END OF THE TRAIL

Evening Star, Issue 20128, 19 March 1929, Page 13

END OF THE TRAIL

HEART OF CHINOOK GREATEST OF SLED DOGS "DIED WITH HIS BOOTS OX.” On his twelfth birthday, after seeing a younger dog broken in for the leadership of his master’s team of mushers, old Chinook slipped awaj from the side of the man he wor shipped, and presently vanished into the white continent which stretches from Commander Byrd’s base on the Bay of Wales, says the ‘ Literary Di gest,’ when referring to Commander Byrd’s recent wireless message from the Bay of Whales that his leading dog has disappeared. A lost dog I Would he find his way back to camp? Would his sturdy brown form be sighted clambering over some dazzling hummock? A lost dog! Once it was he, Chinook, who always went in search of a wanderer, and brought it m; but now others nosed around in vain for him. Had the grand old fellow lost his looting and fallen into some hopeless crevasse? Or—and this surmise, we gather, added a rankling barb to the anxious loneliness of Arthur T. Walden, Chinook’s master and inseparable chum—Was there a subtle purpose behind the patriarchal rnusher’s exit from the scene, a tragic instinct, a fatal emotion, almost a thought? Walden knows what happened; everyone in the party who ever handled ■' huskies ” knows. Chinook in the great intelligence that characterises the husky breed, realised that ho " was done” —that Walden was breaking in a new lead dog, and that as much as the men loved him. that when the real work of the expedition began he would have to be an idle onlooker. He was too great a trailbreaker, too, not to havo'tbought that feeding an idle hand on an expedition of lhat sort was costly business. Ho must have though b lots of canine thoughts, for be went out alone in the snow and lay down and died. t There aie breeds of worker dogs who have done much to aid man in his fight for progress, and in bis efforts to break down the barriers of far places, and of this class was Chinook, who died in the Bay of Whales ice-fields, tar from the high north and muskeag land. A GREAT ADVENTURER. A lost dog—“ ves. but such a dog!” exclaims John T*. Brady, in the Boston ‘Sunday Post,’ in the course of an "intimate story” of ‘The Heart of Chinook, Greatest of Sled Dogs, Who Died With His Boots On.’ He fells of a conversation he had with Walden and Chinook at the former’s Wonalancet (N.H.) homo last September. just before tiro man and the clog left to join the Byrd expedition. As wc road-

"This is going to be our greatest adventure together, i«n*t it- old man? ' he said to Chinook, while the dog sat with his muzzle laid on his master s knee, and his intelligent eyes fixed on Walden’s face. Then, as Chinook " woofed ” agreement, Walden turned to me and went on

"And it may be the last adventure in life for one, or both of us. But we’ll take it together, and meet whatever fate may befall us. with our hoofs on. 1 have often thought with dread of the possibility that there will come a day when it will be my painful duty to take a last walk witn Chinook into the depths of the woods and mercifully end his suffering from illness or old ago in the quickest uossible way. So it is »‘.y most earnest wish that he may die ns .1 know he wants to die. in harness, as be has worked for me all bis life.”-

News from tiic Byrd expedit'd) that Chinook had wandered away into the Antarctic ice-fields, presumably to his death, interested dog lovers everywhere, for his name and lame were known from polo to pole. Not a blue-blooded, pretty, pampered, temperamental, snobbish, posing. thoroughbred show dog. to bo sure. But a red-blooded> unspoiled, stouthearted, modest, gallant, dignified, useful, lovable, he-man’s dog. anti a blue-ribbon champion, i.oo, as a racing sled dog. . , My first acquaintance with Chinook began when he won the first tional Sled Dog Derby at Bcrling. New Hampshire, in 19'2'J, and having known him personally ever since, and .seen many manifestations of his extraordinary intelligence, this story nt him going off on his twelfth, birthday into the white wilderness to ■ iie, striker, me os being a A-ery edd thing for him to do, to sav the least. The writer of the story suggests the possibility that Chinook realised he could no longer keen pace with the younger dogs and do his share of the work, and so deliberately wandered away, preferring to die rather than become a burden to his master. But Chinook knew his master would never regard him as a burden under any circumstances, and he realised that when Walden put some dog in as leader of his freight team, it was to save him for emergencies, when his weight and power were needed to hold n loaded sledge from sliding down a dangerous slope or to yank it out of a ererassc. Long ago' as a matter of fact. Chinook got over being jealous of usurpers of his time-honoured position at the head of his master’s racing team. He knew that he was enthroned in his master’s heart, and no pretender could take that place away from him. A HARD BLOW. No doubt his disappearance was a hard blow .to Walden, ami I can visualise the veteran musher, hardened ns he is by a rough life, lying awake in his tent at night, smoking cigarette after cigarette, with a mist in his eyes and ears eagerly cocked to catch a familiar wolfish howl, and rushing out in the morning to scan the horizon in the hope of catching a glimpse of his missing pet. Walden and Chinook were inseparable pals, and on the rare occasions when they were apart for any length of time, the dog was miserable and the man was plainly not himself. Walden was inclined to get impetuous and “ flyoff the handle” when he was crossed or things went wrong with him. Chinook had a strain _of wild wnll; blood in his veins, inherited from his mother, Ningo, the daughter ot one of the clogs that Peary picked to drag him over the last stage of his journey to the North Pole, relates Mr Brady. Occasionally, during his early years, ho showed evidence of it by killing chickens. sheep, and calves. Once when Walden caught him in the act of killing a calf and undertook to drive out lus savage instincts with a whip, Chinook even attacked his master. “ It was not ray intention to beat Chinook cruelly,” Walden told me in ' describing that incident. “ I though I; too much of him to do that, and would have cut my right hand off sooner than " break his spirit by a terrific beating. “ But when he lunged at me with a vicious growl, T knew that if, was the blood of his savage sires that was ac-

tuating him. and 1 had to fight for my life.

“He fought me like a demon dog, and when, at last, lie quit his struggling and I Jet go my hold on his lower jaw, he looked up at me, with head and tail erect, conquered, but uncowecl.” From tiiat day on Chinook was always a model dog in every respect, and on numerous occasions he publicly demonstrated that lie was literally one of Nature’s noblemen, with not an ounce of bad disposition in all his hundred pounds. FONDNESS FOR CHILDREN. With children he was especially gentle, and would let them pull his tail and maul him without a growl. Because of Ids heroic size, parents feared to let their children go near him, before this admirable trait became publicly known, as a result of an incident that happened at the Old Home Day celebration at Tamworth, New Hampshire, one summer. Walden had fried in vain to convince the crowd that Chinook was really verygentle, but a little girl turned the trick. A pretty tot, with golden curls, she escaped I rom her mother's watchful eve, ran over to Chinook, and while everybody on the field, except herself and Mr Walden, held their breath in fear, she put her arms around the dog’s neck and hugged him. And. with gallantry worthy of a knight of old, Chinook turned his head and kissed one of the little lady’s chubby bauds. Then she fed him an ice cream cone, and afterwards Chinook followed her about all afternoon as though she had been committed to his charge, keeping his distance, yet ever watchful that no harm should befall her. Thus did Chinook become an idol in the eyes of many who had at first treated him as an unwelcome guest, a dog to be feared and shunned. Great, powerful fellow that he was, there was nothing of the bully about Chinook, and, -while he always insisted on his own rights, he respected those of others weaker than himself.