fought back because it was his nature to fight back. And he was
unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of lash and club, he none
the less contrived always to throw in the defiant snarl, the bitter
vindictive menace of his soul which fetched without fail more blows and
beatings. But his was his mother's tenacious grip on life. Nothing
could kill him. He flourished under misfortune, grew fat with famine,
and out of his terrible struggle for life developed a preternatural
intelligence. His were the stealth and cunning of the husky, his mother,
and the fierceness and valour of the wolf, his father.

Possibly it was because of his father that he never wailed. His puppy
yelps passed with his lanky legs, so that he became grim and taciturn,
quick to strike, slow to warn. He answered curse with snarl, and blow
with snap, grinning the while his implacable hatred; but never again,
under the extremest agony, did Leclere bring from him the cry of fear nor
of pain. This unconquerableness but fanned Leclere's wrath and stirred
him to greater deviltries.

Did Leclere give Batard half a fish and to his mates whole ones, Batard
went forth to rob other dogs of their fish. Also he robbed caches and
expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he became a terror to all
dogs and masters of dogs. Did Leclere beat Batard and fondle
Babette--Babette who was not half the worker he was--why, Batard threw
her down in the snow and broke her hind leg in his heavy jaws, so that
Leclere was forced to shoot her. Likewise, in bloody battles, Batard
mastered all his team-mates, set them the law of trail and forage, and
made them live to the law he set.

In five years he heard but one kind word, received but one soft stroke of
a hand, and then he did not know what manner of things they were. He
leaped like the untamed thing he was, and his jaws were together in a
flash. It was the missionary at Sunrise, a newcomer in the country, who
spoke the kind word and gave the soft stroke of the hand. And for six
months after, he wrote no letters home to the States, and the surgeon at
McQuestion travelled two hundred miles on the ice to save him from blood-
poisoning.

Men and dogs looked askance at Batard when he drifted into their camps
and posts. The men greeted him with feet threateningly lifted for the
kick, the dogs with bristling manes and bared fangs. Once a man did kick
Batard, and Batard, with quick wolf snap, closed his jaws