him. He cut sharply across the curve of the trail and was gone.

[Illustration]

THAT SPOT

I don't think much of Stephen Mackaye any more, though I used to swear
by him. I know that in those days I loved him more than my own brother.
If ever I meet Stephen Mackaye again, I shall not be responsible for my
actions. It passes beyond me that a man with whom I shared food and
blanket, and with whom I mushed over the Chilcoot Trail, should turn out
the way he did. I always sized Steve up as a square man, a kindly
comrade, without an iota of anything vindictive or malicious in his
nature. I shall never trust my judgment in men again. Why, I nursed that
man through typhoid fever; we starved together on the headwaters of the
Stewart; and he saved my life on the Little Salmon. And now, after the
years we were together, all I can say of Stephen Mackaye is that he is
the meanest man I ever knew.

We started for the Klondike in the fall rush of 1897, and we started too
late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. We packed our
outfit on our backs part way over, when the snow began to fly, and then
we had to buy dogs in order to sled it the rest of the way. That was how
we came to get that Spot. Dogs were high, and we paid one hundred and
ten dollars for him. He looked worth it. I say _looked_, because he was
one of the finest appearing dogs I ever saw. He weighed sixty pounds,
and he had all the lines of a good sled animal. We never could make out
his breed. He wasn't husky, nor Malemute, nor Hudson Bay; he looked like
all of them and he didn't look like any of them; and on top of it all he
had some of the white man's dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of
the mixed yellow-brown-red-and-dirty-white that was his prevailing
color, there was a spot of coal-black as big as a water-bucket. That was
why we called him Spot.

He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles
stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest looking
brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent looking. To run
your eyes over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of his own
weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn't run
that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct
that was positively grewsome for divining when work was to be done and
for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying
lost he was nothing short of inspired