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.

When the ice cleared out of the lakes and river, we put our outfit in a
Lake Bennett boat and started for Dawson. We had a good team of dogs,
and of course we piled them on top 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 crowded.

"What that dog needs is space," Steve said the second day. "Let's maroon
him."

We did, running the boat in at Caribou Crossing for him to jump ashore.
Two of the other dogs, good dogs, followed 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