several hundred miles and the
Indians with them. There we were. Spring was on and we had to wait for
the river to break. We got pretty thin before we decided to eat the
dogs, and we decided to eat Spot first. Do you know what that dog did?
He sneaked. Now how did he know our minds were made up to eat him? We
sat up nights laying for him, but he never came back, and we ate the
other dogs. We ate the whole team.

And now for the sequel. You know what it is when a big river breaks up
and a few billion tons of ice go out, jamming and milling and grinding.
Just in the thick of it, when the Stewart went out, rumbling and
roaring, we sighted Spot out in the middle. He'd got caught as he was
trying to cross up above somewhere. Steve and I yelled and shouted and
ran up and down the bank, tossing our hats in the air. Sometimes we'd
stop and hug each other, we were that boisterous, for we saw Spot's
finish. He didn't have a chance in a million. He didn't have any chance
at all. After the ice-run, we got into a canoe and paddled down to the
Yukon, and down the Yukon to Dawson, stopping to feed up for a week at
the cabins at the mouth of Henderson Creek. And as we came in to the
bank at Dawson, there sat that Spot, waiting for us, his ears pricked
up, his tail wagging, his mouth smiling, extending a hearty welcome to
us. Now how did he get out of that ice? How did he know we were coming
to Dawson, to the very hour and minute, to be out there on the bank
waiting for us?

The more I think of that Spot, the more I am convinced that there are
things in this world that go beyond science. On no scientific grounds
can that Spot be explained. It's psychic phenomena, or mysticism, or
something of that sort, I guess, with a lot of Theosophy thrown in. The
Klondike is a good country. I might have been there yet, and become a
millionaire, if it hadn't been for Spot. He got on my nerves. I stood
him for two years all together, and then I guess my stamina broke. It
was the summer of 1899 when I pulled out. I didn't say anything to
Steve. I just sneaked. But I fixed it up all right. I wrote Steve a
note, and enclosed a package of "rough-on-rats," telling him what to do
with it. I was worn down to skin and bone by that Spot, and I was that
nervous that I'd jump and look around when there wasn't anybody within
hailing distance. But it was astonishing the way I recuperated when I
got quit of him. I got back twenty pounds before I arrived in San
Fr