ear of him, we started for the cabin, and when we arrived, there
was that Spot sitting on the stoop waiting for us. Now how did he know
we lived there? There were forty thousand people in Dawson that summer,
and how did he _savvy_ our cabin out of all the cabins? How did he know
we were in Dawson, anyway? I leave it to you. But don't forget what I
have said about his intelligence and that immortal something I have seen
glimmering in his eyes.

There was no getting rid of him any more. There were too many people in
Dawson who had bought him up on Chilcoot, and the story got around. Half
a dozen times we put him on board steamboats going down the Yukon; but
he merely went ashore at the first landing and trotted back up the bank.
We couldn't sell him, we couldn't kill him (both Steve and I had tried),
and nobody else was able to kill him. He bore a charmed life. I've seen
him go down in a dog fight on the main street with fifty dogs on top of
him, and when they were separated, he'd appear on all his four legs,
unharmed, while two of the dogs that had been on top of him would be
lying dead.

I saw him steal a chunk of moose meat from Major Dinwiddie's cache so
heavy that he could just keep one jump ahead of Mrs. Dinwiddie's squaw
cook, who was after him with an ax. As he went up the hill, after the
squaw gave out, Major Dinwiddie himself came out and pumped his
Winchester into the landscape. He emptied his magazine twice, and never
touched that Spot. Then a policeman came along and arrested him for
discharging firearms inside the city limits. Major Dinwiddie paid his
fine, and Steve and I paid him for the moose meat at the rate of a
dollar a pound, bones and all. That was what he paid for it. Meat was
high that year.

I am only telling what I saw with my own eyes. And now I'll tell you
something, also. I saw that Spot fall through a water hole. The ice was
three and a half feet thick, and the current sucked him under like a
straw. Three hundred yards below was the big water hole used by the
hospital. Spot crawled out of the hospital water hole, licked off the
water, bit out the ice that had formed between his toes, trotted up the
bank, and whipped a big Newfoundland belonging to the Gold Commissioner.

In the fall of 1898, Steve and I poled up the Yukon on the last water,
bound for Stewart River. We took the dogs along, all except Spot. We
figured we'd been feeding him long enough. He'd cost us more time and
trouble and