d physical pain;
then an idea that drove it all away struck me like a flash. I sat up
and drew the skees to me on the floor, and placed them parallel and
about ten inches apart. Then I took one of the legs of the stove and
pounded a board off of the dry-goods box. It was four feet long and a
foot or more wide. I beat some nails out of the box, and then placed
the board lengthways on top of the skees and nailed it firmly. This
made me a sled, low but long and light.

I had on under my coat a jacket of coarse, strong cloth. This I took
off and cut and tore up into strips, knotted them together, and made
two stout ropes five or six feet long. I fastened one end of each of
these to the front of the skees. Then I let out Kaiser's collar two or
three holes, tied the other ends of my ropes to each side of it,
making them precisely like harness traces, and pushed out of the door
and sat down on my new sled. I had like to have forgotten the letter
on the door, but drew myself up and got it and put it in my pocket.
There was a monstrous red skull and cross-bones on the outside of it.

If you think I did not have a time teaching that dog to draw me, then
you are mistaken. The poor animal had not the least notion what I
wanted of him, and kept mixing up his legs in the traces, coming back
and bounding around me, and doing everything else that he shouldn't. I
coaxed, and tried to explain, and worked with him, and at last boxed
his ears. At this he sat down in the snow and looked at me as much as
to say, "Go ahead, if you will, and abuse the only friend you have
got!" At last I got him square in front, and, clapping my hands
suddenly, he jumped forward, jerked the sled out from under me, and
went off on the run with the thing flying behind.

I lay in the snow with my five wits half scared out of me, expecting
no less than that he would be so terrified that he would run to
Track's End without once stopping. But I made out to do what I could,
and called "Kaiser! Kaiser!" with all the voice I had. Luckily he
heard me, got his senses again, and stopped. He stood looking at me a
long time; then he slipped the collar over his head and came trotting
back, innocent as a lamb, without the sled.

There seemed to be nothing to do but to crawl to the sled, so I
started, with Kaiser tagging behind and not saying a word. I think he
felt he had done wrong, but did not know exactly how. The crawling
pained my ankle somewhat, but not so much as b