CHAPTER XXIII

THE DOGS OF FORT RESOLUTION It sounds like the opening of an epic poem but it is not. The Chipewyan calender is divided in two seasons--dog season and canoe season. What the horse is to the Arab, what the Reindeer is to the Lap and the Yak to the Thibetan, the dog is to the Chipewyan for at least one-half of the year, until it is displaced by the canoe. During dog season the canoes are piled away somewhat carelessly or guarded only from the sun. During canoe season the dogs are treated atrociously. Let us remember, first, that these are dogs in every doggy sense, the worshipping servants of man, asking nothing but a poor living in return for abject love and tireless service, as well as the relinquishment of all family ties and natural life. In winter, because they cannot serve without good food, they are well fed on fish that is hung on scaffolds in the fall in time to be frozen before wholly spoiled. The journeys they will make and the devoted service they render at this time is none too strongly set forth in Butler's "Cerf Vola" and London's "Call of the Wild." It is, indeed, the dog alone that makes life possible during the white half-year of the boreal calender. One cannot be many days in the north without hearing tales of dog prowess, devotion, and heroism. A typical incident was related as follows by Thomas Anderson: Over thirty years ago, Chief Factor George McTavish and his driver, Jack Harvey, were travelling from East Main to Rupert's House (65 miles) in a blizzard so thick and fierce that they could scarcely see the leading dog. He was a splendid, vigorous creature, but all at once he lay down and refused to go. The driver struck him, but the factor reproved the man, as this dog had never needed the whip. The driver then went ahead and found open water only a few feet from the dogs, though out of sight. After that they gave the leader free rein, surrendered themselves to his guidance, and in spite of the blinding blizzard they struck the flagpole of Rupert's between 11 and 12 that night, only a little behind time. Many of the wild Wolf traits still remain with them. They commonly pair; they bury surplus food; the mothers disgorge food for the young; they rally to defend one of their own clan against a stranger; and they punish failure with death. A thousand incidents might be adduced to show that in the north there is little possibility of winter travel without dogs and little possibility of life without winter travel. But April comes with melting snows and May with open rivers and brown earth everywhere; then, indeed, the reign of the dog is over. The long yellow-birch canoe is taken down from the shanty roof or from a sheltered scaffold, stitched, gummed, and launched; and the dogs are turned loose to fend for themselves. Gratitude for past services or future does not enter into the owner's thoughts to secure a fair allowance of food. All their training and instinct prompts them to hang about camp, where, kicked, stoned, beaten, and starved, they steal and hunt as best they may, until the sad season of summer is worn away and merry winter with its toil and good food is back once more. From leaving Fort MacMurray we saw daily the starving dog, and I fed them when I could. At Smith Landing the daily dog became a daily fifty. One big fellow annexed us. "I found them first," he seemed to say, and no other dog came about our camp without a fight. Of course he fared well on our scraps, but many a time it made my heart ache and my food-store suffer to see the gaunt skeletons in the bushes, just beyond his sphere of influence, watching for a chance to rush in and secure a mouthful of--anything to stay the devastating pang. My journal of the time sets forth in full detail the diversity of their diet, not only every possible scrap of fish and meat or whatsoever smelled of fish or meat, but rawhide, leather, old boots, flour-bags, potato-peelings, soap, wooden fragments of meat-boxes, rags that have had enough animal contact to be odorous. An ancient dishcloth, succulent with active service, was considered a treat to be bolted whole; and when in due course the cloth was returned to earth, it was intact, bleached, purged, and purified as by chemic fires and ready for a new round of benevolences. In some seasons the dogs catch Rabbits enough to keep them up. But this year the Rabbits were gone. They are very clever at robbing fish-nets at times, but these were far from the fort. Reduced to such desperate straits for food, what wonder that cannibalism should be common! Not only the dead, but the sick or disabled of their own kind are torn to pieces and devoured. I was told of one case where a brutal driver disabled one of his dogs with heavy blows; its companions did not wait till it was dead before they feasted. It is hard to raise pups because the mothers so often devour their own young; and this is a charge I never heard laid to the Wolf, the ancestor of these dogs, which shows how sadly the creature has been deteriorated by contact with man. There seems no length to which they will not go for food. Politeness forbids my mentioning the final diet for which they scramble around the camp. Never in my life before have I seen such utter degradation by the power of the endless hunger pinch. Nevertheless--and here I expect the reader to doubt, even as I did when first I heard it, no matter how desperate their straits-these gormandisers of unmentionable filth, these starvelings, in their dire extremity will turn away in disgust from duck or any other web-footed water-fowl. Billy Loutit had shot a Pelican; the skin was carefully preserved and the body guarded for the dogs, thinking that this big thing, weighing 6 or 7 pounds, would furnish a feast for one or two. The dogs knew me, and rushed like a pack of Wolves at sight of coming food. The bigger ones fought back the smaller. I threw the prize, but, famished though they were, they turned away as a man might turn from a roasted human hand. One miserable creature, a mere skeleton, sneaked forward when the stronger ones were gone, pulled out the entrails at last, and devoured them as though he hated them. I can offer no explanation. But the Hudson's Bay men tell me it is always so, and I am afraid the remembrance of the reception accorded my bounty that day hardened my heart somewhat in the days that followed. On the Nyarling we were too far from mankind to be bothered with dogs, but at Fort Resolution we reentered their country. The following from my journal records the impression after our enforced three days' stay: "Tuesday, July 16, 1907.--Fine day for the first time since July