KLONDIKE STORIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9912, 29 July 1910, Page 4

KLONDIKE STORIES.

By JACK LONDON fAuthor of "The Sea 'Wolf," "The Call of the Wild," otc).

, No. I IT. THAT SPOT.

[All Rights Reserved.]

T don't think much of Stephen Mackaye any more, though I used to swear by him. I know that in those days 'i loved him mure than my own brother. If ever 1 meet SLcphcn Mackayc again I shall not bo responsible for my actions, ft passed beyond me that a man with whom I shared food and blanket, and with whom 1 mushed over the Cbucoot Trail, should turn out the way he did. 1 always sized Steve up as a square man, a kindly comrade, without sn iota of anvthing vindictive'or malicious in his nature. 1 shall never trust my judgment in men again. Why, £ nursed that man through typhoui fever; we starred together on the head waters of the Stewart; and he saved jot life on tho Little Salmon. And now. after the years wo were together, nil I can say of Stephen Maekayc is that he is tho meanest man 1 ever knew. ; We started for the Klondike m the fall rush of 1897. and wo started too late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. "Wo packed our ontfu. 'on our backs part way over, when the snow began to flv, and then we h?.d to buy dogs in order to sled it the rest of the way. That was how we came to get that 'Spot. Dogs .were high, and ,-we paid ono hundred and ten dollars lor him. Ho looked worth it, I say looked, because he was one of tho fin'csfc appearing dogs I ever saw. He Jwcighod sixty pounds, and he had all the lines of a cood .sled animal. Ve Clever could make out his breed. H© ' .wasn't husky, nor M alemute, nor Hud'teon Bay; he looked like all of them, - . and he didn't look like any of them ; and on top of it all ho had some of tho -• -white man's dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of the mixed yellow- ' - ibrbwn-red-and-dirty-white that, was his prevailing colour, there was a spot ot coal-black as big as a water bucket, That was why we called him Spot, 1 He was a good looker all right. When ho was in condition his muscles *tood out in bunches all over him. And he was tho strongest looking brute 1 \ ever saw in Alaska, also the most m- " telligent-looking. To run your eyes you'd think he could out-pull three dogs' of his own weight. May bo ■ he could, but I never ?aw it. His intelligence didn't run that way. He ' , could steal and forage to perfection; - he had an instinct that was .positively ' gruesome for divining when work was '.to be done, and for making a sneak "■ accordingly; and for getting lost and ' not staving lost, he was nothing short of,, inspired. But when it came to ■ • work tho war that intelligence dribbled out of him and left him a mere. ' clot of wobbling, stupid jelly would r make ybur heart bleed. _ . ■ ■ There are times when I think it 1 - wasn't stupidity. Maybe,, like ,501116 - men I know, too wise to work. ' I- shouldn't/ wonder if he put it all over ' tißrvvith that intelligence of his. May- - ■ be-he figured it all out, and decided "- " that a licking now and again and -no •' ' work was a whole lot better than work '■ * all the time and no licking. He was '. .intelligent enough' for such a- computation. I tell you, I've sat and looked ?' 'into that dog's eyes till the shivers ran 1 * up and down ray spine, and the mar- ■\ row crawled like yeast. What ot tho i -'..•intelligence I saw saining outr" 1 cant i> • 'express myself about the intelligence .'! It is bevond mere words I saw it, ,•>/• that's all. At timos it was like gaa- •■'-" ins into a human soul, to look mto his : , : ;-, eyes; and what I paw there frightened -i ; 'me,.' and started all sorts of ideas in. »"'-"my own mind of reincarnation and all ■'" ■ the rest. 1 tell you I sensed something : '. hig. in that brute's eyes. ..There was a '''. message there, but T wasn't big enough . - v .myself to catch 'it. Whatever it was If-'jJl know I'm making a fool of myself f it was, it baffled me. J give an inkling of what I saw in V7that brute's eyes. It wasn't light, it X -"Wasn't colour; it was something that '■"' .Vmoyed, away hack, when the eyesthem- .'"'* 'selves weren't moving. And I guess >»'." T di&n't see it move cither. , I only ■'.'-. sensed that it moved. ' It was an exV\„pression—that's what "it was—and I got ' : , !'an impression of it. No; it_ was differ- -'■' eritfromamere expression: it was more ■':,' than that. I don't know what it was, ■''' , hut it gave me a feeling of kinship just <~ - the same. Oh, no, not sentimental 1; kinship. It was ,rather, a kinship of 'v. equality. Those eyes never pleaded - :V . like a deer's eyes. They challenged. '•"•'-'No, it wasn't defiance. It was just a V- 1 ' calm assumption of equality. And I *V.. don't, think' it was deliberate. My be- \/ lief is that it was unconscious on his >' part. It was there because it was V -there,' and couldn't help shining out, ■■ '■' No, I didn't mean shine. It didn't • ahine: it moved. I know I'm talking -. rot, hut if you looked into that ani- ;. mat' s eyes the way I have, '' ' you|d understand. Steve was, af- .;, fected the' same way I was. I' ' -•'Why, I tried to kill that Spot, once—he .was no good for anything; and I . . fell down on it. 1 led him out into '; .the brush, and ho came along slow and , .unwilling. He knew.what was going •I ,»n. I stopped in a likely place, put '; my foot on tho rope, and pulled my ;■ : liig- Colt's. And that dog sat down [', i and looked at me. 1 tell you ho didn't ; .plead. He just looked. And I saw all .' " kinds of incomprehensible things moving, yes, moving, in those eyes of his. really see them move; I ■j- ' thought I saw them, for, as I said be--7' "■ fore, 1 guess I only sensed them. And ■'. ; I- want to tell you right now that it ■>j~ got .beyond me. It was like killing a • -.. man, a conscious, brave man who looks'> •ed calmly into your gun, as much as 7/ " to Bay, 3< Who's afraid?" Then, too, \ ' the message seemed so near, that j«,V' ifcead of pulling the trigger quick, I ;7 to seo if I could catch the mes- .-.' ; »age. There it wan right before me, fjlimmeririg all around in those ©yes of lis. And then it i\as too late. I got '"?* scared. I was trembly all' over, and - • "'my stomach generated a nervous pal- ,*'-. pitation that made me sea-«ick. I just •"i 'sat down and looked at that dog, and. .". be looked at me, till I thought I was going crazy. Do you want to know '. , Jivhat 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 tho woods, a v.eek later, for tho game purpose, and that Steve came back alone, and a little later Spot •drifted baok, too.

, "I- -'At any rate, Spot wouldn't work. • tWe paid a hundred and ten dollars for '■' faira from the bottom of our sack, jind he wouldn't work. He wouldn't even tighten the traces. Steve spoke io> \ Him, the first time we put liim in. liar--Mss, and he sort of shivered, that was all Not an ounce on the traces. Ho ■just stood still and wobbled like so much jelly. Steve touched him with the w bip. He yelped, but not an ounce. Steven touched him again, a ■ Jbit harder, and he howled —tho regular; long, wolf howl. Then Steve got

mad and gave him half a dozen, and I. zcamt on the run from, the tent. I told Steve ho was brutal with the animal, arid no had some words—the first we'd ever had. Re throw the whip down in the .snow and walked away mad. I picked it' up and went to it. That Snot trembled a.nd wobbled ami cowered before ever I swung l.he lash, and with the first bites of it he nowled like a lost. soul. Next he lay down in the snow. I started the. rejt of the dogs., and they dragged him along, while I threw the whip into him. Ho rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving in. | the air, himself howling as though ho was going through a, sausage machine. Steve came back ami laughed at me, and I apologised for what.'l'd said. There was no getting any work out [ of that Spot; and to make up for it, be was'the biggest pig-glutton of a dog I over saw. On {op of {hat, he was the cleverest thief. There was no circumventing him. Many a breakfast wo went without our bacon becanso 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 cat the rest of them did. But he was impartial. Ho 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 hind; 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. Ho bullied them, and there was always one or more of them fresh marked with his fangs. But he was more than a bully. Ho wasn't afraid of anything that walked on four legs; and I've seen him march, singlehanded, into a strange team, without any provocation whatever, and put tho kibosh, on the whole outfit. Did I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip, once. That's straight. Ho started in at tho lash, and when. I caught him he 'was down to tho handle, and still going.

But he was a good looker. At flic end of the first week wc sold him for 75' dollars to the mounted police. They hac't experienced dog drivers, and wo knew that by the time he'd covered the 600 miles to Dawson he'd be a good sled dog. I say wo knew, for we were just getting acquainted with that Spot. A little later we were not rash enough anything where ho was concorned. A week later wo woke up in the morning to theVlangdest dog fight we'd ever heard. It was that Spot, come back and knocking the team info shape. We ate a pretty depressing breakfast, I can tell 3'ou; but cheered up two hours afterwards, when we sold him .to sn official courier, bound in to Dawson with Government despatches. That Spot was only three days in coining back, and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough house.

Wo spent the winter and spring, after onr own outfit was across the pass, freighting other people's outfits, and we made a fat stake; also, wo made money out of Spot. If we sold him once we sold him twenty times. He always came Mack, and no one asked for their money. We didn't want the money. We'd have paid handsomely for anyone 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 havo been suspicious. But he was such a fine looker that wc never had any difficulty in selling him. " TJn'broke," we'd say, and they'd pay anyold'price for him. We sold him as low as 25 dollars, and once- we got 150 for liim. That particular man re-turned him in person, refused to take his money back, and the way he abused ns was something awful. He said it was cheap at the price to tell us what ho ■thought.of us; and we felt lie 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.' Then the ice cleared out of the lakes and river, and wc put our outfit in a Lake Bennett boat and started for Dawson. "We had a good team of dogs, a.nd of course we piled them on top of the outfit. That Spot was along—there was no losing him; and a dozen times the first day .he knocked one or another, of the dogs overboard in the course of fighting with them. It was close quarters, and he didn't like being jostled. ■'"What that dog needs is space," Steve said the second day; ''let's maroon him." We did, running the hoat in at Caribou Crossing for him to juuip ashore. Two of the other dogs—good dogsfollowed him, and we lost two whole days trying to find them. We never saw those "two dogs again, but the quietness and relief we enjoyed made us decide, like the man who refused his 150, that it was cheap at any price. For the first time in months Steve and I laughed and whistled and sang. Wo were as happy as clams. The dark days were over. The nightmare had been lifted. That-Spot was gone. Three weeks later, one morning. Steve and 1 were standing on the riverbank at Dawson. A small hoat was just arriving from Lake Bennett. I saw Steve give a start, and heard him say something that was not nice, and that was not under his breath, fnen I looked —and there, in the bow of the boat, with cars pricked up, sat Spot. Steve and I sneaked immediately awav, like beaten curs. like cowards; like absconders Ironi justice. It was jihis last that the lieutenant of poiice thought when ho saw us sneaking. He surmised that there were law officers in the boat, who were after ns. He didn't want to find out, but kept us in sight, and in the jV! and M. saloon got us in a corner. We had >i- merry time explaining, for we refused to go- back to the boat and moot Spot, and fiually lie held us under miard of another policeman while hewent to the boat. After we got clear of him we started for the cabin, and when avo arrived, there was that Spot sitting- on the stoop waiting for us. Now, hnvv did lie know we lived there? lliore wore 40,000 people in Dawson that summer, and how did he sawo our cabin out of all the cabins-? How did he know we went to Dawson anyway? 1 Wve it to veu. But don't forget what I have said about his intelligence and that immortal something J: have seen glimmering in his eyes. There was no getting nd of Jinn any more. There were too 'many people in Dawson who had bought in in up on Chilr.oot, and tho story got around. Half a "dozen times wo put him on board steamboats going down the Yukon, Imt he merely went ashore at tiio 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 eke 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, wl\ile two of the dogs that had been on top of him would be lying dead. 1 saw him' steal a chunk of moose meat from Major Dinwiddle's cache so heavy that he could just keep one jump ahead of Mi-s Dinwiddle's squaw cook, who was after him with an axe. As he went up the hill, after the squaw gave up. Major Dinwiddle 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 Dinwiddle paid his fine, and Steve and I paid him i'or the moose meat, at the rate of a dollar a pound, bones and all. That was what ho 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 else. I saw that Spot fall through a water-hole. The ice was 3£ feet thick, and tho current, sucked him under like a straw. Three hundred yards below was the big waterhole used by the hospital. Spot orawled out of the hospital water-hole, licked off the water, bit out the ice that had formed between his toos, trotted ur> the bank, and whipped a big Newfoundland belonging to the Gold Commissioner.

In the fall of 1898, Steve and I poled im the lukon on the last water, bound lor 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 get 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 the 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 lie get loose? It's up to yon. I haven't any theory. And how did he get across the Klondike River? That's another facer. And, anyway, how did he know we had gono 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 norves, too; and, between ypu and me, wo were just a mite afraid of him. 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 oulit that was bound up wnito River after copper. Now that whole outfit was lost. Never trace nor hide nor hair of men, dogs, sleds or anything Avas ever found. They dropped clean out of sight. It became one of tho mysteries of the country. Steve and I" plugged away np tho Stewart, and six weeks afterwards that Spot crawled into camp. lie was a perambulating skeleton, and could just about drag along; but ho got there. And what i want to know is, who told him we were up the Stewart? Wo could have,gone to a thousand other places. How did he know? You tell mo, and I'll tell you. ! NV 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 bis own dog. Talk about magic, and turning bullets aside—l, for one, consider it a blamed sight harder to turn an axe aside with a big buck at tho 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. f told you about Spot breaking into our meat cache. It was nearly the deatli of us. There wasn't any more meat to be killed, and meat was all wo bad to live on. The moose hftd gone back several hundred miles, and the Indians with them. There we were. Spring wa« on, and wc hud to wait for the river to break. Wo got pretty thin before wo decided to eat dogs, and we decided to cat 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 tip nights laying for him, but he never came back, and we ate the other dogs. We ate tho 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 goes 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

Jup above somewhere. Steve and I ) yelled and shouted, and ran up and down the bank, tossing our huts in the air. Somotir.ics we'd stop and hug each other, we were that boisterous, for we saw Spot's finish. He didn't nave a chance m a million. Ho didn't have any chance, at all. After, the ice-run 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 month of Henderson Creek. And as we. came in to the bank at Dawson there sat that Spot, waiting foi - us, his ears pricked up, his tail wagging, his mouth smiling, extending a hearty welcome to ns. How did he "got out of that ice? How did he know we were coming to Dawson, to the very hour and minute, to he out there on the bank waiting for ns? 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 that Spot be explained. It's psychic phenomena, or mysticism, or something of that sort, 1 guess, with a lot of tbeosophy thrown in. The Klondike is a good country. I might have been there yet and become a millionaire if it hadn't been for Spot. He got on my nerves. I stood him for two years altogether, 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 nn all right, I wrote Steve a note, and enclosed n. package of " rough on rats," telling him what to do with it. T '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 201b 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 anv chango 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 on rats." per directions, and that there was'nothing doing. A year went by. I was back in the ..cffice and prospering in all Avavs —even setting a. bit fat. And then Steve armed. He didn't look me up. I read his name in the steamer list, and Avondered why. But J didn't wonder lon a: I got up one morning, and found that Soot chained to the gate post, and holding up the milkman. Steve went north to Seattle, I learned, that vcrv morning. I didn t put on anv more weight. My wife made me buy him a collar and tag. and within an hour he showed bis gratitude bv killing her pet Persian.cat. There is no fretting rid of that Spot. He will be with me until I die, for he 11 never die. My appetite; is not as rrood since he arrived, and my Avifp says T am looivino- peaked. Last night that Spot got into Mr Harvey's hen house (Harrev is mv next door neighbour'*, and lulled nineteen of his fancy bred chickens. I shall have to pay for them. My neighbours on the other side quarrelled avhli my wife, and then moved out. Spot was the cause of it. And that i.?aAliv T am disappointed in. Stephen Mattkaye, ! I had no idea he was so mean a man.