Short Stories
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?"
Again the shoulders went up.
"Mon pere," he said after a pause, "de taim is not yet. He is
one beeg devil. Some taim Ah break heem, so an' so, all to leetle
bits. Hey? some taim. BON!"
A day came when Leclere 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 poled up the
Koyokuk to deserted Arctic City, and later came drifting back,
from camp to camp, along the Yukon. And during the long
months Batard was well lessoned. He learned many tortures,
and, notably, the torture of hunger, the torture of thirst, the tor-
ture 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 fibre of his being. It made him howl, long and wolf-life, as
when the wolves bay the stars on frosty nights. He could not
help howling. It was his one weakness in the contest with
Leclere, and it was his shame. Leclere, on the other hand, pas-
sionately loved music—as passionately as he loved strong drink.
And when his soul clamoured for expression, it usually uttered
itself in one or the other of the two ways, and more usually in
both ways. And when he had drunk, his brain a-lilt with unsung
song and the devil in him aroused and rampant, his soul found
its supreme utterance in torturing Batard.
"Now we will haf a leetle museek," he would say. "Eh? W'at
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