THE SUN-DOG TRAIL



SITKA CHARLEY smoked his pipe and gazed thoughtfully at the POLICE
GAZETTE illustration on the wall. For half an hour he had been
steadily regarding it, and for half an hour I had been slyly
watching him. Something was going on in that mind of his, and,
whatever it was, I knew it was well worth knowing. He had lived
life, and seen things, and performed that prodigy of prodigies,
namely, the turning of his back upon his own people, and, in so far
as it was possible for an Indian, becoming a white man even in his
mental processes. As he phrased it himself, he had come into the
warm, sat among us, by our fires, and become one of us. He had
never learned to read nor write, but his vocabulary was remarkable,
and more remarkable still was the completeness with which he had
assumed the white man's point of view, the white man's attitude
toward things.

We had struck this deserted cabin after a hard day on trail. The
dogs had been fed, the supper dishes washed, the beds made, and we
were now enjoying that most delicious hour that comes each day, and
but once each day, on the Alaskan trail, the hour when nothing
intervenes between the tired body and bed save the smoking of the
evening pipe. Some former denizen of the cabin had decorated its
walls with illustrations torn from magazines and newspapers, and it
was these illustrations that had held Sitka Charley's attention