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 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 dangdest 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 despatches.  That Spot was only three days in coming back, and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough house.