did.  But he was impartial.  He stole from every body.  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 anything 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 dangdest dog-fight we’d ever heard.  It was that Spot came 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 despatches.  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 suspicious.  But he was such a fine looker that we never had any difficulty in selling him.  “Unbroke,” we’d say, and they’d pay any old price for him.  We sold him as low as twenty-five dollars, and once we got a hundred and fifty for him.  That particular party returned him in person, refused to take his money back, and the way he abused us was something awful.  He said it was cheap at the price to tell us what he thought of us; and we felt he was so justified that we never talked back.  But to this day I’ve never quite regained all the old self-respect that was mine before that man talked to me.