if it is a barren place, and fuel is the precious far-travelled "drift."

It is curious to see how soon travellers get past that first cheeckalko feeling that it is a little "nervy," as the Boy had said, to walk into another man's house uninvited, an absolute stranger, and take possession of everything you want without so much as "by your leave." You soon learn it is the Siwash[*] custom.

[Footnote: Siwash, corruption of French-Canadian _sauvage_, applied all over the North to the natives, their possessions and their customs.]

Nothing would have seemed stranger now, or more inhuman, than the civilized point of view.

The Indians trailed out one by one, all except the old buck to whom the hut belonged. He hung about for a bit till he was satisfied the travellers had no hootch, not even a little for the head of the house, and yet they seemed to be fairly decent fellows. Then he rolls up his blankets, for there is a premium on sleeping-space, and goes out, with never a notion that he is doing more than any man would, anywhere in the world, to find a place in some neighbour's hut to pass the night.

He leaves the two strangers, as Indian hospitality ordains, to the warmest places in the best hut, with two young squaws, one old one, and five children, all sleeping together on the floor, as a matter of course.

The Colonel and the Boy had flung themselves down on top of their sleeping-bag, fed and warmed and comforted. Only the old squaw was still up. She had been looking over the travellers' boots and "mitts," and now, without a word or even a look being exchanged upon the subject, she sat there in the corner, by the dim, seal-oil light, sewing on new thongs, patching up holes, and making the strange men tidy--men she had never seen before and would never see again. And this, no tribute to the Colonel's generosity or the youth and friendly manners of the Boy. They knew the old squaw would have done just the same had the mucklucks and the mitts belonged to "the tramp of the Yukon," with nothing to barter and not a cent in his pocket. This, again, is a Siwash custom.

The old squaw coughed and wiped her eyes. The children coughed in their sleep.

The dogs outside were howling like human beings put to torture. But the sound no longer had power to freeze the blood of the trail-men.

The Colonel merely damned them. The Boy lifted his head, and listened for Nig's note. The battle raged nearer; a great scampering went by the tent.

"Nig!"

A scuffling and snuffing round the bottom of the tent. The Boy, on a sudden impulse, reached out and lifted the flap.

"Got your bandage on? Come here."

Nig brisked in with the air of one having very little time to waste.

"Lord! I should think you'd be glad to lie down. _I_ am. Let's see your paw. Here, come over to the light." He stepped very carefully over the feet of the other inhabitants till he reached the old woman's corner. Nig, following calmly, walked on prostrate bodies till he reached his friend.

"Now, your paw, pardner. F-ith! Bad, ain't it?" he appealed to the toothless squaw. Her best friend could not have said her wizened regard was exactly sympathetic, but it was attentive. She seemed intelligent as well as kind.

"Look here," whispered the Boy, "let that muckluck string o' mine alone." He drew it away, and dropped it between his knees. "Haven't you got something or other to make some shoes for Nig? Hein?" He pantomimed, but she only stared. "Like this." He pulled out his knife, and cut off the end of one leg of his "shaps," and gathered it gently round Nig's nearest foot. "Little dog-boots. See? Give you some bully tabak if you'll do that for Nig. Hein?"

She nodded at last, and made a queer wheezy sound, whether friendly laughing or pure scorn, the Boy wasn't sure. But she set about the task.

"Come 'long, Nig," he whispered. "You just see if I don't shoe my little horse." And he sneaked back to bed, comfortable in the assurance that the Colonel was asleep. Nig came walking after his friend straight over people's heads.

One of the children sat up and whimpered. The Colonel growled sleepily.

"You black devil!" admonished the Boy under his breath. "Look what you're about. Come here, sir." He pushed the devil down between the sleeping-bag and the nearest baby.

The Colonel gave a distinct grunt of disapproval, and then, "Keepin' that brute in here?"

"He's a lot cleaner than our two-legged friends," said the Boy sharply, as if answering an insult.

"Right," said the Colonel with conviction.

His pardner was instantly mollified. "If you wake another baby, you'll get a lickin'," he said genially to the dog; and then he stretched out his feet till they reached Nig's back, and a feeling of great comfort came over the Boy.

"Say, Colonel," he yawned luxuriously, "did you know that--a--to-night--when Nig flared up, did you know you'd trodden on his paw?"

"Didn't know it till you told me," growled the Colonel.

"I thought you didn't. Makes a difference, doesn't it?"

"You needn't think," says the Colonel a little defiantly, "that I've weakened on the main point just because I choose to give Nig a few cracker crumbs. If it's a question between a man's life and a dog's life, only a sentimental fool would hesitate."

"I'm not talking about that; we can get fish now. What I'm pointin' out is that Nig didn't fly at you for nothin'."

"He's got a devil of a temper, that dog."

"It's just like Nicholas of Pymeut said." The Boy sat up, eager in his advocacy and earnest as a judge. "Nicholas of Pymeut said: 'You treat a Siwash like a heathen, and he'll show you what a hell of a heathen he can be.'"

"Oh, go to sleep."

"I'm goin', Colonel."

“One work. Many languages. One reading experience.”