oo. But--

"Don' mark heem, Jake! Don' touch hees head."

Jean might be ever so angry, but he never lost his temper. He might
punish ever so sorely, but he never lost sight of his main objective and
could not be induced to knock dollars off his own property. Incidentally
he knew precisely what his aching hunger meant to Jan, and why the big
dog stole. But that knowledge did not weigh one atom with Jean in
apportioning Jan's food, or his punishment for stealing; both being
meted out, not with any view to Jan's comfort, but solely with the aim
of protecting the food-supply and keeping up Jan's value in dollars. For
Jean, before and above all else, was able; a finished product of the
quite pitiless wilderness in which he made out, not only to survive
where many went under, but in surviving to prosper.

XXVII

MUTINY IN THE TEAM

Jean made sure he would sell Jan at Fort Frontenac. And that he did not
was due to accidental causes over which he had no control.

Jean asked three hundred dollars. The would-be buyer--a man pretty
nearly as able as Jean himself in northland craft--had only two hundred
in cash; but possessed, besides, an invincible objection to owing or
borrowing. (Resembling Jean in his knowledge of the wild, he was
curiously different in most other ways, having a good deal of sentiment
and a keen, almost conventional sense of honor.)

"He's worth three hundred, all right," said the man--who hailed from New
England--when he had seen Jan at work.

"You bet," said Jean, laconically.

"But I just haven't got the money, or he'd be my dog."

Jean grinned. "Ah, well, eet's money talks," said he. And on that they
parted; for this last talk between them came when Jean's team was
pulling out for the north-west, after a profitable little rest-time in
which Jean had exchanged a little rubbish for a lot of good food and a
quite considerable wad of dollars.

But Jean did, on occasion, make mistakes; not vital mistakes, but slips
that might injure his pocket. He made one when he put Jan in the lead,
and named Bill wheeler, in place of Blackfoot. Jean wanted to make a
completely educated dog of Jan as soon as might be. But he did not want
to lose Bill--a very useful dog--nor yet to injure Blackfoot's health
and efficiency. Bill, as leader reduced to wheeling, made Blackfoot's
life a hell upon earth for the kindly wise old dog with Newfoundland
blood in him; and that, of course, was not good for Blackfoot.