The history of Batard and Leclere is a history of war—­of five cruel, relentless years, of which their first meeting is fit summary.  To begin with, it was Leclere’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 Batard 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 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.