and unwilling.  He knew what was going on.  I stopped in a likely place, put my foot on the rope, and pulled my big Colt’s.  And that dog sat down and looked at me.  I tell you he didn’t plead.  He just looked.  And I saw all kinds of incomprehensible things moving, yes, moving, in those eyes of his.  I didn’t really see them move; I thought I saw them, for, as I said before, I guess I only sensed them.  And I want to tell you right now that it got beyond me.  It was like killing a man, a conscious, brave man who looked calmly into your gun as much as to say, “Who’s afraid?” Then, too, the message seemed so near that, instead of pulling the trigger quick, I stopped to see if I could catch the message.  There it was, right before me, glimmering all around in those eyes of his.  And then it was too late.  I got scared.  I was trembly all over, and my stomach generated a nervous palpitation that made me seasick.  I just sat down and looked at that dog, and he looked at me, till I thought I was going crazy.  Do you want to know what I did?  I threw down the gun and ran back to camp with the fear of God in my heart.  Steve laughed at me.  But I notice that Steve led Spot into the woods, a week later, for the same purpose, and that Steve came back alone, and a little later Spot drifted back, too.

At any rate, Spot wouldn’t work.  We paid a hundred and ten dollars for him from the bottom of our sack, and he wouldn’t work.  He wouldn’t even tighten the traces.  Steve spoke to him the first time we put him in harness, and he sort of shivered, that was all.  Not an ounce on the traces.  He just stood still and wobbled, like so much jelly.  Steve touched him with the whip.  He yelped, but not an ounce.  Steve touched him again, a bit harder, and he howled—­the regular long wolf howl.  Then Steve got mad and gave him half a dozen, and I came on the run from the tent.  I told Steve he was brutal with the animal, and we had some words—­the first we’d ever had.  He threw the whip down in the snow, and walked away mad.  I picked it up and went to it.  That Spot trembled and wobbled and cowered before ever I swung the lash, and with the first bite of it he howled like a lost soul.  Next he lay down in the snow.  I started the rest of the dogs, and they dragged him along while I threw the whip into him.  He rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving in the air, himself howling as though he was going through a sausage machine.  Steve came back and laughed at me, and I apologized for what I’d said.

There was no getting any work out of that Spot; and to make up for it, he was the biggest pig-glutton of a dog I ever saw.  On top of that, he was the cleverest thief.  There was no circumventing him.  Many a breakfast we went without our bacon because Spot had been there first.  And it was because of him that we nearly starved to death up the Stewart.  He figured out the way to break into our meat-cache, and what he didn’t eat, the rest of the team