ache, and what
he didn't eat, the rest of the team did. But he was impartial. He stole
from everybody. He was a restless dog, always very busy snooping around
or going somewhere. And there was never a camp within five miles that he
didn't raid. The worst of it was that they always came back on us to pay
his board bill, which was just, being the law of the land; but it was
mighty hard on us, especially that first winter on the Chilcoot, when we
were busted, paying for whole hams and sides of bacon that we never ate.
He could fight, too, that Spot. He could do everything but work. He
never pulled a pound, but he was the boss of the whole team. The way he
made those dogs stand around was an education. He bullied them, and
there was always one or more of them fresh-marked with his fangs. But he
was more than a bully. He wasn't afraid of anything that walked on four
legs; and I've seen him march, single-handed, into a strange team,
without any provocation whatever, and put the _kibosh_ on the whole
outfit. Did I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip once.
That's straight. He started in at the lash, and when I caught him he was
down to the handle, and still going.

But he was a good looker. At the end of the first week we sold him for
seventy-five dollars to the Mounted Police. They had experienced dog
drivers, and we knew that by the time he'd covered the six hundred miles
to Dawson he'd be a good sled dog. I say we _knew_, for we were just
getting acquainted with that Spot. A little later we were not brash
enough to know anything where he was concerned. A week later we woke up
in the morning to the dangedest dog fight we'd ever heard. It was that
Spot come back and knocking the team into shape. We ate a pretty
depressing breakfast, I can tell you; but cheered up two hours afterward
when we sold him to an official courier, bound in to Dawson with
government dispatches. That Spot was only three days in coming back,
and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough-house.

We spent the winter and spring, after our own outfit was across the
pass, freighting other people's outfits; and we made a fat stake. Also,
we made money out of Spot. If we sold him once, we sold him twenty
times. He always came back, and no one asked for their money. We didn't
want the money. We'd have paid handsomely for any one to take him off
our hands for keeps. We had to get rid of him, and we couldn't give him
away, for that would have been