waiting for us. Now how did he know we lived there? There were forty
thousand people in Dawson that summer, and how did he savve our cabin
out of all the cabins ? How did he know we were in Dawson, anyway? I
leave it to you. But don’t forget what I have said about his intelligence and
that immortal something I have seen glimmering in his eyes.
LOST FACE
42
There was no getting rid of him any more. There were too many people in
Dawson who had bought him up on Chilcoot, and the story got around.
Half a dozen times we put him on board steamboats going down the
Yukon; but he merely went ashore at the first landing and trotted back up
the bank. We couldn’t sell him, we couldn’t kill him (both Steve and I had
tried), and nobody else was able to kill him. He bore a charmed life. I’ve
seen him go down in a dog-fight on the main street with fifty dogs on top
of him, and when they were separated, he’d appear on all his four legs,
unharmed, while two of the dogs that had been on top of him would be
lying dead.
I saw him steal a chunk of moose-meat from Major Dinwiddie’s cache so
heavy that he could just keep one jump ahead of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s squaw
cook, who was after him with an axe. As he went up the hill, after the
squaw gave up, Major Dinwiddie himself came out and pumped his
Winchester into the landscape. He emptied his magazine twice, and never
touched that Spot. Then a policeman came along and arrested him for
discharging firearms inside the city limits. Major Dinwiddie paid his fine,
and Steve and I paid him for the moose- meat at the rate of a dollar a
pound, bones and all. That was what he paid for it. Meat was high that
year.
I am only telling what I saw with my own eyes. And now I’ll tell you
something, also. I saw that Spot fall through a water-hole. The ice was
three and a half feet thick, and the current sucked him under like a straw.
Three hundred yards below was the big water-hole used by the hospital.
Spot crawled out of the hospital water-hole, licked off the water, bit out
the ice that had formed between his toes, trotted up the bank, and whipped
a big Newfoundland belonging to the Gold Commissioner.
In the fall of 1898, Steve and I poled up the Yukon on the last water,
bound for Stewart River. We took the dogs along, all except Spot. We
figured we’d been feeding him long enough. He’d cost us more time and
trouble and money and grub than we’d got by selling him on the Chilcoot–
especially grub. So Steve and I tied him down in the cabin and pulled our
freight. We camped that night at the mouth of Indian River, and Steve and
I were pretty facetious over having shaken him. Steve was a funny cuss,
and I was just sitting up in the blankets and laughing when a tornado hit
camp. The way that Spot walked into those dogs and gave them what-for
was hair-raising. Now how did he get loose? It’s up to you. I haven’t any
theory. And how did he get across the Klondike River? That’s another
lacer. And anyway, how did he know we had gone up the Yukon? You
see, we went by water, and he couldn’t smell our tracks. Steve and I began
to get superstitious about that dog. He got on our nerves, too; and, between
you and me, we were just a mite afraid of him.
LOST FACE
43
The freeze-up came on when we were at the mouth of Henderson Creek,
and we traded him off for two sacks of flour to an outfit that was bound up
White River after copper. Now that whole outfit was lost. Never trace nor
hide nor hair of men, dogs, sleds, or anything was ever found. They
dropped clean out of sight. It became one of the mysteries of the country.
Steve and I plugged away up the Stewart, and six weeks afterward that
Spot crawled into camp. He was a perambulating skeleton, and could just
drag along; but he got there. And what I want to know is who told him we
were up the Stewart? We could have gone a thousand other places. How
did he know? You tell me, and I’ll tell you.
No losing him. At the Mayo he started a row with an Indian dog. The buck
who owned the dog took a swing at Spot with an axe, missed him, and
killed his own dog. Talk about magic and turning bullets aside–I, for one,
consider it a blamed sight harder to turn an axe aside with a big buck at the
other end of it. And I saw him do it with my own eyes. That buck didn’t
want to kill his own dog. You’ve got to show me.
I told you about Spot breaking into our meat-cache. It was nearly the death
of us. There wasn’t any more meat to be killed, and meat was all we had to
live on. The moose had gone back several hundred miles and the Indians
with them. There we were. Spring was on, and we had to wait for the river
to break. We got pretty thin before we decided to eat the dogs, and we
decided to eat Spot first. Do you know what that dog did? He sneaked.
Now how did he know our minds were made up to eat him? We sat up
nights laying for him, but he never came back, and we ate the other dogs.
We ate the whole team.
And now for the sequel. You know what it is when a big river breaks up
and a few billion tons of ice go out, jamming and milling and grinding.
Just in the thick of it, when the Stewart went out, rumbling and roaring,
we sighted Spot out in the middle. He’d got caught as he was trying to
cross up above somewhere. Steve and I yelled and shouted and ran up and
down the bank, tossing our hats in the air. Sometimes we’d stop and hug
each other, we were that boisterous, for we saw Spot’s finish. He didn’t
have a chance in a million. He didn’t have any chance at all. After the icerun,
we got into a canoe and paddled down to the Yukon, and down the
Yukon to Dawson, stopping to feed up for a week at the cabins at the
mouth of Henderson Creek. And as we came in to the bank at Dawson,
there sat that Spot, waiting for us, his ears pricked up, his tail wagging, his
mouth smiling, extending a hearty welcome to us. Now how did he get out
of that ice? How did he know we were coming to Dawson, to the very
hour and minute, to be out there on the bank waiting for us?
The more I think of that Spot, the more I am convinced that there are
things in this world that go beyond science. On no scientific grounds can
LOST FACE
44
that Spot be explained. It’s psychic phenomena, or mysticism, or
something of that sort, I guess, with a lot of Theosophy thrown in. The
Klondike is a good country. I might have been there yet, and become a
millionnaire, if it hadn’t been for Spot. He got on my nerves. I stood him
for two years all together, and then I guess my stamina broke. It was the
summer of 1899 when I pulled out. I didn’t say anything to Steve. I just
sneaked. But I fixed it up all right. I wrote Steve a note, and enclosed a
package of “rough-on-rats,” telling him what to do with it. I was worn
down to skin and bone by that Spot, and I was that nervous that I’d jump
and look around when there wasn’t anybody within hailing distance. But it
was astonishing the way I recuperated when I got quit of him. I got back
twenty pounds before I arrived in San Francisco, and by the time I’d
crossed the ferry to Oakland I was my old self again, so that even my wife
looked in vain for any change in me.
Steve wrote to me once, and his letter seemed irritated. He took it kind of
hard because I’d left him with Spot. Also, he said he’d used the “rough-onrats,”
per directions, and that there was nothing doing. A year went by. I
was back in the office and prospering in all ways–even getting a bit fat.
And then Steve arrived. He didn’t look me up. I read his name in the
steamer list, and wondered why. But I didn’t wonder long. I got up one
morning and found that Spot chained to the gate-post and holding up the