 Section No. 7. Battered of the Faith of Men. Battered by Jack London. Battered was a devil. This was recognized throughout the Northland. Hell's spawn, he was called by many men. But his master, Black Lecler, chose for him the shameful name Battered. Now Black Lecler was also a devil, and the twain were well matched. There is a saying that when two devils come together, hell is to pay. This is to be expected, and this certainly was to be expected when Battered and Black Lecler came together. The first time they met, Battered was a part-grown puppy, lean and hungry, with bitter eyes, and they met with snap and snarl, and wicked looks. For Lecler's upper lip had a wolfish way of lifting and showing the white, cruel teeth. And it lifted then, and his eyes gleamed viciously as he reached for Battered and dragged him out from the squirming litter. It was certain that they devined each other, for on the instant Battered had buried his puppy fangs in Lecler's hand, and Lecler, thumb and finger, was coolly choking his young life out of him. Jecredam, the Frenchman said softly, flirting the quick blood from his bitten hand, and gazing down on the little puppy, choking and gasping in the snow, Lecler turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the sixty-mile post. That foe, what I like him, almak, I buy him, now I buy him quick. And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Lecler bought Battered and gave him his shameful name. And for five years the twain adventured across the Northland, from St. Michael's and the Yukon Delta to the head-reaches of the Pelley, and even so far as the Peace River, Athabasca and Great Slave. And they acquired a reputation for uncompromising wickedness, the like of which never before attached itself to man and dog. Battered did not know his father hence his name, but, as John Hamlin knew, his father was a great grey timber-wolf. But the mother of Battered, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling, bickering, obscene, husky, full-fronted, and heavy-chested, with a malign eye, a cat-like grip on life, and a genius for trickery and evil. There was neither faith nor trust in her. Her treachery alone could be relied upon, and her wild wood amours attested her general depravity. Much of evil and much of strength were there in these, Battered's progenitors. And, bone and flesh of their bone and flesh, he had inherited it all, and then came Black Lecler to lay his heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy-life to press and prod and mold till it became a big bristling beast, acute in navery, overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical. With a proper master, Bataard may have made an ordinary, fairly efficient sled-dog. He never got the chance. Lecler but confirmed him in his congenital iniquity. The history of Bataard and Lecler is a history of war, of five cruel, relentless years of which their first meeting is fit summary. To begin with it was Lecler's fault, for he hated with understanding and intelligence, while the long-legged, ungainly puppy, hated only blindly, instinctively, without reason or method. At first there were no refinements of cruelty. These were to come later. But simple beatings and crude brutalities. In one of these, Bataard had an ear injured. He never regained control of the riven muscles, and ever after the ear drooped, limply, down to keep keen, the memory of his tormentor. And he never forgot. His puppyhood was a period of foolish rebellion. He was always worsted, but he fought back because it was his nature to fight back. And he was unconquerable. Yelping shrilly from the pain of lash and club, he nonetheless 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 valor of the wolf, his father. Possibly it was because of his father that he never wailed. His puppy yelps past 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 extremist agony, did Leclerc bring from him the cry of fear, nor of pain. This unconquerableness but fanned Leclerc's wrath, and stirred him to great deviltries. Did Leclerc give Bitaard half a fish, and to his mate's whole ones? Bitaard went forth to rob other dogs of their fish. Also he robbed cashes, and expressed himself in a thousand rogueries, till he became a terror to all dogs and masters of dogs. Did Leclerc beat Bitaard, and fondle Babette? Babette who was not half the worker he was? Why? Bitaard threw her down in the snow, and broke her hind leg with his heavy jaws, so that Leclerc was forced to shoot her. Likewise, in bloody battles, Bitaard mastered all his teammates, set them the law of the 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 matter 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 MacQuestion traveled two hundred miles on the ice to save him from blood poisoning. Men and dogs looked to scant, Bitaard, when he drifted into their camps and posts. The men greeted him with feet threateningly lifted for the kick. The dogs with bristling mains and bared fangs. Once a man did kick, Bitaard, and Bitaard, with quick-wolf snap, closed his jaws like a steel trap on the man's calf, and crunched down to the bone, where at the man was determined to have his life. Only black Leclerc with ominous eyes and naked hunting-knife stepped in between. The killing of Bitaard, ah, Sacredame, that was a pleasure Leclerc reserved for himself. Someday it would happen, or else, bah, who was to know? Anyway, the problem would be solved. For they had become problems to each other. The very breath each drew was a challenge and a menace to the other. Their hate bound them together as love could never bind. Leclerc was bent on coming of the day when Bitaard should wilt in spirit and cringe and whimper at his feet. And Bitaard, Leclerc knew what was in Bitaard's mind, and more than once had read it in Bitaard's eyes. And so clearly he had read that when Bitaard was at his back he made it a point to glance often over his shoulder. Men marveled when Leclerc refused large money for the dog. Someday you'll kill him and be out his price, said John Hamilton once, when Bitaard lay panting in the snow where Leclerc had kicked him, and no one knew whether his ribs were broken, and no one dared look to see. That, said Leclerc, dryly, that is my business, Miss you. And the men marveled that Bitaard did not run away. They did not understand. But Leclerc understood. He was a man who lived much in the open, beyond the sound of human tongue, and he had learned the voices of wind and storm, the sight of night, the whisper of dawn, the clash of day. In a dim way he could hear the green things growing, the running of the sap, the bursting of the bud, and he knew the subtle speech of things that moved, of the rabbit in the snare, the moody raven, beating the air with hollow wang, the bald face shuffling under the moon, the wolf like a gray shadow gliding betwixt the twilight and the dark. And to him Bitaard spoke clear and direct, full well he understood why Bitaard did not run away, and he looked more often over his shoulder. When in anger Bitaard was not nice to look upon, and more than once had he leapt for Leclerc's throat, to be stretched quivering and senseless in the snow by the bud of the ever-ready dog-whip. And so Bitaard learned to bide his time. When he reached his full strength and prime of youth, he thought the time had come. He was broad-chested, powerfully muscled, of far more than ordinary size, and his neck, from head to shoulders, was a mass of bristling hair, to all appearances, of full-blooded wolf. Leclerc was lying deep in his furs when Bitaard deemed the time to be ripe. He crept upon him stealthily, head low to earth, and loner laid back with a feline softness of tread. Bitaard breathed gently, very gently, and not till he was close at hand did he raise his head. He paused for a moment, and looked at the bronzed bull-throat, naked and naughty, and swelling to a deep steady pulse. The slaver dripped down his fangs and slid off his tongue at the sight, and in that moment he remembered his drooping air, his uncounted blows and prodigious wrongs, and without a sound sprang on the sleeping man. Leclerc awoke to the pang of the fangs in his throat, and, perfect animal that he was, he awoke clear-headed and with full comprehension, he closed on Bitaard's windpipe with both his hands, and rolled out of his furs to get his weight uppermost. But the thousands of Bitaard's ancestors had clung at the throats of unnumbered moose and caribou, and dragged them down. And the wisdom of those ancestors was his. When Leclerc's weight came on top of him, he drove his hind legs upwards and in, and clawed down chest and abdomen, ripping and tearing through skin and muscle, and when he felt the man's bloody wints above him and lift, he worried and shook at the man's throat. His teammates closed around in a snarling circle and Bitaard, with failing breath and fading scents, knew that their jaws were hungry for him. But that did not matter. It was the man, the man above him, and he ripped and clawed and shook and worried to the last ounce of his strength. But Leclerc choked him with both his hands till Bitaard's chest heaved and writhed for the air denied, and his eyes glazed and set, and his jaws slowly loosened, and his tongue protruded black and swollen. Eh, Bon, you devil! Leclerc gurgled, mouth and throat clogged with his own blood, and he shoved the dizzy dog from him, and then Leclerc cursed the other dogs off as they fell upon Bitaard. They drew back into a wider circle, squatting alertly on their punches, and licking their chops, the hair on every neck bristling and erect. Bitaard recovered quickly, and at the sound of Leclerc's voice, tottered to his feet and swayed weakly back and forth. Ah, ah, you big devil! Leclerc sputtered, I fix you, I fix you plenty, by gar. Bitaard, the air biting into his exhausting lungs, like wine, flushed full into the man's face, his jaws missing and coming together with a metallic clip. They rolled over and over on the snow, Leclerc striking madly with his fists. Then they separated, face to face, and circled back and forth before each other. Leclerc could have drawn his life. His rifle was at his feet, but the beast in him was up and raging. He would do the thing with his hands and his teeth. Bitaard sprang in, but Leclerc knocked him over with a blow of his fist, fell upon him, and buried his teeth to the bone in the dog's shoulder. It was a primordial setting and a primordial scene, such as might have been in the savage youth of the world. An open space, in a dark forest, a ring of grinning wolf dogs, and in the center two beasts, locked in combat, snapping and snarling, raging madly about, panting, sobbing, cursing, straining, wild with passion, in a fury of murder, ripping and tearing and clawing in elemental brutishness. But Leclerc caught Bitaard behind the ear with a blow from his fist, knocking him over, and, for the instant, stunning him. Then Leclerc leaped upon him with his feet, and sprang up and down, striving to grind him into the earth. Both Bitaard's hind legs were broken, ere Leclerc ceased that he might catch a breath. Ah! Ah! he screamed, incapable of speaking, shaking his fist through sheer impudence of throat and larynx. But Bitaard was indomitable. He lay there in a helpless welter, his lip feebly lifting and ringing to the snarl he had not the strength to utter. Leclerc kicked him and the tired jaws closed on the ankle, but could not break the skin. Leclerc picked up the whip, and proceeded almost to cut him to pieces, and each stroke of the lash crying, Distaim, I break you, eh, by Gar, I break you. In the end, exhausted, fainting from loss of blood, he crumpled up and fell by his victim. And when the wolf dogs closed in to take their vengeance, with his last consciousness dragged his body on top of Bitaard to shield him from their fangs. This occurred not far from sunrise, and the missionary opening the door to Leclerc a few hours later was surprised to note the absence of Bitaard from the team. Nor did his surprise lessen when Leclerc threw back the robes from the sled, gathered Bitaard into his arms, and staggered across the threshold. It happened that the surgeon of Macquestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on gossip, and between them they proceeded to repair Leclerc. Merci non, he said. Do you fix fares, de dog, to die? Non, it is not good, because he, ma, must, yet break. That foe, what he must not die. The surgeon called it a marvel, the missionary a miracle, that Leclerc pulled through it all, and so weakened was he, that in the spring the fever got him. And he went on his back again. Bitaard had been an even worse plight, but his grip on life prevailed, and the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves. During the several weeks he lay strapped to the floor, and by the time Leclerc finally convalescent, shallow and shaky, took to the sun by the cabin door, Bitaard had reasserted his supremacy among his kind, and brought not only his own teammates, but the missionary's dogs into subjection. He moved never a muscle, nor twitched a hair, when, for the first time, Leclerc tottered out on the missionary's arm, and sank down slowly, with infinite caution, on the three-legged stool. Bon, he said, Bon, de good son, and he stretched out his wasted hands, and washed them in the warmth. When his gaze fell on the dog, and the old light blazed back in his eyes, he touched the missionary lightly on the arm. Montperie, that is one big devil, de Bitaard. You will bring me one pistol, so that I drink, de son, in peace. And thenceforth, for many days, he sat in the sun before the cabin door, he never dozed, and the pistol lay always across his knees. Bitaard had away the first thing each day of looking for the weapon in its wanted place. At sight of it he would lift his lip faintly in token that he understood, and Leclerc would lift his own lip in an answering grin. One day the missionary took note of the trick. Bless me, he said, I really believe the brute comprehends. Leclerc laughed softly. Look you, Montperie, that what I now spike, to that does he listen. As if in confirmation, Bitaard, just perceptibly, wriggled his loner up to catch the sound. I say keel. Bitaard growled deep in his throat. The hair bristled along his neck, and every muscle went tense and expectant. I lift a gun, so like that. And, suiting action toward, he sighted the pistol at Bitaard. Bitaard, with a single leap sideways, landed around the corner of the cabin, out of sight. Bless me, he repeated at intervals. Leclerc grinned proudly. But why does he not run away? The Frenchman's shoulders went up in the racial shrug that means all things, from total ignorance to infinite understanding. Then why do you not kill him? And the shoulders went up. Montperie, he said after a pause, detain is not yet. He is one, big devil. Some tame I break him, so and so all, to little bits. Hey, some tame, bomb? A day came when Leclerc gathered his dogs together and floated down in a bateau to forty mile, and on to the porcupine where he took a commission from the P.C. Company, and went exploring for the better part of a year. After that he pulled up Decoy-a-Cuck to deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back from camp to camp along the Yukon, and during the long months Bitaard was well lessened. He learned many tortures, and notably the torture of hunger, the torture of thirst, the torture of fire, and worst of all the torture of music. Like the rest of his kind he did not enjoy music. It gave him exquisite anguish, racking him nerve by nerve and ripping apart every fiber of his being. It made him howl, long and wolf-like, as when the wolves bay the stars on frosty nights. He could not help howling. It was his one weakness in the contest with Leclerc, and it was his shame. Leclerc on the other hand passionately loved music, as passionately as he loved strong drink, and when his soul clamored for expression it usually uttered itself in one or the other of the two ways, and more usually in both ways, and when he drank his brain alilt with unsung song the devil in him arose and rampant. His soul found its supreme utterance in torturing Bitaard. Now we will have a little music. He would say, A. What you think, Bitaard? It was only an old and battered harmonica, tenderly treasured and patiently repaired, but it was the best that money could buy, and out of its silver reeds he drew weird vagrant heirs that men had never heard before. Then Bitaard, dumb of throat, with teeth tight clenched, would back away inch by inch to the farthest cabin corner, and Leclerc, playing, playing, a stout club, tucked under his arm, followed the animal up, inch by inch, step by step, till there was no further retreat. At first Bitaard would crowd himself in the smallest possible space, groveling close to the floor, but as the music came nearer and nearer he was forced to up rear, his back jammed into the logs, his forelegs fanning the air, as though to beat off the rippling waves of sound. He still kept his teeth together, but severe muscular contractions attacked his body, strange twitchings and jerkings, till he was all a quiver, and writhing in silent torment. As he lost control, his jaws spesmodically wrenched apart, and deep throaty vibrations issued forth, too low in the register of sound for human ear to catch, and then nostrils distended, eyes dilated, hair bristling, in helpless rage arose the long-wolf howl. It came with a slurring rush upwards, swelling to a great heart-breaking burst of sound, and dying away in sadly cadenced woe. Then the next rush upward, octave upon octave, the bursting heart and the infinite sorrow and misery, fainting, fading, falling, and dying slowly away. It was fit for hell, and Leclerc, with fiendish keen, seemed to divine each particular note and heart-string, and with long wails and tremblings, and sobbing minors, to make it yield up its last shred of grief. It was frightful, and for twenty-four hours after Bataard was nervous and unstrong, starting at common sounds, tripping over his own motto, but with awe, vicious and masterful, with his teammates. Nor did he show signs of breaking spirit. Rather, did he grow more grim and taciturn, biting his time with an inscrutable patience that began to puzzle and weigh upon Leclerc. The dog would lie in the fire-light, motionless for hours, gazing straight before him at Leclerc, and hating him with his bitter eyes. Often the man felt that he had bucked against the very essence of life, the unconquerable essence that swept the hawk down out of the sky like a feathered thunderbolt that drove the great gray goose across the zones that hurled the spawning salmon through two thousand miles of boiling Yukon flood. At such times he felt impelled to express his own unconquerable essence, and with strong drink, wild music, and Bataard he indulged in vast orgies, wherein he pitted his puny strength in the face of things, and challenged all that was, and had been, and was yet to be. "'There is something there,' he affirmed, when the rhythm to vagarities of his mind touched the secret cords of Bataard's being, and brought forth the long, luguberous howl. "'I poolet. I poolet. Outward bot. My ends. So and so. Ha-ha! At his phone. At his very phone. The priests chant. The women's pray. The man's swear. The little bird go peep-peep. Bataard him go yow-yow. And, at his all, the very same thing. Ha-ha!' Father Gautier, a worthy priest, once reproved him with instances of concrete perdition. He never reproved him again. "'It may be so, Montpierre,' he made answer. "'And I think I go true, hella snappin', like the hemlock, tro-de-fire. "'Emonperre?' "'But all bad things come to an end as well as good. And so, with black Leclerc, on the summer low water, in a poiling boat, he left MacDougall for sunrise. He left MacDougall in company with Timothy Brown, and arrived at sunrise by himself. Further, it was known that they had quarreled just previous to pulling out. For the Lizzie, a wheezy ten-ton steer-wheeler, twenty-four hours behind him, beat Leclerc in by three days. And when he did get in, it was with a clean-drilled bullet-hole, through his shoulder-muscle, and a tail of ambush and murder. A strike had been made at sunrise, and things had changed considerably. With the infusion of several hundred gold-seekers, a deal of whisky, and a half-dozen-equipped gamblers, the missionary had seen the page of his years of labor, with the Indians wiped clean. When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking beans, and keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with swapping their warm furs for the black bottles and broken time-pieces, he took to his bed, said, Bless me, several times, and departed to his final accounting in a rough-hewn oblong box. Whereupon the gamblers moved their roulette and fargo-tables into the mission-house, and the click of chips and clink of glasses went up from dawn till dark, and to dawn again. Now Timothy Brown was well-beloved among these adventurers of the North. The one thing against him was his quick temper, and ready fist, a little thing, for which his kind heart and forgiving hand more than atoned. On the other hand there was nothing to atone for black Leclerc. He was black. As more than one remembered, deed-bore witness. He was as well-hated as the other was beloved. So the men of sunrise put an antiseptic dressing on his shoulder, and hauled him before Judge Lynch. It was a simple affair. He had quarreled with Timothy Brown at MacDougall. With Timothy Brown he had left MacDougall. Without Timothy Brown he had arrived at sunrise. Considered in the light of his evilness, the unanimous conclusion was that he had killed Timothy Brown. On the other hand, Leclerc acknowledged their facts, but challenged their conclusion, and gave his own explanation. Twenty miles out of sunrise he and Timothy Brown were polling the boat along the rocky shore. From that shore two rifle shots rang out. Timothy Brown pitched out of the boat and went down bubbling red, and that was the last of Timothy Brown. He, Leclerc, pitched into the bottom of the boat with a stinging shoulder. He lay very quiet, peeping at the shore. After a time two Indians stuck up their heads and came out to the water's edge, carrying between them a birch bark canoe. As they launched it, Leclerc let fly. He potted one who went over the side after the manner of Timothy Brown. The other dropped into the bottom of the canoe, and then canoe and polling boat went down the stream in a drifting battle. After that they hung up on a split current, and the canoe passed on one side of an island and the polling boat on the other. That was the last of the canoe, and he came into sunrise. Yes, from the way the Indian in the canoe jumped, he was sure he had potted him. That was all. This explanation was not deemed adequate. They gave him ten hours' grace while the Lizzie steamed down to investigate. Ten hours later she came wheezing back to sunrise. There had been nothing to investigate. No evidence had been found to back up his statements. They told him to make his will, for he possessed a fifty thousand dollar sunrise claim, and they were a law-abiding as well as a law-giving breed. Leclerc shrugged his shoulders. Bought one thing, he said. A little what you call a favor, a little favor, that is it. I give my fifty thousand dollar to the church. I give my husky dog batard to the devil. De little favor, fears you hang him. And, Dan, you hang me. It is good, eh? Good it was, they agreed, that Hell's spawn should break trail for his master across the last divide, and the court was adjourned down to the river-bank, where a big spruce tree stood by itself. Slackwater Charlie put a hangman's knot in the end of a hauling line, and the noose was slipped over Leclerc's head and pulled tight around his neck. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was assisted to the top of a cracker-box. Then the running end of the line was passed over an overhanging branch, drawn taut and made fast. To kick the box out from under would leave him dancing on the air. Now for the dog, said Webster Shaw, some-time mining engineer, you'll have to rope him Slackwater. Leclerc grinned. Slackwater took a chew of tobacco, rover running noose, and proceeded leisurely to coil a few turns in his hand. He paused once or twice to brush particularly offensive mosquitoes from off his face. Everybody was brushing mosquitoes, except Leclerc, about whose head a small cloud was visible. Even Betard, lying full-stretched on the ground with his fore-pause, rubbed the pests away from his eyes and mouth. But while Slackwater waited for Betard to lift his head, a faint call came from the quiet air, and a man was seen waving his arms and running across the flat from sunrise. It was the storekeeper. Cacollar off, boys, he panted as he came in among them. Little Sandy and Bernadette just got back in. He explained with returning breath. Landed down below, and come up by the shortcut, got the beaver with him, picked him up in his canoe, stuck in a back channel, with a couple of bullet holes in him. Other buck was clock-close, the one that knocked spots out of his squaw and dusted. Eh, what, eh, say, eh, Leclerc cried exultantly. Dat de won, fo sho. I know, I spiked true. The thing to do is to teach these damned shishwashies a little manners, spoke Webster Shaw. They're getting fat and sassy, and we'll have to bring them down a peg. Round in all the bucks and string up the beaver for an object lesson. That's the program. Come on, let's see what he's got to say for himself. Hey, monsieur, Leclerc called, as the crowd began to melt away through the twilight in the direction of sunrise. I lack vermoche to see de faune. I will turn you loose when we come back, Webster Shaw shouted over his shoulder. In the meantime, meditate on your sins and the ways of providence. It will do you good, so be grateful. As is the way, with men who are accustomed to great hazards, whose nerves are healthy and trained in patience, so it was with Leclerc, who settled himself to the long wait, which is to say that he reconciled his mind to it. There was no settling of the body. For the taut rope forced him to stand, rigidly erect. The least relaxation of the leg muscle pressed the rough-fibred noose into his neck. While the upright position caused him much pain in his wounded shoulder, he projected his upper lip and expelled his breath upwards along his face to blow the mosquitoes away from his eyes. But the situation had its compensation. To be snatched from the maw of death was well worth a little bodily suffering. Only it was unfortunate that he should miss the hanging of the beaver. And so he mused till his eyes chanced to fall upon Bataard, head between four paws, and stretched on the ground to sleep. And there, Leclerc ceased to muse. He studied the animal closely, striving to sense if the sleep were real or feigned. Bataard's sides were heaving regularly, but Leclerc felt that the breath came and went a shade too quickly. Also he felt that there was a vigilance or alertness to every hair that belied unshackling sleep. He would have given his sunrise claim to be assured that the dog was not awake, and once, when one of his joints creaked, he looked quickly and guiltily at Bataard to see if he roused. He did not rouse, but a few minutes later he got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and looked carefully about him. Sacred damn, said Leclerc under his breath, assured that no one was in sight or hearing. Bataard sat down, curled his upper lip almost into a smile, looked up at Leclerc, and licked his chops. "'I see my finish,' the man said, and laughed sardonically aloud. Bataard came nearer, the useless ear wobbling, the good ear cocked forward with devilish comprehension. He thrust his head on one side quizzically, and advanced with menacing playful steps. He rubbed his body gently against the box till it shook and shook again. Leclerc teetered carefully to maintain his equilibrium. "'Bataard,' he said calmly, "'look out, I kill you.'" Bataard snarled at the word, and shook the box with greater force. Then he upreared, and with his fore-pause threw his weight against it higher up. Leclerc kicked out with one foot, but the rope bit into his neck and choked so abruptly as nearly to overbalance him. "'Haya, chuk, mochon,' he screamed. Bataard retreated, for twenty feet or so, with a fiendish levity in his bearing that Leclerc would not mistake. He remembered the dog often breaking the scum of ice on the water-hole by lifting up and throwing his weight upon it, and remembering he understood what he now had in mind. Bataard faced about and paused. He showed his white teeth in a grin which Leclerc answered, and then hurled his body through the air in full charge straight for the box. Fifteen minutes later, Slackwater Charlie and Webster Shaw returning caught a glimpse of a ghostly pendulum swinging back and forth in the dim light. As they hurriedly drew in closer, they made out demands in her body and a live thing that clung to it and shook and worried and gave to it the swaying motion. "'Haya, chuk,' you spawn of hell, yelled Webster Shaw, but Bataard glared at him and snarled threateningly without loosening his jaws. Slackwater Charlie got out his revolver, but his hand was shaking as with a chill and he fumbled. "'Here, you take it,' he said, passing the weapon over. Webster Shaw laughed shortly, drew a sight between the gleaming eyes and pressed the trigger. Bataard's body twitched with the shock, thrashed the ground spasmodically for a moment, and went suddenly limp. But his teeth still held fast and locked. End of Bataard by Jack London. In 2007, the story of G. Zuck part one by Jack London, there have been renunciations and renunciations. But in its essence, renunciation is ever the same. And the paradox of it is that men and women forego the dearest thing in the world for something dearer. It was never otherwise. Thus it was when Abel bought of the first links of his flock and of the fat thereof. The first links in the fat thereof were to him the dearest things in the world. Yet he gave them over that he might be on good terms with God. So it was with Abraham when he prepared to offer up his son Isaac on a stone. Isaac was very dear to him. But God, in incomprehensible ways, was yet dearer. It may be that Abraham feared the Lord, but whether that be true or not, it has since been determined by a few billion people that he loved the Lord and desired to serve him. And since it has been determined that love is service, and since to renounce is to serve, then G. Zuck, who was merely a woman of sort skin breed, loved with a great love. She was unversed in history, having learned to read only the signs of weather and of game. So she had never heard of Abel nor of Abraham, nor having escaped the good sisters at Holy Cross. Had you been told the story of Ruth, the Moabetus, who renounced her very God for the sake of a stranger woman from a strange land? G. Zuck had learned only one way of renouncing, and that was with the club as the dynamic factor, in much the same manner as a dog is made to renounce a stolen marrow-bone. Yet when the time came, she proved herself capable of rising to the height of the fair-faced royal races and of renouncing in right regal fashion. So this is the story of G. Zuck, which is also the story of Neil Bonner and Kitty Bonner, and a couple of Neil Bonner's progeny. G. Zuck was of a sort skin breed, it is true, but she was not an Indian nor was she an Eskimo, nor even an Inuit. Going backward into Mouth tradition, there appears the figure of One Skulls, a Toyat Indian of the Yukon, who journeyed down in his youth to the Great Delta where dwell the Inuits, and where he foregathered with a woman remembered as Olili. Now the woman Olili had been bred from an Eskimo mother by an Inuit man, and from Skulls an Olili came Haley, who was one half Toyat Indian, one quarter Inuit, and one quarter Eskimo. And Haley was the grandmother of G. Zuck. Now Haley, in whom three stocks had been bastardized, who cherished no prejudice against further admixture, made it with a Russian fur trader called Spak, also known in his time as the Big Fat. Spak is here in class Russian for lack of a more adequate term, for Spak's father, a Slavonic convict from the lower provinces, had escaped from the Quicksilver mines into northern Siberia, where he knew Zimba, who was a woman of the dear people, and who became the mother of Spak, who became the grandfather of G. Zuck. Now had not Spak been captured in his boyhood by the sea people, who fringed the rim of the Arctic Sea with their mystery, he would have not have become the grandfather of G. Zuck, and there would be no story at all. But he was captured by the sea people, from whom he escaped to Kamchaka, and then sent an Norwegian well-ship to the Baltic. Not long after that he turned up in St. Petersburg, and years were not many till he went drifting east over the same weary road his father had measured with blood and groans a half century before. But Spak was a free man, and the employee of the great Russian fur company. And in that employee he fared farther and farther east, until he crossed the Bering Sea into Russian America. And that pastolic, which is hard by the great delta of the Yukon, became the husband of Haley, who was the grandmother of G. Zuck. Out of this union came the woman-child Tukasan. Spak, under the orders of the company, made a canoe voyage of a few hundred miles up the Yukon to the post of Nulato. With him he took Haley into Babe Tukasan. It was in 1850, and in 1850 it was that the river Indians fell upon Nulato and wiped it from the face of the earth. And that was the end of Spak and Haley. On that terrible night Tukasan disappeared. To this day the Toyats of Verde had no hand in the trouble. But be that as it may, the fact remains that the Babe Tukasan grew up among them. Tukasan was married successfully to two Toyat brothers, to both of whom she was barren. Because of this other women shook their heads, and no third Toyat man could be found to dare matrimony with the childless widow. But at this time many hundred miles above at Fort Yukon was a man Spike O'Brien. Fort Yukon was a Hudson Bay company post, and Spike O'Brien one of the company's servants. He was a good servant, but he achieved an opinion that the service was bad, and in the course of time vindicated that opinion by deserting. It was a year's journey by the chain of posts back to York Factory on Hudson Bay. Further, being company post he knew he could not evade the company's clutches. Nothing retained but to go down the Yukon. It was true no white man had ever gone down the Yukon, and no white man knew whether the Yukon emptied into the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea. But Spike O'Brien was a kelp, and the promise of danger was a lure he had ever followed. A few weeks later, somewhat battered, rather famished, and about dead with river fever, he drove the nose of his canoe into the Earth Bank by the village of the Toyats, and promptly fainted away. While getting his strength back, in the weeks that followed he looked upon Tukasan and found her good. Like the father of Spack, who lived to the ripe old age among the Siberian deer people, Spike O'Brien might have left his age and boned with the Toyats. But romance gripped his heartstrings and would not let him stay. As he had journeyed from York Factory to Fort Yukon, so first among men might he journey from Fort Yukon to the sea, and win the honor of being the first man to make the Northwest Passage by land. So he departed down the river, won the honor, and was unannailed and unsung. In after years he ran a sailor's boarding house in San Francisco, where he became esteemed a most remarkable liar by virtue of the gospel truths he told. But a child was born to Tukasan, who had been childless. And this child was Jezuk. Her lineage has been traced at length to show that she was neither Indian, nor Eskimo, nor Inuit, nor much of anything else. Also to show what waves of the generations we are, all of us, and the strange meanderings of the seed from which we spring. What, with the vagrant blood in her, and the heritage compounded of many races, Jezuk developed a wonderful young beauty. Bizarre perhaps it was, and oriental enough to puzzle any passing ethnologist. Lied and slender grace characterized her. Beyond the quickened lilt to the imagination, the contribution of the kelp was a no-wise apparent. It might possibly have put the warm blood under her skin, which made her face less sore in her body fairer. But that in turn might have come from Spak, the big fat, who inherited the color of a Slavonic father. And finally she had great blazing black eyes, the half-caste eye round, full-orbed and sensuous, which marched the collision of the dark races with the light. Also the white blood in her, combined with her knowledge that it was in her, made her in a way ambitious. Otherwise, by upbringing and in outlook on life, she was wholly and utterly a Toyat Indian. One winter, when she was a young woman, Neil Bonner came into her life. But he came into her life as he had come into the country somewhat reluctantly. In fact, it was very much against his will coming into the country. Between a father who clipped coupons and cultivated roses, and a mother who loved the social round, Neil Bonner had gone rather wild. It was not vicious, but a man with meat in his belly and without work in the world has to expend his energy somehow, and Neil Bonner was such a man. And he expended his energy in such a fashion, and to such an extent that when the inevitable climax came, his father, Neil Bonner Sr., crawled out of his roses in a panic and looked on his son with a wondering eye. Then he hired himself away to a crony of kindred pursuits with whom he was want to confer over coupons and roses, and between the two the destiny of young Neil Bonner was made manifest. He must go away on probation to live down his harmless follies in order that he might live up to their own excellent standard. This determined upon, and young Neil a little repentant and a great deal of shame, the rest was easy. The cronies were heavy stockholders in the PC Company. The PC Company owned fleets of river steamers and ocean-going craft, and in addition to farming the sea, exploited a hundred thousand square miles or so of the land that, on the maps of the geographers, usually occupies the white spaces. So the PC Company sent young Neil Bonner north, where the white spaces are to do its work and to learn to be good like his father. Five years of simplicity close to the soil and far from temptation will make a man of him, said old Neil Bonner, and forthwith crawled back among his roses. Young Neil set his jaw, pitched his chin at the proper angle, and went to work. As an underling he did his work well and gained the commendation of suspicions. Not that he delighted in the work, but that it was the one thing that prevented him from going mad. The first year he wished he was dead. The second year he cursed God. The third year he was divided between the two emotions, and in the confusion quarreled with a man in authority. He had the best of the quarrel, though the man in authority had the last word, a word that sent Neil Bonner into an exile that made his own billet appear as paradise. But he went without a whimper, for the north had succeeded in making him into a man. Here and there, on the white spaces on the map, little circlets like the letter O were to be found, and appended to these circlets on one side or the other, are names such as Fort Hamilton, Yanana Station, Twenty Mile, thus leading one to imagine that the white spaces are plentifully besprinkled with towns and villages. But it is a vain imagining. Twenty Mile, which is very like the rest of the posts, is a log building the size of a corner grocery with rooms to let upstairs. A long-legged cache on stilts may be found in the backyard, also a couple of outhouses. The backyard is unfenced, and extends to the skyline in an unassertainable bit beyond. There are no other houses in sight, though the toyots sometimes pitch a winter camp a mile or two down the Yukon. And this is Twenty Mile, one tentacle of the many tentacled PC Company. Here the agent with an assistant barters with the Indians for their furs, and does an erratic trade on gold dust bases with the wandering miners. Here also, the agent and his assistant yearn all winter for the spring, and when spring comes, camp blasphemously on the roof while the Yukon washes out the establishment. And here also, in the fourth year of a sojourn in the land, came Neil Bonner to take charge. He had displaced no agent, for the man that previously ran the post had made away with himself. Because of the rigors of the place, said the assistant, who still remained, the toyots by their friars had another version. The assistant was a shrunken, shouldered, hollow-chested man, with a cadaverous face and cavernous cheeks that his sparse black beard could not hide. He coughed much as though consumption gripped his lungs, while his eyes had that mad, fevered, light common to consumptoms in the last stage. Pentley was his name, Amos Pentley, and Bonner did not like him, though he felt a pity for the forlorn and hopeless devil. They did not get along together. These two men, who of all men, should have been on good terms in the face of the cold and silence and darkness of the long winter. In the end, Bonner concluded that Amos was partly demented and left him alone, doing all the work himself except the cooking. Even then, Amos had nothing but bitter looks and an undisguised hatred for him. This was a great loss to Bonner, for the smiling face of one of his own kind, the cheery word, the sympathy of comradeship shared with his fortune. These things meant much, and the winter was yet young when he began to realise the added reasons with such an assistant that the previous agent has found to impel his own hand against his life. It was very lonely at twenty-mile. The bleak fastness stretched away on every side to the horizon. The snow, which was really frost, flung its mantle over the land and buried everything in the silence of death. For days it was clear and cold, the thermometer steadily recording forty to fifty degrees below zero. Then a change came over the face of things. What little moisture had oozed into the atmosphere, gathering to dull grey, formless clouds. It became quite warm, the thermometer rising to twenty below, and the moisture fell out of the sky in harsh frost granules that hissed like dry sugar, or driving sand when kicked underfoot. After that it became clear and cold again, until enough moisture had gathered to blanket the earth from the cold of outer space. That was all. Nothing happened. No storms, no churning waters and thrusting forests, nothing but the machine-like precipitation of accumulated moisture. Possibly the most notable thing that occurred through the weary weeks was this gliding of the temperature up to the unprecedented height of fifteen below. To atone for this, outer space smoked the earth with its cold till the mercury froze and the spirit thermometer remained more than seventy below for a fortnight when it burst. There was no telling how much colder it was after that. Another occurrence, monotonousness and regularity, was the lengthening of the night, till day became a mere blink of light between the darkness. Neil Bonner was a social animal. The very follies for which he was doing penance had been bread of his excessive sociability. And here, in the fourth year of exile, he found himself in company, which were to travesty the word, with a morose and speechless creature in whose somber eyes smoldered a hatred as bitter as it was unwarranted. And Bonner, to whom speech and fellowship were as the breath of life, went about as a ghost might go, tantalized by the gregarious revelries of some former life. In the days his lips were compressed, his face stern, but in the night he clenched his hands, rolled about in his blankets, and cried aloud like a little child. And he would remember a certain man in authority and curse him through the long hours. Also, he cursed God. But God understands. He cannot find it in his heart to blame the weak mortals who blaspheme in Alaska. And here, to the post of Twenty Mile, came G. S. Uck to trade for flour and bacon and beads and bright scarlet claws for her fancy work. And further, and unwittingly, she came to the post of Twenty Mile to make a lonely man more lonely, make him reach out empty arms in his sleep. For Neil Bonner was only a man. When she first came into the store, he looked at her long, as a thirsty man might look at a flowing well. And she, with the heritage bequeathed to her by Spike O'Brien, imagined daringly and smiled up into his eyes, not as the Swartzkin people should smile at the royal races, but as a woman smiles at a man. The thing was inevitable. Only he did not see it, and fought against her as fiercely and passionately as he was drawn towards her. And she? She was G. Suck, by upbringing wholly and utterly a Toyat Indian woman. End of the story of G. Suck. Part 1 Section 9. The Story of G. Suck Part 2. From the Faith of Men. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by ML Cohen, Cleveland, Ohio. July 2007. The Story of G. Suck. Part 2. by Jack London. She came often to the post to trade, and often she sat by the big wood stove and chatted in broken English with Neil Bonner. And he came to look for her coming. And on the day she did not come, he was worried and restless. Sometimes he stopped to think, and then she was met coldly with a resolve that perplexed and peaked her, in which she was convinced was not sincere. But more often he did not dare to think, and then all went well and there were smiles and laughter. And Amos Pentley, gasping like a stranded catfish, his hollow coffa reek with the grave, looked upon it all and grinned. He, who loved life, could not live, and it rankled his soul that others should be able to live. Wherefore he hated Bonner, who was so very much alive and into his eyes, sprang joy at the sight of G. Suck. As for Amos, the very thought of the girl was sufficient to send his blood pounding up into a hemorrhage. G. Suck, whose mind was simple, who thought elementally and was unused to weighing life in its subtler quantities, read Amos Pentley like a book. She warned Bonner openly and bluntly, in few words. But the complexity of higher existence confused the situation to him, and he laughed at her evident anxiety. To him Amos was a poor miserable devil, tottering desperately into the grave. And Bonner, who had suffered much, found it easy to forgive greatly. But one morning during a bitter snap he got up from the breakfast table and went into the store. G. Suck was already there rosy from the trail to buy a sack of flour. A few minutes later he was out in the snow lashing the flour on her sled. As he bent over he noticed the stiffness in his neck and felt the premonition of impending physical misfortune. As he put the last half hitch into the lashing and attempted to straighten up a quick spasm seized him and he sank into the snow. Tense and quivering, head jerked back, limbs extended back, arched and mouth twisted and distorted. He appeared as though being racked limb from limb. Without cry or sound G. Suck was in the snow beside him. But he clutched both her wrists spasmodically, and as long as the convulsion endured she was helpless. In a few minutes the spasm relaxed and he was left weak and fainting, his forehead beaded with sweat, his lips flecked with foam. Quick! he muttered in a strange hoarse voice. Quick! Inside! He started to crawl on his hands and knees, but she raised him up and supported by her young arm he made faster progress. As he entered the store the spasm seized him again and his body writhed irresistibly away from her and rolled and curled on the floor. Amos pently came and looked on with curious eyes. Oh Amos! you cried in an agony of apprehension and helplessness. Him die, you think? But Amos shrugged his shoulders and continued to look on. Bonner's body went slack, the tense muscles easing down in an expression of relief coming into his face. Quick! he gritted between his teeth, his mouth twisting with the oncoming of the next spasm and with his effort to control it. Quick, G. Suck! The medicine! Never mind! Drag me! She knew where the medicine chest stood at the rear of the room beyond the stove and thither by the legs she dragged the struggling man. As the spasm passed he began, very faint and very sick to overhaul the chest. He had seen dogs die exhibiting similar symptoms to his own and he knew what should be done. He held up a vial of chlorohydrate, but his fingers were too weak and nervous to draw the cork. This G. Suck did for him while he was plunged into another convulsion. As he came out of it he found the open bottle, preferred him, and looked into the great black eyes of the woman and read what men have always ran in Matei women's eyes. Taking a full dose of the stuff he sank back until another spasm had passed. Then he raised himself limply on his elbow. Listen, G. Suck! He said very slowly as though aware of the necessity for haste and yet afraid to hasten. Do what I say. Stand by my side but do not touch me. I must be very quiet, but you must not go away. His jaw began to set in his face to quiver and distort with the forerunning bangs, but he gulped and struggled to master them. Do not go away and do not let Amos go away. Understand? Amos must stay right here. She nodded her head and he passed off into the first of many convulsions which gradually diminished in force and frequency. G. Suck hung over him remembering his injunction and not daring to touch him. Once Amos grew restless and made as though to go into the kitchen, but a quick blaze from her eyes quelled him, and after that, save for his labored breathing and charnel cough, he was very quiet. Bonner slept. The blink of light that marked the day disappeared. Amos, followed about by the woman's eyes, lighted the kerosene lamps. Evening came on. Through the north window the heavens were emblazoned with a nororal display, which flamed and flared and died down into blackness. Some time after that, Neil Bonner roused. First he looked to see that Amos was still here, then smiles at G. Suck and pulled himself up. Every muscle was stiff and sore, and he smiled roofily, pressing and prodding himself as if to ascertain the extent of the ravage. Then his face went stern and business like. G. Suck, he said, take a candle, go into the kitchen. There was food on the table, biscuits and beans and bacon also, coffee in the pot on the stove. Bring it here on the counter, also bring tumblers and water and whiskey, which you will find on the top shelf of the locker. Do not forget the whiskey. Having swallowed a stiff glass of the whiskey, he went carefully through the medicine chest, now and again putting aside with definite purpose certain bottles and vials. Then he set to work on the food, attempting a crude analysis. He had not been unused to the laboratory in his college days and was possessed of sufficient imagination to achieve results with his limited materials. The condition of tetanus which had marked his paroxysm simplified matters, and he made but one test. The coffee yielded nothing, nor did the beans. To the biscuits he devoted the utmost care. Amos, who knew nothing of chemistry, looked on with steady curiosity. But G. Zuck, who had boundless faith in the white man's wisdom, and especially in Neil Bonner's wisdom, and who not only knew nothing but knew that she knew nothing, watched his face rather than his hands. Step by step he eliminated possibilities until he came to the final test. He was using a thin medicine vial for a tube, and this he held between him and the light, watching the slow precipitation of assault through the solution contained in the tube. He said nothing, but saw it what he had expected to see. And G. Zuck, her eyes riveted on his face, saw something, too. Something that made her spring like a tiger's upon Amos, and with splendid suppleness and strength bend his body back across her knee. Her knife was out of its sheath and uplifted, glinting in the lamplight. Amos was snarling, but Bonner intervened ere the blade could fall. That's a good girl, G. Zuck, but never mind. Let him go. She dropped the man obediently, though with protest writ large on her face, and his body thudded to the floor. Bonner nudged him with his moccasin foot. Get up, Amos, he commanded. You've got to pack an outfit yet tonight, and hit the trail. You don't mean to say, Amos blurted savagely. I mean to say that you tried to kill me, and you went on in a cold, even tone. I mean to say that you killed Birdsol for all the company believes he killed himself. You used Stricton in my case. God knows what you fixed him. Now I can't hang you, you too near dead as it is, but twenty miles too small for the pair of us, and you've got the mush. It's two hundred miles to Holy Cross. You can make it if you're careful not to over exert. I'll give you grub, a sled, and three dogs. You'll be as sace as if you were in jail, for you can't get out of the country. And I'll give you one chance. You're almost dead, very well. I shall send no word to the company until the spring. In the meantime, the thing for you to do is die. Now, mush! You go to bed, Jezak insisted, when Amos had turned away into the night towards Holy Cross. You sick man yet, Neil. And you're a good girl, Jezak, he answered. And here's my hand on it. But you must go home. You don't like me, she said simply. He smiled, helped her on with her parka, and led her to the door. Only too well, Jezak, he said softly. Only too well. After that, the pall of the Arctic night fell deeper and blacker on the land. Neil Bonner discovered that he had failed to put proper valuation upon even the sullen face of the murderous and death-stricken Amos. It became very lonely at twenty-mile. For the love of God, Prentice, send me a man, he wrote to the agent at Fort Hamilton, three hundred miles up river. Six weeks later the Indian message bought back reply. It was characteristic. Hell, both feet frozen, needom myself, Prentice. To make matters worth, most of the toyots were in the back country on the slanks of a caribou herd, and Jezak was with them. Removing to a distance seemed to bring her closer than ever, and Neil Bonner found himself picturing her day by day, in camp and on trail. It is not good to be alone. Often he went out of the quiet store, bare-headed and frantic, and shook his fist at the blink of day that came over the southern skyline. And on cold, still nights he left his bed and stumbled into the frost, where he assaulted the silence at the top of his lungs that there was some tangible sentient thing that he might arouse. Or he shouted to the sleeping dogs that they howled and howled again. One shaggy broody bought into the post, playing that it was the new man set by Prentice. He strove to make it sleep decently under blankets at night, and to sit at table and eat as a man should. But the beast, mere dovesticated wolf that it was, rebelled and sought out dark corners and snarled and bit him in the leg, and finally was beaten and driven forth. Then the trick of personification seized upon Neil Bonner and mastered him. All the forces of his environment metamorphosed into living, breathing entities and came to live with him. He recreated a primitive pantheon, reared an altar to the sun and burned candle-fat and bacon-grease thereon, and in the unfenced yard by the long-legged cache made a frost devil, which he was wont to make faces at and mock when the mercury oozed down into the bulb. All this in play, of course. He said to himself that it was in play, and repeated it over and over to make sure, unaware that madness is ever prone to express itself and make believe in play. One midwinter day, Father Champerot, a Jesuit missionary, pulled into twenty mile. Bonner fell upon him and dragged him into the post and clung to him in wept until the priest wept with him from pure compassion. Then Bonner became madly hilarious and made lavish entertainment, swearing valiantly that his guest should not depart. But Father Champerot was pressing to salt water on urgent business for his order and pulled out next morning, with Bonner's blood threatened on his head. And the threat was in a fair way towards realization when the Toyats returned from their long hunt to the winter camp. They had many furs and there was much trading in stirrer twenty mile. Also Gizak came to buy beads and scarlet cloths and things, and Bonner began to find himself again. He fought for a week against her. Then the end came one night when she rose to leave. She had not forgotten her repulse, and the pride that drove Spike O'Brien on to complete the north's west passage by land was her pride. I go now, she said. Good night, Neil. But he came up behind her. Nay, it is not well, he said. And as she turned her face toward him with a sudden joyful flash he bent forward slowly and gravely as it were a sacred thing, and kissed her on the lips. The Toyats had never taught her the meaning of a kiss upon the lips, but she understood and was glad. With the coming of Gizak at once things brightened up. She was regal in her happiness, a source of unending delight. The elemental workings of her mind and her naive little ways made an immense sum of pleasurable surprise to the over-civilized man that had stooped to catch her up. Not alone was she solid to his loneliness, but her primitiveness rejuvenated his jaded mind. It was as though, after long wandering, he had returned to pillow his head in the lap of Mother Earth. In short, in Gizak he found the youth of the world, the youth and the strength and the joy. And to fill the full round of his need, and that they might not see over much of each other, there arrived a twenty-mile one sandy MacPherson, as companiable a man as ever whistled along the trail, arraised abalad by a campfire. A Jesuit priest had run into his camp a couple hundred miles up the Yukon, and the nick of time to say a last word over the body of Sandy's partner. An undeparting the priest had said, My son, you will be lonely now. And Sandy had bowed his head brokenly. At twenty mile, the priest added, There is a lonely man. You have need of each other, my son. So it was that Sandy became a welcome third of the post, brother to the man and woman that resided there. He took Bonner moose-hunting and wolf-trapping, and in return, Bonner resurrected a battered and waywarm volume and made him friends with Shakespeare, till Sandy declined dynamic pentameters to his sled-dog whenever they waxed mutinous. And of the long evenings they played cribbage and talked and disagreed about the universe, while Gizak rocked matronly in an easy chair and darned their moccasins and socks. Spring came. The sun shot up out of the south. The land exchanged its austere robes for the garb of a smiling wanton. Everywhere light laughed and life invited. The days stretched out their balmy length and nights passed from blinks of darkness to no darkness at all. The river bared its bosom and snorting steam-boats challenged the wilderness. There were stir and bustle new faces and fresh facts. An assistant arrived at twenty miles and Sandy McPherson wandered off with a bunch of prospectors to invade Dikoya Kuk country. And there were newspapers and magazines and letters for Neil Bonner. And Gizak looked in worryment, for she knew his kindred talk with him across the world. Without much shock it came to him that his father was dead. There was a sweet letter of forgiveness dictated in his last hours. There were official letters from the company graciously ordering him to turn the post over to the assistant and permitting him to depart as early as pleasure. A long legal affair from the lawyers informed him of interminable list of stocks and bonds, real estates, rents and chattels that were his by his father's will. And a dainty bit of stationery sealed in monogram implored Dio Neil's return to his heartbroken and loving mother. Neil Bonner did some swift thinking, and when the Yukon bell coughed into the bank on her way down the Bering Sea he departed. Departed with the ancient lie of quick return young and blithe on his lips. I'll come back, dear Gizak, before the first snow flies, he promised her, between the last kisses at the gang-plank. And not only did he promise, but like the majority of men under the same circumstances, he really meant it. To John Thompson, the new agent, he gave orders for the extension of unlimited credit to his wife Gizak. Also, with his last look from the deck of the Yukon bell, he saw a dozen men at work rearing the logs that were to make the most comfortable house along a thousand miles of riverfront, the house of Gizak, and likewise the house of Neil Bonner, ere the first flurry of snow. For he fully and fondly meant to come back. Gizak was dear to him, and further a golden future awaited the north. With his father's money he intended to verify that future. An ambitious dream allured him, with his four years of experience, and aided by this friendly cooperation of the P.C. Company, he would return to become the Roads of Alaska. And he would return, fast as steam could drive, as soon as he had put into shapes the affairs of his father, whom he had never known, and comforted his mother, whom he had forgotten. There was much to do when Neil Bonner came back from the Arctic. The fires were lighted in the flesh-pots slung, and he took it of all and called it good. Not only was he bronzed and creased, but he was a new man under his skin, with a grip on things and a seriousness and control. His own companions were amazed when he declined to hit up the pace in the good old way, while his father's cronies rubbed their hands gleefully, and became an authority upon the reclamation of wayward and idle youth. For four years Neil Bonner's mind had laid in follow. Little that was new had been added to it, but it had undergone a process of selection. It had, so to say, been purged of the trivial and superfluous. He had lived quick years down in the world, and up in the wilds time had been given to him to organize the confused mass of his experiences. His superficial standards had been flung to the winds, and new standards erected on deeper and broader generalizations. Concerning civilization, he had gone away with one set of values, had returned with another set of values. Aided also by the earth's smells in his nostrils and the earth's sights in his eyes, he laid hold of the inner significance of civilization, beholding with clear vision its futilities and powers. It was a simple little philosophy he evolved. Clean living was the way to grace. Duty performed was sanctification. One must live clean and do his duty in order that he might work. Work was salvation. And to work towards life abundant and more abundant was to be in line with the scheme of things and the will of God. Primarily he was of the city, and his fresh earth grip and virile conception of humanity gave him a finer sense of civilization and endeared civilization to him. Day by day the people of the city clung closer to him, and the world loomed more colossal. And, day by day, Alaska grew more remote and less real. And then he met Kitty Sharon, a woman of his own flesh and blood and kind, a woman who put her hand to his hand and drew him to her. Till he forgot the day and hour and the time of the year the first snow flies on the Yukon. End of the Story of Jezuk, Part 2. Section 10. The Story of Jezuk Conclusion. Of the faith of men. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. According by ML Coe and Cleveland, Ohio, July 2007. The Story of Jezuk Conclusion. By Jack London. Jezuk moved into her grand log house and dreamed away three golden summer months. Then came the autumn, post-taste before the downrush of winter. The air grew thin and sharp, the days thin and short. The river ran sluggishly, and skin ice formed in the quiet eddies. All migratory life departed south, and silence fell upon the land. The first snow flurries came, and the last home in Steamboat bucked desperately into the running mush ice. Then came the hard ice, solid cakes and sheets till the Yukon ran level with its banks. And when all this ceased the river stood still, and the blinking days lost themselves in the darkness. John Thompson, the new agent, laughed. But Jezuk had faith in the missed chances of sea and river. Neil Bonner might be frozen anywhere between Chilcoute Pass and St. Michael's, for the last travelers of the year are always caught by the ice, when they exchanged boat for sled and dash on through the long hours behind the flying dogs. But no flying dogs came up the trail, nor down the trail, to twenty-mile. And John Thompson told Jezuk, with a certain gladness ill-concealed, that Bonner would never come back again. Also, and brutally, he suggested his own eligibility. Jezuk laughed in his face and went back to her grand log-house. But when Minwitter came, when hopes died down and life is at its lowest ebb, Jezuk found she had no credit at the store. This was Thompson's doing, and he rubbed his hands and walked up and down, and came to his door and looked up at Jezuk's house and waited. And he continued to wait. She sold her dog-team to a party of miners and paid cash for her food. And when Thompson refused to honor even her coin, Toyat Indians made her purchases and sledded them up to her house in the dark. In February the first post came in over the ice, and John Thompson read in the Society column of a five months old paper of the marriage of Neal Bonner and Kitty Sharon. Jezuk held the door jar and him outside while he imparted the information, and when he had done, laughed pridefully and did not believe. In March, and all alone, she gave birth to a man-child, a brave bit of new life at which she marbled. And at that hour, a year later, Neal Bonner sat by another bed, marveling at another bit of new life that had fared into the world. The snow went off the ground and the ice broke out of the Yukon, the sun journeyed north and journeyed south again, and the money from the being spent. Jezuk went back to her own people. Oshish, a shrewd hunter, proposed to kill the meat for her and her babe, and catch all the salmon if she would marry him. And Amago and Hayeo and Wynuch, husky young hunters all made similar proposals. But she elected to live alone and seek her own meat and flesh. She sewed moccasins and parkas and mittens, warm serviceable things and pleasing to the eye with all, what of the ornamental hair tuffs and beadwork? These she sold to the miners, who were drifting faster into the land each year. And not only did she win food that was good and plentiful, but she laid money by and one day took passage on the Yukon bell down the river. At St. Michael's she washed dishes in the kitchen of the post. The servants of the company wondered that the remarkable woman with the remarkable child, though they asked no questions and she vowed safe nothing. But just before the Bering Sea closed in for the year she bought a passage south on a strayed ceiling schooner. That winter she cooked for Captain Markham's household on Alaska and in the spring continued south to Sitka on a whisky sloop. Later on appeared at Mickelata, which is near to St. Mary's at the end of the Panhandle, where she worked in the canneries through the salmon season. When autumn came and the seawash fishermen prepared to return to Puget Sound, she embarked with a couple of families in a big cedar canoe, and with them she threaded the hazardous chaos of the Alaskan and Canadian coasts till the Straits of Wandifuka were passed and she let her boy by the hand up the hard pave of Seattle. There she met Sandy McPherson on a windy corner, very much surprised and, when he had heard her story, very wroth. Not so wroth as he might have been had he known of Kitty Sharon, but of her G. Zuck breathed not a word for she had never believed. Sandy, who read commonplace and sorted desertion into the circumstance, strove to dissuade her from her trip to San Francisco, while Nio Bonner was supposed to live when he was at home. And, having striven, he made her comfortable, bought her tickets and saw her off, the while smiling in her face and muttering, damn shame, into his beard. With roar and rumble through daylight and dark, swaying and lurching between the dawns, soaring into winter snows and sinking into summer valleys, skirting depth-sleeping chasms, piercing mountains, G. Zuck and her boy were hurled south. But she had no fear of the iron stallion, nor was she stunned by the masterful civilization of Nio Bonner's people. It seemed, rather, that she saw with greater clearness the wonder that a man of such godlike race had held her in his arms. The screaming medley of San Francisco with its restless shipping, belching factories and thundering traffics did not confuse her, instead she comprehended swiftly the pitiful sordidness of twenty mile and the Skins Lodge Toyot village. And she looked down at the boy that clutched her hand and wondered that she had borne him by such a man. She paid the hack-driver five pieces, and went up the stone steps of Nio Bonner's front door. A slant-eyed Japanese parlayed with her for a fruitless space, then led her inside and disappeared. She remained in the hall, which to her simple fancy seemed to be the guest-room, the show-place wherein were arrayed all the household treasures with the frank purpose of parade and dazzlement. The walls and ceilings were of oiled and paneled redwood. The floor was more glassy than glare eyes, and she sought standing place on one of the great Skins that gave a sense of security to the polished surface. A huge fireplace, an extravagant fireplace, she deemed it, yawned in the farther wall. A flood of light, mellowed by stained glass, fell across the room, and from the far end came the white gleam of a marble figure. This much she saw, and more, when the slant-eyed servant led the way past another room, of which she caught a fleeting glance and into a third, both of which dimmed the brave show of the entrance hall. And to her eyes the great house seemed to hold out the promise of endless similar rooms. There was such length and breadth to them, and the ceilings were so far away, for the first time since her advent into the white man's civilization, a feeling of awe laid hold of her. Nio, her Nio, lived in this house, breathed the air of it, and laid down at night and slept. It was beautiful, all that she saw, and it pleased her. But she felt also the wisdom and mastery behind. It was the concrete expression of power in terms of beauty, and it was the power that she unerringly divine. And then came a woman, queenly tall, crowned with the glory of hair that was like a golden sun. She seemed to come toward Jezuk as a ripple of music across still water, her sweeping garment itself a song. Her body playing rhythmically beneath. Jezuk herself was a man-compeller. There were Ocic, and Amago, and Hajo, and Wynuch, to say nothing of Neil Bonner and John Thompson and other white men that had looked upon her and felt her power. But she gazed upon the wide blue eyes and rose-white skin of this woman that advanced to meet her, and she measured her with a woman's eyes looking through a man's eyes. And as a man-compeller she felt herself diminish, and grow insignificant before this radiant and flashing creature. You wish to see my husband? The woman asked. And Jezuk gasped at the liquid silver of voice that had never sounded harsh cries at snarling wolf-dogs, nor molded itself to guttural speech, nor toughened in storm and frost and camp-smoke. No. Jezuk answered slowly and gropingly, and although she might do justice to her English. I came to see Neil Bonner. He is my husband, the woman laughed. Then it was true. John Thompson had not lied that bleak February day when she laughed pridefully and shut the door in his face. As once she had thrown Amos Pentley across her knee and ripped her knife into the air, so now she felt impelled to spring upon this woman and bear her back and down and tear the life out of her fair body. But Jezuk was thinking quickly, and gave no sign. And Kitty Bonner little dreamed how intimately she had for an instant been related with sudden death. Jezuk nodded her head that she understood. And Kitty Bonner explained that Neil was expected at any moment. Then they sat down on ridiculously comfortable chairs, and Kitty sought to entertain her strange visitor. And Jezuk strove to help her. You knew my husband in the north? Kitty asked once. Sure, I wash him clothes, Jezuk had answered, her English abruptly beginning to grow atrocious. And this is your boy? I have a little girl. Kitty caused her daughter to be brought, and while the children, after the manner struck in acquaintance, the mothers indulged in the talk of mothers and drank tea from cups so fragile that Jezuk feared lest hers should crumble the pieces beneath her fingers. Never had she seen such cups so delicate and dainty. In her mind she compared them with the woman who poured the tea, and there arose in contrast the gourds and panikins of the Toyat village and the clumsy mugs of twenty mile to which she likened herself. And in such fashion and such terms the problem presented itself. She was beaten. There was a woman other than herself better fitted to bear and upbring Neil Bonner's children. Just as his people exceeded her people, so did his womankind exceed her. They were the man compellers, as their men were the world compellers. She looked at the rose-white tenderness of Kitty Bonner's skin and remembered the sunbeat on her own face. Likewise she looked from the brown hand to white, the one work-worn and hardened by whip-handle and paddle, the other as guiltless of toil and as soft as a newborn babe's. And for all the obvious softness and apparent weakness, Jezuk looked into the blue eyes and saw the mastery she had seen in Neil Bonner's eyes and in the eyes of Neil Bonner's people. Why? It's Jezuk, Neil Bonner said when he entered. He said it calmly, with even a ring of joyful cordiality, coming over to her and shaking both her hands, but looking into her eyes with a worry in his own that she understood. Hello, Neil, she said. You look much good. Fine, fine, Jezuk, he answered heartily, though secretly studying Kitty for some sign of what had passed between the two. Yet he knew his wife too well to expect, even though the worst had passed. Such a sign. Well, I can't say how glad I am to see you, he went on. What's happened? Did you strike a mine? And when did you get in? Oh, I get in today, she replied, her voice instinctively seeking its guttural parts. I know strike it, Neil. You know Captain Markham on Alaska? I cook his house, long time. No spend money. Buy and buy plenty. Pretty good, I think, go down and see white man's land. Very fine, white man's land. Very fine, she added. Her English puzzled him, for Sandy and he had sought constantly to better her speech, and she had proved an apt pupil. Now it seemed she had sunk back into her race. Her face was guileless, stolidly guileless, giving no clue. Kitty's untroubled brow likewise baffled him. What had happened? How much had been said, and how much guessed? While he wrestled with these questions, and while Jezuk wrestled with her problem, never had he looked so wonderful and great, a silence fell. To think that you knew my husband in Alaska, Kitty said softly. Knew him, Jezuk could not for bear a glance at the boy she had borne him, and his eyes followed her mechanically to the window where played the two children. An iron hand seemed to tighten across his forehead. His knees went weak and his heart leaped up and pounded like a fist against his breast. His boy, he had never dreamed it. Little Kitty Bonner, fairy-like in gauzy lawn, with pinkest of cheeks and bluest of dancing eyes, arms outstretched in lips puckered in invitation, was striving to kiss the boy. And the boy, lean and lithe, sunbeaten and brown, skin clad and hair fringed and hair tough to mucklucks that showed the wear of the sea in rough work, coolly with stuttered vances, his body straight and stiff, with the peculiar erectness commoned the children of savage people. A stranger in a strange land, unabashed and unafraid, he appeared more like an untamed animal, silent and watchful, his black eyes flashing from face to face, quiet so long as quiet endured, but prepared to spring and fight and tear and scratch for life at the first sign of danger. The contrast between boy and girl was striking, but not pitiful. There was too much strength in the boy for that, weight that he was of the generations of Spack, Spike O'Brien and Bonner. In his features, clean cut his cameo and almost classic in their severity, there were the power and achievement of his father and his grandfather, and the one known as the Big Fat, who was captured by the sea people and escaped to Kamchatka. Neil Bonner fought his emotion down, swallowed it down and choked over it, though his face smiled with good humor and the joy of which one meets a friend. Your boy ages, Ock, he said. And then, turning to Kitty, handsome fellow, he'll do something with those two hands of his in this hour world. Kitty nodded concurrence. What is your name, she asked. The young savage flasks his quick eyes upon her and dwelt over her first space, seeking out as it were the motive beneath the question. Neil, he answered deliberately, when the scrutinny had satisfied him. Engine talk, G. Zuck interposed, glibly manufacturing languages on the spur of the moment. Him, engine talk, Neil, all the same, cracker. Him, baby, him like cracker, him cry for cracker. Him say, Neil, Neil, all the time, Neil. Then I say that him name, so him name all time, Neil. Never did a sound more blessed fall upon Neil Bonner's ear than that lie from G. Zuck's slips. It was the cue, and he knew there was a reason for Kitty's untroubled brow. And his father, Kitty asked, he must be a fine man. Oh, a yes, was the reply. I'm father fine man, sure. Did you know him, Neil, queered Kitty? Know him? Most intimately, Neil answered, and hark back to dreary twenty-mile and the man alone in the silence with his thoughts. And here might well end the story of G. Zuck, but for the crown she put upon her renunciation. When she returned to the North to dwell in her grand log-house, John Thompson found that the PC Company could make a shift somehow to carry on its business without his aid. Also, the new agent and the succeeding agents received instructions that the woman G. Zuck should be given whatsoever goods and grubs she desired, in whatsoever quantity she ordered, and that no charge should be placed upon the books. Further, the company paid yearly to the woman G. Zuck a pension of five thousand dollars. When he had attained suitable age, Father Champerot laid hands upon the boy, and the time was not long when G. Zuck received letters regularly from the Jesuit College in Maryland. Later on these letters came from Italy and still later from France, and in the end they returned to Alaska one father, Neil, a man mighty for good in the land, who loved his mother and who ultimately went into a wider field and rose to high authority in that order. G. Zuck was a young woman when she went back into the North, and men still looked upon her and yearned. But she lived straight, and no breath was ever raised saved in commendation. She stayed for a while with the good sisters at Holy Cross, where she learned to read and write and became versed in practical medicine and surgery. After that she returned to her grand log-house and gathered about her the young girls of the Toyat Village to show them the way of their feet in the world. It is neither Protestant nor Catholic this school in the house built by Neil Bonner for G. Zuck, his wife, but the missionaries of all the sex look upon it with equal favor. The lasturing is always out, and tired prospectors and trail-weary men turn aside from the flowing river, or frozen trail, to rest there for a space, and be warmed by her fire. And down in the States Kitty Bonner is pleased that the interest her husband takes in Alaskan education, and the large sums he devotes to that purpose. And though she often smiles and chaffs, deep down and secretly she is but the prouder of him. End the Story of G. Zuck. End the Faith of Men by Jack London.