The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

big, wolf-like beast made no sound after that first growl, and made no movement. And yet every muscle in his body seemed gathered in a tense readiness to spring, and his gleaming fangs threatened. He was ferocious, and yet shrinking; ready to leap, and yet afraid. He was like a thing at bay--a hunted creature that had been prisoned. And then David noticed that he had but one good eye. It was bloodshot, balefully alert, and fixed on him like a round ball of fire. The lids had closed over his other eye; they were swollen; there was a big lump just over where the eye should have been. Then he saw that the beast's lips were cut and bleeding. There was blood on the snow; and suddenly the big brute covered his fangs to give a racking cough, as though he had swallowed a sharp fish-bone, and fresh blood dripped out of his mouth on the snow between his forepaws. One of these forepaws was twisted; it had been broken.
"You poor devil!" said David aloud.
He sat down on a birch log within six feet of the end of the chain, and looked steadily into the big husky's one bloodshot eye as he said again:
"You poor devil!"
Baree, the dog, did not understand. It puzzled him that this man did not carry a club. He was used to clubs. So far back as he could remember the club had been the one dominant thing in his life. It was a club that had closed his eye. It was a club that had broken one of his teeth and cut his lips, and it was a club that had beat against his ribs until--now--the blood came up into his throat and choked him, and dripped out of his mouth. But this man had no club, and he looked friendly.
"You poor devil!" said David for the third time.
Then he added, dark indignation in his voice:
"What, in God's name, has Thoreau been doing to you?"
There was something sickening in the spectacle--that battered, bleeding, broken creature huddling there against the tree, coughing up the red stuff that discoloured the snow. Loving dogs, he was not afraid of them, and forgetting Father Roland's warning he rose from the log and went nearer. From where he stood, looking down, Baree could have reached his throat. But he made no movement, unless it was that his thickly haired body was trembling a little. His one red eye looked steadily up at David.
For the fourth time David spoke;
"You poor, God-forsaken brute!"
There was friendliness, compassion, wonderment in his voice, and he held down a hand that he had drawn from one of the thick mittens. Another moment and he would have bent over, but a cry stopped him so sharply and suddenly that he jumped back.
Thoreau stood within ten feet of him, horrified. He clutched a rifle in one hand.
"Back--back, m'sieu!" he cried sharply. "For the love of God, jump back."
He swung his rifle into the crook of his arm. David did not move, and from Thoreau he looked down coolly at the dog. Baree was a changed beast. His one eye was fastened upon the fox breeder. His bared, bleeding lips revealed inch-long fangs between which there came now a low and menacing snarl. The tawny crest along his spine was like a brush; from a puzzled toleration of David his posture and look had changed into deadly hatred for Thoreau, and fear of him. For a moment after his first warning the Frenchman's voice seemed to stick in his throat as he saw what he believed to be David's fatal disregard of his peril. He did not speak to him again. His eyes were on the dog. Slowly he raised his rifle; David heard the click of the hammer--and Baree heard it. There was something in the sharp, metallic thrill of it that stirred his brute instinct. His lips fell over his fangs, he whined, and then, on his belly, he dragged himself slowly toward David!
It was a miracle that Thoreau the Frenchman looked upon then. He would have staked his very soul--wagered his hopes of paradise against a _babiche_ thread--that what he saw could never have happened between Baree and man. In utter amazement he lowered his gun. David, looking down, was smiling into that one, wide-open, bloodshot eye of Baree's, his hand reaching out. Foot by foot Baree slunk to him on his belly, and when at last he was at David's feet he faced Thoreau again, his terrible teeth snarling, a low, rumbling growl in his throat. David reached down and touched him, even as he heard the fox breeder make an incoherent sound in his beard. At the caress of his hand a great shudder passed through Baree's body, as if he had been stung. That touch was the connecting link through which passed the electrifying thrill of a man's soul reaching out to a brute instinct.
Baree had found a man friend!
When David stepped away from him to Thoreau's side as much of the Frenchman's face as was not hidden under his beard was of a curious ashen pallor. He seemed to make a struggle before he could get his voice.
And then: "M'sieu, I tell you it is incredible! I cannot believe what I have seen. It was a miracle!"
He shuddered. David was looking at him, a bit puzzled. He could not quite comprehend the fear that had possessed him. Thoreau saw this, and pointing to Baree--a gesture that brought a snarl from the beast--he said:
"He is bad, m'sieu, _bad_! He is the worst dog in all this country. He was born an outcast--among the wolves--and his heart is filled with murder. He is a quarter wolf, and you can't club it out of him. Half a dozen masters have owned him, and none of them has been able to club it out of him. I, myself, have beaten him until he lay as if dead, but it did no good. He has killed two of my dogs. He has leaped at my throat. I am afraid of him. I chained him to that tree a month ago to keep him away from the other dogs, and since then I have not been able to unleash him. He would tear me into pieces. Yesterday I beat him until he was almost dead, and still he was ready to go at my throat. So I am determined to kill him. He is no good. Step a little aside, m'sieu, while I put a bullet through his head!"
He raised his rifle again. David put a hand on it.
"I can unleash him," he said.
Before the other could speak, he had walked boldly to the tree. Baree did not turn his head--did not for an instant take his eye from Thoreau. There came the click of the snap that fastened the chain around the body of the spruce, and David stood with the loose end of the chain in his hand.
"There!"
He laughed a little proudly.
"And I didn't use a club," he added.
Thoreau gasped "_Mon Dieu_!" and sat down on the birch log as though the strength had gone from his legs.
David rattled the chain and then re-fastened it about the spruce. Baree was still watching Thoreau, who sat staring at him as if the beast had suddenly changed his shape and species.
In David's breast there was the thrill of a new triumph. He had done it unconsciously, without fear, and without feeling that there had been any great danger. In those few minutes something of his old self had returned into him; he felt a new excitement pumping the blood through his heart, and he felt the warm glow of it in his body. Baree had awakened something within him--Baree and the _club_. He went to Thoreau, who had risen from the log. He laughed again, a bit exultantly.
"I am going north with Father Roland," he said. "Will you let me have the dog, Thoreau? It will save you the trouble of killing him."
Thoreau stared at him blankly for a moment before he answered.
"That dog? You? Into the North?" He shot a look full of hatred and disgust at Baree. "Would you risk it, m'sieu?"
"Yes. It is an adventure I would very much like to try. You may think it strange, Thoreau, but that dog--ugly and fierce as he is--has found a place with me. I like him. And I fancy he has begun to like me."
"But look at his eye, m'sieu----"
"Which eye?" demanded David. "The one you have shut with a club?"
"He deserved it," muttered Thoreau. "He snapped at my hand. But I mean the other eye, m'sieu--the one that is glaring at us now like a red bloodstone with the heart of a devil in it! I tell you he is a quarter wolf...."
"And the broken paw. I suppose that was done by a club, too?" interrupted David.
"It was broken like that when I traded for him a year ago, m'sieu. I have not maimed him. And ... yes, you may have the beast! May the saints preserve you!"
"And his name?"
"The Indian who owned him as a puppy five years ago called him Baree, which among the Dog Ribs means Wild Blood. He should have been called The Devil."
Thoreau shrugged his shoulders, as though the matter and its consequences were now off his hands, and turned in the direction of the cabin. As he followed the Frenchman, David looked back at Baree. The big husky had risen from the snow. He was standing at the full length of his chain, and as David disappeared among the spruce a low whine that was filled with a strange yearning followed him. He did not hear the whine, but there came to him distinctly a moment later the dog's racking cough, and he shivered, and his eyes burned into Thoreau's broad back as he thought of the fresh blood-clots that were staining the white snow.


CHAPTER VIII
Much to Thoreau's amazement Father Roland made no objection to David's ownership of Baree, and when the Frenchman described with many gesticulations of wonder what had happened between that devil-dog and the man, he was still more puzzled by the look of satisfaction in the Little Missioner's face. In David there had come the sudden awakening of something which had for a long time been dormant within him, and Father Roland saw this change, and felt it, even before David said, when Thoreau had turned away with a darkly suggestive shrug of his shoulders:
"That poor devil of a beast is down and out, _mon Pere_. I have never been so bad as that; never. Kill him? Bah! If this magical north country of yours will make a man out of a human derelict it will surely work some sort of a transformation in a dog that has been clubbed into imbecility. Will it not?"
It was not the David of yesterday or the day before that was speaking. There was a passion in his voice, a deep contempt, a half taunt, a tremble of anger. There was a flush in his cheeks, too, and a spark of fire in his eyes. In his heart Father Roland whispered to himself that this change in David was like a conflagration, and he rejoiced without speaking, fearing that words might quench the effect of it.
David was looking at him as if he expected an answer.
"What an accursed fool a man is to waste his soul and voice in lamentation--especially his voice," he went on harshly, his teeth gleaming for an instant in a bitter smile. "One ought to act and not whine. That beast back there is ready to act. He would tear Thoreau's jugular out if he had