rce. But, if nobody in the
district liked him, it is but fair to say that many feared him, and none
could be found who spoke ill of him in the sense of calling his honesty
or his competence into question.

The sergeant was a terror to evil-doers, a hard man to cross, and too
grim and sour to be any one's companion. But no man doubted his honesty,
and those who had no call to fear him entertained a certain respect for
him, even though they could not like the man. In addition to his
grimness he had a stingingly bitter tongue. He was not a fluent speaker;
but most of his words had an edge to them, and he dealt not at all in
compliments, never going beyond a curt nod by way of response to another
man's "Good day!" When, with the punctiliousness of the perfectly
disciplined man, he saluted an officer, there was that in his expression
and in the almost fierce quality of his movement which made the salute
something of a menace.

His forbidding disposition had probably stood between Sergeant Moore and
further promotion. His contemporaries, the older men of the corps, knew
he had once been married. His juniors had never seen the sergeant in
converse with a woman. Withal it was believed that Sergeant Moore had
one weakness, one soft spot in his armor. It was said that when he
believed himself to be quite alone with his dog Sourdough he indulged
himself in some of the tendernesses of a widowed father who lavishes all
his heart upon a single child.

There was little enough about Sourdough to remind one of a human child,
lovable or otherwise. If the master was grim and forbidding in manner
and appearance, the dog exhibited a broadly magnified reflection of the
same attributes. His color was a sandy grayish yellow without markings.
His coat was coarse, rather ragged, and extraordinarily dense. His
pricked ears were chipped and jagged from a hundred fights, and in a
diagonal line across his muzzle was a broad white scar, gotten, men
said, in combat with a timber-wolf in the Athabasca country.

It was a part of Sourdough's pose or policy in life to profess
short-sightedness. He would walk past a group of dogs as though unaware
of their existence. Yet let one of those dogs but cock an eye of
impudence in his direction, or glance with lifting eyebrow at one of his
fellows, with a sneer or jeer in his heart for Sourdough, and in that
instant Sourdough would be upon him like an angry lynx, with a bitter
snarl and a snap that was pretty