“Skag With the Queer Head” by Murray Leinster appeared in Marvel Science Fiction, August 1951. The editor of this low-paying Pulp was Robert O. Erisman. This strange Northern is a Science Fiction story with a scientist mutating sled dogs for superior intelligence. Skag, the male of the pair, does have a queer head. The increased brains require more room. The scientist in question is Professor Danil, who has fled to remote Alaska to carry out his experiments. We get the first inkling that Danil may not be that nice a guy, fleeing the scientific community and the authorities. Dugan’s Landing is a remote Alaskan hideaway.
Deena, Skag’s mate, has had a second litter of puppies. Danil is excited to see what this next generation will bring. He experiments with Skag by pretending to take one of the puppies. The dog will not let him pass. Only when Deena tells him all is okay does the animal let the man by. Danil shouts at Skag but laughs it off afterwards. In his diary he records that he is looking forward to operating on Deena’s puppies. (The fate of the last brood.) This operating involves painful surgery without anesthetic. (Shades of H. G. Wells’s “The House of Pain”.)
When the Professor goes to take one of the pups, he is attacked by both dogs. He has a pistol to protect himself but the dogs pin him, not breaking the bones in his arms. He drops the pistol, out-matched by the intelligent specimens. Deena takes the gun and buries it. This fires the scientist’s anger. He rants and plots and finally cools down. He will drug the parents and take the puppies.
When Danil shows up with the drugged food, he discovers the dogs have taken their children and fled. The fence around the compound is high and should have kept them in. Unfortunately for Danil, snow drifts allowed the huskies to get over the barricade. Now he has to hunt them in the woods, which he does with a rifle. He discovers their tracks but Skag outwits him with several false trails. The sun is fading so Danil has to retreat to his cabin.
A game of cat-and-mouse begins, with Skag getting into the house to steal food. Danil tries to catch him with bear traps but the dogs are too smart. The Professor tries tracking them again, following the dogs to a new den in a fallen tree. Deena is guarding the puppies but Skag is nowhere to be seen. Skag attacks out of the shadows and steals Danil’s rifle. The weapon is taken into the forest and buried. When the man tries to flee, the two dogs chase him up a tree.
Later when Spring comes, Joe Timmins, the man who brings the Professor his mail and supplies, finds the dogs and their fast-growing pups. The Professor’s house has been abandoned for many months. He finds Danil still in the tree, long dead. Timmons reads his journal and quickly pieces together what happened. He decides to burn the house down and never tell anyone about the intelligent dogs living in the woods.
Leinster (Will F. Jenkins) wrote the occasional straight Northerns for the adventure magazines. Leinster, under several different nom de plumes, made a good percentage of his money writing for non-SF publications. An example is “The Private God” for Complete Northwest Novels, July 1937. In that story a native man creates his own god to keep him safe. (More on this story in a later post.)
“Skag With the Queer Head” is Leinster’s Science Fiction Northern. The tale is definitely descended from H. G. Wells and The Island of Doctor Moreau (1897), in which Wells criticizes vivisection and the cruelties of scientific research. Leinster obviously shares some of those thoughts. You get the feeling that if Danil would treat the dogs as something closer to equals, with some modicum of kindness, it would have all turned out differently. The Professor is a man-child, throwing temper tantrums whenever his intelligent specimens behave as such. Our sympathies are all with Skag and Deena. Joe Timmons is a kinder version of a human, giving Skag the advice to never let any humans control him and his family.
This story is also typical of the 1950s, as opposed to the SF Northerns of the 1930s like Walter Kately’s tales for Amazing Stories, or Ed Earl Repp’s “Under the North Pole” and its underground laboratory. I suppose the mad scientist in that story and Professor Danil are of a type but Leinster portrays the childish Professor without mustache twirling or other Pulpy cliches. Danil is over-ambitious and cruel but not interested in “Taking over the world!” The Northern setting of this story is nicely done, with Danil having to deal with inclement weather like snow storms, dogs hiding in the woods, etc. His obvious knowledge of the setting makes the whole thing tick.