Читать книгу Brave Dogs - Lilian Gask - Страница 4

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Through the blackness of the night the stars shone down on the vast plains of whiteness. The waves that through the brief Arctic summer had ebbed and flowed round the rock-bound coast were silent now, fast locked in ice, and not a breath stirred amid the pines that sheltered the long, low, two-roomed house in which a tired man was sleeping. John Farrant had built that house himself, with some small help from the friendly Cree Indians; and that he had taken a Double First at Cambridge seemed a small thing to him in comparison.

“Jolly good house!” he murmured drowsily, as he woke for a moment at a wailing chorus from the huskies that formed his team. “Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooO!” they howled, and every dog within hearing distance answered the melancholy sound. “Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooO!” it rose and fell; but Dr John had ceased to hear it. A long day’s drive in the bitter cold to visit a patient across the bay had made sleep come to him readily.

Up on the roof, snuggled under the snow, lay some of the serenaders. It was warmer there than anywhere else outside with the thermometer at twenty below zero; and warmth was what Black Nell wanted. Very near, and pressing hard against her, were three new-born pups, as black as she, with blunt noses and shining eyes. As she licked their rough heads, sighing faintly with rapture, her first-born touched the tip of her muzzle with his own moist, red tongue.

The stars were hidden now, and more snow was falling, flake after flake, till the tall green pines bent under the load they bore. Black Nell was heavy, and her pups were big. As they pushed one another out of the way, she moved suddenly to rebuke them; and plop! on John Farrant, as he lay dreaming, fell a tangled mass of hairy puppies with several hundredweight of snow.

This was John’s introduction to Thor, who had landed right on his head. Instead of yelping like his brother and sister, now actively engaged in trying to tear a rug, Thor vented his feelings in a strong, deep growl, surprisingly loud for his size.

The doctor freed himself with difficulty, too astonished to be indignant. Though new to the North, he had heard that roofs fell in, but his roof! It was incredible.

Thor continued to growl, and while Black Nell, glad to be under shelter, took possession for her pups of the deep wicker chair John’s mother had sent from home, he scrambled unsteadily back to the bed and defied Dr John to do his worst.

John was too busy feeding the stove to take much notice of him then, but it flashed through his mind as he piled on more wood that ‘Thor’ must be the youngster’s name.

“It was thunder, not lightning, that bothered my roof,” he said, in writing to his old mother. “Thor’s going to be a fine fellow,” he added, “or I am much mistaken.”

His faith was justified. The Newfoundland blood Thor had from his father marked him out among the huskies, his mother’s kindred. From his early puppyhood he was almost human, or so it seemed to his master.

“Don’t know what I should do without you!” Dr John would sometimes say, and it was no more than the truth. The loneliness of this bleak white land was in striking contrast to the city practice he had left in answer to its call, and Thor’s welcome alone made the bare house ‘home’ after his long day of work. Thor never barked, but his growl of pleasure was sharply defined from the thunderous sounds that rumbled in his throat when the doctor was in bed and some one came to the door.

“Gently, gently,” John would say, and Thor would subside into a suspicious stillness.

Nothing pleased him more than to steal into the surgery when his master’s back was turned, there to watch the measuring of pills and potions, which he wistfully regarded as strange rewards in which he had no share. There were times, of course, when his strong will came into collision with the doctor’s, as when he neglected his share of white-fish to feast on moccasins hung out to dry, or on the corner of a moose-skin rug. So adept was he at stealing snared rabbits that for a long time he was not found out. Caught at last in the act by an Eskimo boy, he was reported to Dr John, who gave him his first thrashing.

Thor took this in silence, making no sound, and vanished for three whole days. On the fourth he returned, another rabbit in his mouth, and his head held high in defiance.

This time the doctor tried another plan. Fastening him up outside the dispensary, he tied the rabbit round his neck so that he could not get at it, and there it remained till night. The injured natives, duly coached, made frequent visits to jeer at him, and by evening Thor had had enough of rabbits to sicken him of them for ever.

Another black day in his young life was the first of his training for team work. Harnessed with a couple of old dogs in front of him, and another behind who snapped at his ankles if given the slightest excuse, he was dragged forward whether he would or no at his trainer’s sharp command to “Marche!” A shout of “Chaw!” meant turn to the right; “Yee!” to the left; while “Isse” added on either meant that he was to turn back on the trail to the side that had last been mentioned. When released, after some rough handling from the others, he was off to the woods like a shot. He did not return until nightfall.

Dr John heard him breathing outside the door, and hastened to let him in.

“Bravo!” he said cheerfully, stroking the great head. “You’ll do finely to-morrow, old man. It’s a splendid game when you try it!”

Thor growled, but quite gently. If he did not understand the new point of view the doctor put before him, he knew he was being praised; and praise from his master was as sweet to him as ridicule was bitter. There was no more trouble with him in the team, and his achievements later on as leader are still remembered on the island.

When the ice over which he had to travel, in some places several inches thick, was being ‘candled’—separated into long, crisp splinters by the bright sunshine of early spring—he wound his team in and out among it, skirting dangerous places with judgment and skill, and always reaching his goal. Sometimes when the snow lay thick across the trail an Indian guide ran on ahead, but this was rarely necessary with Thor. “He knows,” would say the guide; and in some queer way he did.

Early one morning a wandering Cree brought a message that some one was very sick on a lonely farm beyond the lake. Packing his sledge with medicine and stores, and taking an old guide with him, the doctor set out at once. The sky was clear; if all went well they would be home before dusk.

Thor was in great form, and the dogs behind him kept well up to the pace he set. The journey to the farm was uneventful, though sharp little gusts of wind came and went, and the guide began to look anxious.

“Him blizzard, he come soon,” he nodded. And Thor, as though he knew what had been said, went at a speed that left his followers breathless.

The patient, a gentle grey-eyed woman, was so ill that the only chance for her life was to take her at once to hospital. Leaving a note for her husband, a trapper, who might not be home for some days, Dr John rolled her in a pile of blankets and carried her out to the sledge. Two wondering small boys, whom she could not leave behind, were tucked in beside her in a nest of furs, and thought it a very good joke.

And now it was decided to skirt the lake, as the trail on the left bank was not so rough—a great advantage to the invalid. Once more the dogs set off at full speed, for Thor, like the Indian, knew the meaning of those sharp gusts that now seemed to come from every quarter. The whirling snow made it more and more difficult to see where they were going, but he had often found his way in the teeth of a raging storm.

“Go ahead, old boy,” said Dr John cheerfully. “We’re leaving it to you, you know.”

And Thor did his best, avoiding dangerous places, winding his team in and out on rocky ground and making straight for home. The blizzard shrieked and howled; the little boys, in their furry nest, hid their faces against each other, while their mother, too spent to ask what was happening, was satisfied to feel them near.

“We can’t be far from the settlement now,” the doctor shouted to his companion. He had scarcely spoken when Thor, to his dismay, flung himself down on the snow.

Nothing would move him. Sharp blows from the guide, his master’s reproaches, the sting of the whip, brought from him never a sound. Like a dead weight he lay across the track, his harness twisted and tangled.

The guide, in despair, ran on a few paces to see if he could make out some landmark that would give him an idea of where they were. In a minute or two he groped his way back, shaken and horror-struck.

“Thor—Thor—he save us all!” he panted. They had come to a point where a river joined the lake, and here the current was so strong that the ice above—barely two inches thick—would not have been strong enough to bear them.

Thor got up stiffly when, instead of being commanded to go forward, he was told to turn on the trail. Left to himself, he went back for some half-mile, and crossing the lake at another point, brought them all to the settlement in safety.

When Dr John returned from the hospital, having done what he could for the comfort of his patient and seen the children warmed and fed, the dogs were ravenously devouring seal flesh, thawed out of the ice for them.

All but one. Thor was missing. The storm was over now, and the moon, riding over the clouds like a queen, threw gleaming silver on the snow. Some three or four hundred yards from the house a solitary form loomed dark on the ice-field, motionless, sullen, grim.

“Thor!” called his master. “Thor! come here!”

But once again Thor disobeyed....

Dr John was cold and hungry. The basin of steaming soup on his table, his slippers set out before a roaring fire, and the knowledge that in less than ten minutes he might be called out again, tempted him to leave Thor to come to his senses—to stay there all night if he would. But Thor had saved their lives.... A short, sharp run, and the two of them were side by side, Thor looking steadfastly the other way as though he were still alone.

The doctor had an inspiration.

“Well done!” he cried heartily. “Well done! Well done! I’m proud of you, old man!”

Thor turned round slowly, felt his master’s touch, and forgiving and forgetting those unjust blows, went back with him to share his supper.