gh 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
colour, 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 eves 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 gruesome 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. But when it came to work, the way that
intelligence dribbled out of him and left him a mere clot of wobbling,
stupid jelly would make your heart bleed.

There are times when I think it wasn't stupidity. Maybe, like some men I
know, he was too wise to work. I shouldn't wonder if he put it all over
us with that intelligence of his. Maybe he figured it all out and
decided that a licking now and again and no work was a whole lot better
than work all the time and no licking. He was intelligent enough for
such a computation. I tell you, I've sat and looked into that dog's eyes
till the shivers ran up and down my spine and the marrow crawled like
yea