the quick blood from
his bitten hand and gazing down on the little puppy choking and gasping
in the snow.

Leclere turned to John Hamlin, storekeeper of the Sixty Mile Post. "Dat
fo' w'at Ah lak heem. 'Ow moch, eh, you, _M'sieu_'? 'Ow moch? Ah buy
heem, now; Ah buy heem queek."

And because he hated him with an exceeding bitter hate, Leclere bought
Batard 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 Pelly and even so far as the Peace River,
Athabasca, and the Great Slave. And they acquired a reputation for
uncompromising wickedness, the like of which never before attached itself
to man and dog.

Batard 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 Batard, 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, Batard's progenitors, and, bone and flesh
of their bone and flesh, he had inherited it all. And then came Black
Leclere, to lay his heavy hand on the bit of pulsating puppy life, to
press and prod and mould till it became a big bristling beast, acute in
knavery, overspilling with hate, sinister, malignant, diabolical. With a
proper master Batard might have made an ordinary, fairly efficient sled-
dog. He never got the chance: Leclere but confirmed him in his
congenital iniquity.

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