Jan: A Dog and a Romance Part 23

"Call your dog off, Sergeant, or he'll be killed," shouted d.i.c.k.

Sergeant Moore spake no word. In his queer heart intelligence of d.i.c.k's fame rankled bitterly, yet not so bitterly as the fact of Jan's return to barracks. His obsession made him certain in his own mind that the redoubtable Sourdough could certainly kill any dog. And so he spake no word while Sourdough flew at Jan.

And for Jan, as he caught sight in the gloaming of his ancient enemy, his hackles had risen very stiffly, his pendent lips had twitched ominously.

Jan was perfectly well aware that the killing of Sourdough or any other dog he had seen since his return to cities would be a supremely easy matter for him. Indeed it would be for almost any dog having his experience of the wild. And having in his simple dog mind no shadow of a reason for sparing Sourdough, of all creatures that walked, one may take it that Jan savored with some joyousness the prospect of the killing which Sourdough's snarling rush presented to him.

He received that rush with a peculiar s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g thrust of his left shoulder, the commonest trick among fighting-dogs in the northland, but one for which old Sourdough seemed totally unprepared, since he made no apparent preparation to withstand it, and as an inevitable consequence was rolled clean over on his back by the force of his own impetus, scientifically met.

That, by all the rules in the northland game of which Jan was a past-master, brought Sourdough within seconds of his end. The throat was exposed; the deadly underhold, given which no dog breathing could evade Jan.

And at that moment came d.i.c.k's voice in very urgent and meaning exhortation:

"Back, Jan! Don't kill him. He's too old. Back--here--Jan!"

Jan's jaws had parted for the killing grip. His whole frame was perfectly poised for the thrust from which no dog placed as Sourdough was could possibly escape. A swift shudder pa.s.sed through him as though his sovereign's words reached him on a cold blast, and, stiff-legged, wondering, his shoulder hair all erect, and jaws still parted for the fray, Jan stepped back to d.i.c.k's side.

"You'll have to keep that old tough in to heel if you mean to save him, Sergeant," said Captain Arnutt. "You can't expect Jan to lie down to him. Why don't you keep him in to heel, man?"

The sergeant pa.s.sed on, saluting, without a word. Doubtless he had liefer far that Captain Arnutt had hit him in the face. But, when all is said, no words could hurt this curious monomaniac now, after that which he had seen with his own eyes and that which he now saw.

Complete enlightenment had come to old Sourdough in one fraction of a moment. In the moment when he reached earth, on his back, flung there by his impact with the calculated s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g thrust of Jan's ma.s.sive shoulder, Sourdough knew that his day was over. He expected to die then and there, and was prepared to die. Contact with Jan had told him in a flash things which could not be written in a page. He tasted in that moment the cold-drawn, pitiless efficiency of the methods of the northland wild, and realized that he could no more stand against this new Jan than a lady's house-bred lap-dog could have stood against himself. As his feet left the ground his life was ended, as Sourdough saw it.

And then had come Jan's miraculous, shuddering withdrawal, wholly inexplicable, chilling to the heart in its uncanny unexpectedness.

Sourdough mechanically regained his footing, and then with low-hung head, inward-curling tail, and crouching shoulders he slunk away at the heel of his bitterly disappointed master. The collapse of this old invincible within a few seconds was a rather horrid sight and a very strange and startling one.

From that hour Sourdough was never again seen in the precincts of the R.N.W.M.P. barracks, and, though many people puzzled over the old dog's disappearance, none ever knew what became of him. The sergeant had been for some time ent.i.tled to retire from the service. That night he obtained his commanding officer's permission to do so.

x.x.xIX

HOW JAN CAME HOME

Captain Arnutt proved himself a friend indeed to d.i.c.k Vaughan. Once he had come to understand the position, he fully sympathized with d.i.c.k's wish to leave the service at once and return to England. That sympathy he proceeded forthwith to translate into action, and within the month Sergeant-Inspector d.i.c.k Vaughan had received his discharge and booked his pa.s.sage--with Jan's--for England.

Despite his elation over the prospect before him, d.i.c.k found the actual parting with his comrades in Regina a good deal of a wrench. They were fond of him, and of Jan, and proud of both. And d.i.c.k found when the packing was over and valedictory remarks begun that these men had entered pretty deeply into his life and general scheme of things.

They were good fellows all, these hard, spare, long-limbed riders of the plains, and they and the North-west had made of the d.i.c.k who was now bidding them good-by a man radically different in a hundred ways from the careless, irresponsible, light-hearted d.i.c.k who had come to them a few years back direct from kindly, indulgent Suss.e.x.

d.i.c.k had become a fit and proper part of his western environment and had "made good" in it, as the saying is. We most of us like doing that which we do well. d.i.c.k's mature and able manhood had come to him in the West.

He would never lose it now, however far eastward he might travel.

But--the West and the good folk tugged pretty hard at his heart-strings, as from the rear platform of his car on the east-bound train he watched the waving stiff-brimmed hats of his comrades, and a little later the last of the roofs of Saskatchewan's capital fading out in the distance.

Hard land as many have found it, hard though it had been in many ways for d.i.c.k, the North-west had forced its bracing, stimulating spirit into his being and made him the man he was, just so surely as the northland wilderness had made of Jan the wonderful hound he now was.

And d.i.c.k left it all with a swelling heart; not unwillingly, because he was going to a great promised happiness, but with a swelling heart none the less, and a kind of mistiness of vision, due in great measure to the real respect, the sincere grat.i.tude he felt toward the land and life and people who had helped him to make of himself a very much bigger and better man than any previous efforts of his had promised to evolve out of the same material in Suss.e.x, for example.

Winter ruled still in the land, and so the actual seaboard--Halifax--and not the big St. Lawrence port, was rail-head for d.i.c.k and Jan. But for Jan the enforced confinement of the journey was greatly softened by regular daily visits from his lord. And in Halifax two and a half days of almost unbroken companionship awaited them before their steamer left.

This homeward journey was a totally different matter for Jan from the outward trip. It was true he gave no thought to England as yet. But he perfectly understood the general idea of travel. He knew that he and his lord were on a journey together, that certain temporary separations were an unavoidable feature of this sort of traveling, and that, the journey done, the two of them would come together again. The sum of Jan's knowledge, his reasoning powers, and his faculties of observation and deduction were a hundredfold greater now than at the time of his departure from England.

Jan loathed the close confinement of his life at sea, but he did not rebel against it, neither was he cast down by it. He knew that it was to be no more than a brief interlude, and he understood quite well that though, unfortunately, men-folk had so arranged things that he must be kept out of sight of his sovereign, save during those daily intervals of delight in which d.i.c.k visited him in his house beside the butcher's shop, yet his lord was in the same vessel with him, at no great distance from him, and bound with him for the one destination. He knew that he and d.i.c.k were traversing the one trail.

And sure enough the morning came at length, after all their shared divagations since the night of meeting beside the Peace River trail, when Jan stood beside his lord again, under the open sky and on the steamer's boat-deck, watching the rapidly nearing sh.o.r.es of England.

Many pictures were pa.s.sing through Jan's mind, some inspired by memory of the tense, strenuous life he had left behind him in the northland, but a larger number having for background and subjects scenes that he remembered in his old life in Suss.e.x-by-the-Sea.

The steamer was in yellow tidal waters now, with land close in all about her. As Jan reached the open deck he had drawn in first one and then another and another long, tremulous, deep breaths which, pa.s.sing through the infinitely delicate test-tubes of his wonderful nostrils, recorded in his brain impressions more vivid and accurate than any that vision could supply to him.

In this air, incalculably more soft and humid than any he had breathed for many a long day, were subtly distinctive qualities that were quite easily recognized by Jan. Well he knew now the meaning of this voyaging.

Well he knew that this was England. It was this knowledge made him lift his muzzle and touch d.i.c.k's left hand with his tongue. The other hand held binoculars through which d.i.c.k was gazing fixedly at the line of wharfs they were approaching.

"Well, old chap," said he, in answer to the meaning touch. "You know all about it, eh? I believe you do; begad, I quite believe you do. Well, see if you can understand this: On the wharf there, where we shall be in a few minutes, there's old Finn, your sire, waiting, and the Pater and the Master, and--and there's Betty, Jan, boy, there's sweet Betty standing there, and she's waiting for you and me. She's waiting there for us, Jan, boy, and we're never going away from her again, old chap--never, as long as ever we live."

And if Jan did not understand it all just then he did very soon afterward, when he felt Betty Murdoch's arms about his neck, and lordly gray old Finn was sniffing and nuzzling friendly-wise about his flanks.

Jan fully understood then that after all his far wanderings he had at the last of it come home.

THE END