Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador
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CHAPTER II
_In Which Timothy Light's Team of Ten Potential Outlaws is Considered, and There is a Significant Description of the Career of a Blood-Guilty, Ruined Young Dog, Which is in the Way of Making Desperate Trouble for Somebody_
Of all this Billy Topsail had been an observer. To a good deal of it hehad listened with an awakened astonishment. It did not appear to himthat he would be concerned in what might grow out of the incident. Hedid not for a moment imagine, for example, that he would find himself ina situation wherein his hair would stand on end--that he would standstripped naked in the north wind, confronting Death in a most unpleasantform. Nor was it that Doctor Luke's personality had stirred him toadmiration--though that was true: for Doctor Luke had a hearty, cheerytwinkling way with him, occasionally mixed with a proper austerity, thatwould have won any boy's admiration; but what particularly engaged BillyTopsail was something else--it was Doctor Luke's confident assertionthat he could cure little Teddy Brisk.
Billy Topsail knew something of doctors, to be sure; but he had neverbefore quite realized their power; and that a man, being only human,after all, could take a knife in his hand, which was only a man's hand,after all, and so employ the knife that the painful, hampering leg ofTeddy Brisk, which had placed a dreadful limitation on the little boy,would be made whole and useful again, caused Billy Topsail a good dealof deep reflection. If Doctor Luke could do that, why could not BillyTopsail learn to do it? It seemed to Billy Topsail to be a moreadmirable thing to be able to do than to sail a hundred-tonner in a galeof wind.
"Who _is_ that man?" he asked.
"That's Doctor Luke," said Teddy's mother. "You know that."
"Well, who's Doctor Luke?"
"I don't know. He's jus' Doctor Luke. He've a wee hospital at OurHarbour. An' he heals folk. You'll find un go anywhere he's asked t' goif there's a poor soul in need. An' that's all _I_ know about un."
"What does he do it for?"
"I reckon he wants to. An' anyhow, I'm glad he does do it. An' I reckonyou'd be glad, too, if you had a little boy like Teddy."
"I _am_ glad!" said Billy. "I think 'tis the most wonderful thing ever Iheard of. An' I wish----"
And the course of Billy Topsail's life moved inevitably on towards anearing fate that he would have shuddered to contemplate had he foreseenit.
* * * * *
Well, now, there was but one team of dogs in Tight Cove. It was a happycircumstance. No dogs could have existed as a separate pack in theneighbourhood of Timothy Light's mob of potential outlaws. It was allvery well for Timothy Light to pleasure his hobby and pride in theunsavoury collection. Timothy Light had command of his own team. It wasquite another matter for the timid mothers of Tight Cove. TimothyLight's dogs had a bad name. As neighbours they deserved it, whatevertheir quality on the trail--a thieving, snarling crew.
To catch Timothy Light in the act of feeding his team was enough toestablish an antipathy in the beholder--to see the old man beat off therush of the pack with a biting walrus whip while he spread the bucket offrozen fish; to watch him, then, leap away from the ferocious onset; andto be witness of the ravenous anarchy of the scramble--a free fight,dwindling, at last, to melancholy yelps and subsiding in the licking ofthe small wounds of the encounter. Timothy Light was a fancier of dogflesh, as a man may be devoted to horse-flesh; and the object of hisselective taste was what he called go-an'-gumption.
"The nearer the wolf," said he, "the better the dog."
It was to accord with this theory--which is a fallacy as ageneralization--that he had evolved the team of ten that he had.
"I'm free t' say," he admitted, "that this here Cracker o' mine is nonetoo tame. He've the wolf in him--that's so. As a wolf, with the pack inthe timber, he'd be a bad wolf; as a dog in harbour he's a marvellouswicked rogue. He've a eye as bitter as frost. Did you mark it? He leavesit fool all over a person in a laughin' sort o' fashion an' never stopon the spot he really wants t' look at--except jus' once in a while. An'then it darts t' the throat an' away again; an' Cracker thinks, jus' asplain as speech:
"'Oh, Lord, wouldn't I like t' fix my teeth in there!'
"Still an' all," the old man concluded, "he yields t' command. A tap onthe snout goes a long way with Cracker. He've a deal o' wolf'sblood--that one has; but he's as big a coward, too, as a wolf, an'there's no danger in him when he's overmastered. Still an' all"--with ashrug--"I'd not care t' lose my whip an' stumble an' fall on the trailin the dusk when he haven't been fed for a while."
* * * * *
Cracker had come to Tight Cove in a dog trade of questionable propriety.Cracker had not at once taken to the customs and dogs of Tight Cove; hehad stood off, sullen, alert, still--head low, king-hairs lifted, eyesflaring. It was an attitude of distrust, dashed with melancholy, ratherthan of challenge. Curiosity alone maintained it through the intervalrequired for decision. Cracker was deliberating.
There was Tight Cove and a condition of servitude to Timothy Light;there were the free, wild, famishing spaces of the timber beyond.Cracker must choose between them.
All at once, then, having brooded himself to a conclusion, Crackerbegan to wag and laugh in a fashion the most ingratiating to beimagined: and thereupon he fought himself to an established leadershipof Timothy Light's pack, as though to dispose, without delay, of thatnecessary little preliminary to distinction. And subsequently heaccepted the mastery of Timothy Light and fawned his way into securityfrom the alarmed abuse of the harbour folk; and eventually he settledhimself comfortably into the routine of Tight Cove life.
There were absences. These were invariably foreshadowed, at first, byyawning and a wretched depth of boredom. Cracker was ashamed of hisintentions. He would even attempt to conceal his increasing distaste forthe commonplaces of an existence in town by a suspiciously subservientobedience to all the commands of Timothy Light. It was apparent that hewas preparing for an excursion to the timber; and after a day or two ofwhimpering restlessness he would vanish.
It was understood, then, that Cracker was off a-visiting of his cronies.Sometimes these absences would be prolonged. Cracker had been gone amonth--had been caught, once, in a distant glance, with a pack oftimber wolves, from whom he had fled to hiding, like a boy detected inbad company. Cracker had never failed, however, to return from hisabandoned course, in reasonable season, as lean and ragged as a prodigalson, and in a chastened mood, to the respectability and plenty ofcivilization, even though it implied an acquiescence in the exigency ofhard labour.
Timothy Light excused the dog.
"He've got t' have his run abroad," said he. "I 'low that blood isthicker than water."
Cracker had a past. Timothy Light knew something of Cracker's past.What was respectable he had been told, with a good deal ofelaboration--concerning Cracker's feats of endurance on the longtrail, for example, accomplished with broken shoes, or no shoes atall, and bloody, frosted feet; and relating, with warm, wide-eyeddetail of a persuasively conscientious description, to Cracker'scheerful resistance of the incredible pangs of hunger on a certaincelebrated occasion.
Moreover, Cracker was a bully of parts. Cracker could bully adiscouraged team into a forlorn endeavour of an amazing degree of powerand courage. "As clever a dog as ever you seed, sir! Noshirkin'--ecod!--with Cracker t' keep watch on the dogs an' snap at theheels an' haunches o' the loafers." It was all true: Cracker was apowerful, clever, masterful, enduring beast in or out of harness, and amerciless driver of the dogs he led and had mastered.
"Give the devil his due!" Timothy Light insisted.
What was disreputable in Cracker's past--in the course of the dog tradeof questionable propriety referred to--Timothy Light had been left toexercise his wit in finding out for himself. Cracker was from thenorth--from Jolly Cove, by the Hen-an'-Chickens. And what Timothy Lightdid not know was this: Cracker had there been concerned in an affair sodoubtful, and of a significance so shocking, that, had the news of itgot abr
oad in Tight Cove, the folk would have taken the customaryprecaution as a defensive measure, in behalf of the children on theroads after dark, and as a public warning to all the dogs of Tight Cove,of hanging Cracker by the neck until he was dead.
Long John Wall, of Jolly Cove, on the way to the Post at Little Inlet,by dog team, in January weather, had been caught by the snow betweenGrief Head and the Tall Old Man; and Long John Wall had perished on theice--they found his komatik and clean bones in the spring of the year;but when the gale blew out, Long John Wall's dogs had returned to JollyCove in a fawning humour and a suspiciously well-fed condition.
The Jolly Cove youngster, the other party to the dog trade, neglected toinform Timothy Light--whose eyes had fallen enviously on the smoky,taut, splendid brute--that this selfsame Cracker which he coveted hadbullied and led Long John Wall's team on that tragic and indubitablybloody occasion.
His philosophy was ample to his need.
"In a dog trade," thought he with his teeth bare, when the bargain wasstruck, "'tis every man for hisself."
And so this blood-guilty, ruined young dog had come unsuspected to TightCove.