by Max Brand
“Whatever he was,” snapped out Massey suddenly, “I know what he is today. If you turned him crazy, we’ll turn him crazier still. To have you — to lose you — to know that you’re in my hands! Why, if he doesn’t drop dead with spite, like a snake that’s bitten himself, he’ll come rushing out on our trail as fast as he can go! Let him come! Let him come even with slow dogs, for he’ll find that we’re not traveling too fast for him. Oh, he’ll be able to catch up with us!”
I watched the girl, and saw that she was straining her ears to hear these last words, but that she had failed.
Then Massey came out of his frenzy and mastered himself, as he was able to do, in a moment.
He hurried across to the girl and dropped a hand on her shoulder. He said: “I’ve been carrying on a strange way. I want you to try to overlook that. From now on, if you’ll put yourself in my hands, you’ll find that I’m straight with you, kind to you, and that I’ve taken the edge off my tongue. Will you try me?”
This put me in a strange mental mood.
The reason for this quick change in his attitude toward her was sufficiently clear. He simply saw with clarity that she would be the perfect bait with which he might capture Calmont. The whole thing spread before me with a wonderful simplicity. He would probably leave enough clues for Calmont to follow, and then take to the road and draw Calmont after him.
Certainly, Calmont would attack, if he got close enough for the purpose, and such an attack was exactly what Massey wanted.
That would free him from his oath and leave his hands unburdened to defend himself. And of all that he wanted between earth and sky, there was nothing so dear to him as a chance to finish off with Calmont.
This was pretty much the way of the course his mind was taking, as I guessed then, and as I saw proved later on. I wondered if the girl would guess any of this. She was watching Massey’s changed face intently. Then she said: “I don’t know what’s going on in your mind. I don’t even know what sort of a plan you could have to help me.”
He said: “It’s a big job and a long one. We want to get out of the country where you made this bargain, and before so many witnesses. You want to get into Canada, say, as fast as possible. Now, there are several hundred miles of frozen sea, and rough overland, and the river ice of the Yukon to trek over before we could get to Forty Mile. But that’s where I propose taking you. Will you go?”
She sat up as straight as a rod. Her eyes were so big that she looked as though she were trying to read in the dark. She was trying to read — the soul of Massey.
She looked across at me blankly, as the Herculean dimensions of this suggestion came home to her.
Clear across Alaska to the Canadian border!
‘The boy ‘11 go with us,” put in Massey. “He’ll be our escort, as one might say. Our chaperon!”
He spoke very quietly. He laughed, and the laughter was like the subdued purring of a cat, as if he wanted his words to glide without a jar into her mind and become a part of her own thinking. Yes, he was almost tremulously eager, now, that she should accept his offer. She was straining to fathom its possibilities, but at last she broke out: “There’s no one else who could help me. I don’t know what’s in your mind. I don’t know why you’re willing to do such a thing for me. But I’ll go! Several hundred miles? Oh, I’d go thousands and thousands!”
“Good!” cried Massey.
He snapped his fingers. His face turned to ice again, and he began to pace up and down the room once more, with his eyes deep in thought. Finally he paused by the stove, and the dog, pausing with him, sat down to watch the wise human face above.
“Are you very strong?” he asked the girl.
“I’m mustang tough,” she said, without a smile.
“You’ll need all your toughness. What about clothes? Have you got an outfit for a march? Do you even know what such an outfit should be?”
“I know everything about it,” she said. “I’ve every scrap that I need.”
One could tell, by the way she said it, that she must have been turning the idea of a flight over in her mind, before this. Whatever were the strange circumstances connected with her stay in Nome, and whatever had made her sacrifice herself for the sake of eleven thousand dollars — I would have paid with pain to know the secret — she declared that she had every item ready for the longest sort of a trip. She had snowshoes and skis, both, and simply wanted to know which she should take along.
She said these things with a touch of eagerness, so that it was plain that she wanted to be in the fight of that long march as quickly as possible.
“You can get to your house,” said Massey, “and make up your pack. It won’t be too heavy for you to carry back here, I take it?”
She shook her head. She watched him almost like Alec, waiting for orders.
“Bring both the skis and the snowshoes. We can afford that much extra weight, and we’ll save time on a long march if we have both. If you have a medicine chest, leave it behind you. We’ll do enough hard work to keep us healthy on a long march. Now, hurry along.”
She walked out of that house without a word and, as the door closed behind her, I turned and gaped like a fish at Massey. He went on in the same brisk way to me:
“Go down to the Penley store and get an outfit. Pick out everything you need and get fitted. Do you know what’s needed for a long trip?”
I said I did, but that I supposed the store would not be open at this time of the night. But he assured me that the place never closed now that the spring was coming on and the midnight was still bright. He said that Penley himself owed him an account, and that I was to get the best. He gave me a note, instructing the store to charge what I wanted against him.
“Massey,” I said, “are you really going to do what you say? Are you really going to try to make the trip all the way to Forty Mile from Nome?”
He looked at me for a moment with an ugly lifting of his lip.
“I’m going to try to do it, and I’m going to succeed,” he said. “We’re going through to Forty Mile, and you’ll be with us if you have the nerve to stick out the marching.
“I’ll stick!” I said.
Stick with him? Why Nome to me was simply a cold cell, and any change had to be for the better.
I went trudging off to the store, and there I fitted myself out. I knew pretty much what I wanted and needed, and Penley himself made a good many suggestions. He asked if Massey himself were leaving Nome on a long trip, and was as keen as a ferret to find out. But I had sense enough to keep my mouth shut. I got well suited, though the boots were a little too big for me, and then I turned and slogged back to Massey’s house on my brand new snowshoes, with the skis under my arm.
This trying and buying had taken a good deal of time and, when I got back to the house of Massey, I found there in the street a string of eight dogs in front of three sleds. I knew at once that this was the outfit for the long march, and I liked every angle of it. The Yukon hitch is the only one, and the little seven-foot sleds have every advantage on the trail when it comes to going over obstacles or winding among thick woods. They’ll crawl along like a caterpillar and, if anything goes wrong with one of the three sleds, or it is overturned, it can be righted easily, whereas the bigger sleds have to be half unloaded before they can be handled.
I was surprised to find that there was quite a crowd turned out to watch the last of the loading of those sleds. Two men were busied at this job, the bystanders offering suggestions and admiring the dogs.
They were, in fact, as fine a lot as ever pulled in a harness in Alaska, I think. They were Mackenzie huskies, bred for size, and hand-picked, I suppose, out of thousands. The sled dog was the most powerful-looking brute I ever saw. Massey told me that he weighed exactly a hundred and seventy pounds, not when he was fat, but when he was in working flesh. In addition, there was a leader hardly five pounds lighter, and the average of that whole string of eight must have been over a hundred and fifty pounds.
One of the men tapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re the kid Massey spoke about, are you?” he said. “Come along with me!”
I helped break out the runners, the steel having frozen into the snow during even the short halt and, as the word was given, the team leaned into the harness and we marched off down the street.
The long adventure had begun.
XI. BATTLE OF THE DOGS
I WENT ON with those two strangers until we were outside of Nome, and then they turned around without a word and marched back to the town, while I trailed along after the moving sled, wondering what was to become of me and feeling mighty lonely in the bigness and the whiteness of the world around me.
Inside a hundred yards, however, two forms came around the edge of a snow hummock, with Alec the Great behind them. They swung in beside me, then Massey moved out in front on his snowshoes, and went ahead of the lead dog, to break trail. The girl and I came along behind, and we were fairly launched on our long, long journey.
For the first ten days, I think that I turned my head and looked at the horizon behind us at least a thousand times every twenty-four hours, but there was never a sign of pursuers. After that I almost forgot Calmont, and I began to have a feeling that Massey had undertaken this huge job merely for the sake of saving the girl. Yet I doubted that. I doubted it with all my might, and kept a certain suspicion always in mind.
Dreary, heart-breaking weeks of labor opened before us and dragged away behind. A more uneventful trip no one could possibly imagine in the beginning; but what kept my nerves taut was a certain forward look in the eyes of Massey, as though he were leaning his shoulders against a high wind of chance that was sure to promise trouble before the end. In the meantime, the breaking into that labor was enough to occupy our attention, you can be sure.
One had to grow used to the muscle strain of snowshoes and skis — each requiring a different set. And before we had been going a week, we all could bless the wisdom of Massey in making us take along both kinds of footgear.
The load was almost entirely food for man and dog, and it was very heavy. I think there was close to three quarters of a ton for the eight dogs to pull, and they snaked it along slowly. I imagine that we hardly covered more than twenty miles a day at the beginning, and those twenty miles were enough for me and for the girl. She was what she had called herself, however — mustang tough. And she worked into marching condition very quickly. My own misery in Nome had burned the fat off me. It was simply a question of working up the necessary muscle, and muscles grow nowhere so fast as they do on a snow trail.
As the dogs grew hardened to their work, as the girl and I became more tough and proficient with the snowshoes and skis, we made better and better time. Besides, the load of food was, of course, slowly diminishing.
Several times we ran into storms that stopped us for long hours. But on the whole, we marched along very steadily, clicking off a good average. At night we camped, put up the two little tents, got the traveling stove going, and cooked bacon, flapjacks, and tea. We had some pemmican, too, put up Indian style. At first I thought that that was the worst food I ever tasted, but it seemed to get better from day to day, and within a fortnight, it was a delicacy. Pound for pound, I doubt if a finer article of food existed — such nourishment and taste in such compass.
The picking of the trail was entirely in the hands of Massey. He had three charts, done roughly in ink on thick pieces of paper, and over these charts he used to brood almost every night, sitting for a time by the fire. Then he and I went to the cold tent and left the warm one for the girl.
We were a silent trio.
Massey never was a chatterer, and the girl had too great an anxiety on her shoulders to do a great deal of talking. After a while we had our jaws locked and our teeth set against speech, as though the escape of a word would be the wastage of a vital spark.
I can remember almost every word that was said during the first part of the trip. Almost all of these were spoken by Massey to Alec the Great. For Alec was being taught how to answer the words of command and all the art of leading a string of dogs, which was something he already knew pretty well. He simply had to have the fine points at the tips of his toes, so to speak. So, each day, he was put in on extra traces ahead of the big gray leader.
That dog went almost mad with indignation. He had to be muzzled to keep him from jumping on Alec and breaking his back for him; and he struggled so frantically to get at Alec that the young dog could be left in harness for only an hour or so at a stretch. He picked up the sledding art with wonderful speed, however.
One day, during a halt, Massey stood with his feet spread, snapping the long lash of the dog whip at Alec, who was free from harness at that time. The big, limber fellow enjoyed that game enormously. According as the lash flicked out at him with a down cut, or a slash to either side, he winced back, dropped flat so that the whip sang over him, or popped into the air so that it slid beneath him. He loved the dodging game, and there was enough wolf blood in him to give him a special talent for it. Considering his size, I never saw a dog who compared with Alec the Great for speed of foot. He not only had a natural talent, but he had been trained since puppyhood by Massey in the art of balance. I could believe what I had heard, that he could even walk a tightrope.
Said Massey, as he vainly cut and slashed at that big shadow: “I don’t think there’s a dog in Alaska that could put a tooth in Alec.”
“Well,” I said, “you wouldn’t risk a ten-thousand-dollar brain on a fight with a two-hundred-dollar husky, would you?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“No team follows well a leader that it doesn’t fear,” he said. “That gray brute, yonder, that Misty — he can have it out with Alec when we camp, tonight.”
I thought that he could not mean it, but when the end of the march came that day, he took Misty out of the traces, allowed him a couple of hours for resting, and then got Alec out of the tent, where he was sleeping at our feet.
Those sled dogs all hated Alec with a fury, because he was the manhandled pet of the party. But they had learned, by dint of whip strokes and club whacks as well, that it paid to leave the favorite alone. However, this evening Massey said something to Misty, and pushed Alec at the great leader.
That was enough of an invitation. Misty rushed like an arrow off the string. Alec dodged with such ease that he had to turn his head toward his master and ask, with his eyes, what this proceeding might mean, and why protection had been withdrawn from him. But Massey simply turned his back.
It must have been a frightful moment for Alec. Every young dog is keenly aware that it has not yet come to its eventual, hardened strength, and it willingly shows the white feather. As Misty charged, Alec, his tail between his legs, yipped for help, and tried to get between Massey’s legs. He was promptly kicked away, and from that instant he seemed to guess that he was fighting for his life.
It was a grand fight, too, while it lasted. Misty was pretty well tired out by his long labors of the day, but at the same time there was enough energy left in him to beat and eat two or three ordinary dogs. There were no two dogs in the outfit, including the huge wheeler, who dared to take on Misty in battle. However, poor young Alec had to fight as well as he could, or else die. So it must have seemed to him.
He could not even take refuge in flight. He knew that if he turned tail and ran for it, the seven brutes who stood around in hostility with the fur rising along their backs would cut loose and be after him in no time at all. He had to stand his ground, or else be eaten by the pack. So he stood his ground.
For the first couple of minutes, I held my breath, expecting that Alec would go down under those charges in no time, and perhaps have his throat torn by the knife stroke of Misty’s teeth. Then I began to breathe more easily, for I saw that Alec was dodging those battle strokes as easily as a dead leaf in the air whirls from a beating hand.
His own courage rose. His tail came out from between his legs. In another ins
tant, he gave Misty a nip as the big fellow went by like an express train; and on the next charge he followed the nip with a slash that split hide over Misty’s left shoulder.
Misty, furious, panting, half blind, I suppose, with rage and astonishment, stopped charging for a moment, and on braced legs waited for further developments. Young Alec, it appeared, was not only an adept at battle, but, above all, he knew how to deliver an insult in dog gesture. He turned a little away from Misty and licked up a bit of snow, with his side presented to the leader.
It was too much for the latter. He went in with a silent fury, and hit the air again. He whirled, skidding in the soft surface snow which already had been reduced to powder by the trampling. As he straggled, young Alec got him. He had saved his stroke until he saw an opening as wide as a barn door. Now he flashed in, and with a good solid thump of his shoulder he knocked Misty sprawling on his back. Alec did not stand back and let the other fellow get up. There was no standing on rule about Alec. He simply hopped on Misty and clamped the safest of holds on him. I mean, he caught him under the jaws and began to work his grip in toward the life.
Misty could lie and kick, but that was all. The fight was over, and Massey, with a single word, made Alec jump back from his enemy.
Misty lay a moment on his side, with lolling tongue, while Alec stood stiff and high above him, daring him so much as to whisper a discourtesy. Misty did not dare. He had had enough. The rest of the dogs had had enough to fill their eyes, also. They lay down in the snow and licked their forefeet thoughtfully, and poor Misty finally got up and staggered away to get distance between him and this young terror of a man-trained fencer.
Well, it was on the whole a very neat exhibition.
“I never saw anything like it,” I gasped to Marjorie.