know, he was too wise to work. I shouldn't wonder if he put it all over
us with that intelligence of his. Maybe 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 up and down my spine and the marrow crawled like
yeast, what of the intelligence I saw shining out. I can't express
myself about that intelligence. It is beyond mere words. I saw it,
that's all. At times it was like gazing into a human soul, to look into
his eyes; and what I saw there frightened me and started all sorts of
ideas in my own mind of reincarnation and all the rest. I tell you I
sensed something big in that brute's eyes; there was a message there,
but I wasn't big enough myself to catch it. Whatever it was (I know I'm
making a fool of myself)--whatever it was, it baffled me. I can't give
an inkling of what I saw in that brute's eyes; it wasn't light, it
wasn't color; it was something that moved, away back, when the eyes
themselves weren't moving. And I guess I didn't see it move, either; I
only sensed that it moved. It was an expression,--that's what it
was,--and I got an impression of it. No; it was different from a mere
expression; it was more than that. I don't know what it was, but it gave
me a feeling of kinship just the same. Oh, no, not sentimental kinship.
It was, rather, a kinship of equality. Those eyes never pleaded like a
deer's eyes. They challenged. No, it wasn't defiance. It was just a calm
assumption of equality. And I don't think it was deliberate. My belief
is that it was unconscious on his part. It was there because it was
there, and it couldn't help shining out. No, I don't mean shine. It
didn't shine; it _moved_. I know I'm talking rot, but if you'd looked
into that animal's eyes the way I have, you'd understand. Steve was
affected the same way I was. Why, I tried to kill that Spot once--he was
no good for anything; and I fell down on it. I led him out into the
brush, and he came along slow and unwilling. He knew what was going on.
I stopped in a likely place, put my foot on the rope, and pulled my big
Colt's. And that dog sat down and looked at me. I tell you he didn't
plead. He just looked. And I saw all kinds of incomprehensible things
moving, yes, _moving_, in those eyes of his. I didn't really see them
move; I thought I saw them, for, as I said before, I guess I only sensed
them. And I want to tell you right now that it got beyond me. It was
like killing a man, a conscious, brave man who looked calmly into your
gun as much as to say, "Who's afraid?" Then, too, the message seemed so
near that, instead of pulling the trigger quick, I stopped to see if I
could catch the message. There it was, right before me, glimmering all
around in those eyes of his. And then it was too late. I got scared. I
was trembly all over, and my stomach generated a nervous palpitation
that made me seasick. I just sat down and looked at that dog, and he
looked at me, till I thought I was going crazy. Do you want to know what
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 the
woods, a week later, for the same purpose, and that Steve came back
alone, and a little later Spot drifted back, too.
At any rate, Spot wouldn't work. We paid a hundred and ten dollars for
him from the bottom of our sack, and he wouldn't work. He wouldn't even
tighten the traces. Steve spoke to him the first time we put him in
harness, and he sort of shivered, that was all. Not an ounce on the
traces. He just stood still and wobbled, like so much jelly. Steve
touched him with the whip. He yelped, but not an ounce. Steve touched
him again, a bit harder, and he howled--the regular long wolf howl. Then
Steve got mad and gave him half a dozen, and I came on the run from the
tent.
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. These 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 dangedest 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 dispatches. That Spot was only three days in coming back,
and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough-house.
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 Bennet 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
his hundred and fifty, that it was cheap at the price. For the first
time in months Steve and I laughed and whistled and sang. We 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 I were standing on the river
bank at Dawson. A small boat 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. Then I looked; and there, in the bow of
the boat, with ears pricked up, sat Spot. Steve and I sneaked
immediately, like beaten curs, like cowards, like absconders from
justice. It was this last that the lieutenant of police thought when he
saw us sneaking. He surmised that there were law officers in the boat
who were after us. He didn't wait to find out, but kept us in sight, and
in the M.&.M. saloon got us in a corner. We had a merry time explaining,
for we refused to go back to the boat and meet Spot; and finally he held
us under guard of another policeman while he went to the boat. After we
got clear of him, we started for the cabin, and when we arrived, there
was that Spot sitting on the stoop waiting for us. Now how did he know
we lived there? There were forty thousand people in Dawson that summer,
and how did he _savvy_ 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.
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 ax. As he went up the hill, after the
squaw gave out, 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 facer. 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.
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 ax, 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 ax 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 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 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 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
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 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-on-rats," 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 milkman. Steve went north to Seattle, I learned, that
very morning. I didn't put on any more weight. My wife made me buy him a
collar and tag, and within an hour he showed his gratitude by killing
her pet Persian cat. There is no getting rid of that Spot. He will be
with me until I die, for he'll never die. My appetite is not so good
since he arrived, and my wife says I am looking peaked. Last night that
Spot got into Mr. Harvey's hen house (Harvey is my next door neighbor)
and killed nineteen of his fancy-bred chickens. I shall have to pay for
them. My neighbors on the other side quarreled with my wife and then
moved out. Spot was the cause of it. And that is why I am disappointed
in Stephen Mackaye. I had no idea he was so mean a man.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] From _Lost Face_. Copyright, 1910, by the Macmillan Company.
Reprinted by special permission of the publisher.
[Illustration]
VII.--When Lincoln Licked a Bully[7]
_By Irving Bacheller_
_In "A Man For the Ages" Irving Bacheller tells
the story of Abraham Lincoln's life and career in
the form of a novel. He represents that the book
is written by the grandson of one Samson Traylor,
who is presented as a friend of Lincoln's. The
story that follows is an abbreviation of the
account of the journey of Samson Traylor and his
wife and two children and their dog, Sambo, in
1831, from Vergennes, Vermont, to the Illinois
country; and the part "Abe" Lincoln, a clerk in
Denton Offut's store at New Salem, had in building
a log cabin for them upon their arrival there; and
concludes by telling how Lincoln licked a
bully._--THE EDITOR.
IN the early summer of 1831 Samson Traylor and his wife, Sarah, and two
children left their old home near the village of Vergennes, Vermont, and
began their travels toward the setting sun with four chairs, a bread
board and rolling-pin, a feather bed and blankets, a small
looking-glass, a skillet, an ax, a pack basket with a pad of sole
leather on the same, a water pail, a box of dishes, a tub of salt pork,
a rifle, a teapot, a sack of meal, sundry small provisions and a violin,
in a double wagon drawn by oxen. . . . A young black shepherd dog with
tawny points and the name of Sambo followed the wagon or explored the
fields and woods it passed.
The boy Josiah--familiarly called Joe--sits beside his mother. He is a
slender, sweet-faced boy. He is looking up wistfully at his mother. The
little girl Betsey sits between him and her father.
That evening they stopped at the house of an old friend some miles up
the dusty road to the north.
"Here we are--goin' west," Samson shouted to the man at the doorstep.
He alighted and helped his family out of the wagon.
"You go right in--I'll take care o' the oxen," said the man.
Samson started for the house with the girl under one arm and the boy
under the other. A pleasant-faced woman greeted them with a hearty
welcome at the door.
"You poor man! Come right in," she said.
"Poor! I'm the richest man in the world," said he. "Look at the gold on
that girl's head--curly, fine gold, too--the best there is. She's
Betsey--my little toy woman--half past seven years old--blue eyes--helps
her mother get tired every day. Here's my toy man Josiah--yes, brown
hair and brown eyes like Sarah--heart o' gold--helps his mother,
too--six times one year old."
"What pretty faces!" said the woman as she stooped and kissed them.
"Yes, ma'am. Got 'em from the fairies," Samson went on. "They have all
kinds o' heads for little folks, an' I guess they color 'em up with the
blood o' roses an' the gold o' buttercups an' the blue o' violets.
Here's this wife o' mine. She's richer'n I am. She owns all of us. We're
her slaves."
"Looks as young as she did the day she was married--nine years ago,"
said the woman.
"Exactly!" Samson exclaimed. "Straight as an arrow and proud! I don't
blame her. She's got enough to make her proud I say. I fall in love
again every time I look into her big brown eyes."
The talk and laughter brought the dog into the house.
"There's Sambo, our camp follower," said Samson. "He likes us, one and
all, but he often feels sorry for us because we cannot feel the joy that
lies in buried bones and the smell of a liberty pole or a gate post."
They had a joyous evening and a restful night with these old friends and
resumed their journey soon after daylight. They ferried across the lake
at Burlington and fared away over the mountains and through the deep
forest on the Chateaugay trail. . . .
They had read a little book called _The Country of the Sangamon_. The
latter was a word of the Pottawatomies meaning "land of plenty." It was
the name of a river in Illinois draining "boundless, flowery meadows of
unexampled beauty and fertility, belted with timber, blessed with shady
groves, covered with game and mostly level, without a stick or a stone
to vex the plowman." Thither they were bound to take up a section of
government land.
They stopped for a visit with Elisha Howard and his wife, old friends of
theirs, who lived in the village of Malone, which was in Franklin
County, New York. There they traded their oxen for a team of horses.
They were large gray horses named Pete and Colonel. The latter was fat
and good-natured. His chief interest in life was food. Pete was always
looking for food and perils. Colonel was the near horse. Now and then
Samson threw a sheepskin over his back and put the boy on it and tramped
along within arm's reach of Joe's left leg. This was a great delight to
the little lad.
They proceeded at a better pace to the Black River country, toward
which, in the village of Canton, they tarried again for a visit with
Captain Moody and Silas Wright, both of whom had taught school in the
town of Vergennes.
They proceeded through DeKalb, Richville and Gouverneur and Antwerp and
on to the Sand Plains. They had gone far out of their way for a look at
these old friends of theirs.
Every day the children would ask many questions, as they rode along,
mainly about the beasts and birds in the dark shadows of the forest
through which they passed. These were answered patiently by their father
and mother and every answer led to other queries.
"You're a funny pair," said their father one day. "You have to turn over
every word we say to see what's under it. I used to be just like ye,
used to go out in the lot and tip over every stick and stone I could
lift to see the bugs and crickets run. You're always hopin' to see a
bear or a panther or a fairy run out from under my remarks."
"Wonder why we don't see no bears?" Joe asked.
"'Cause they always see us first or hear us comin'," said his father.
"If you're goin' to see ol' Uncle Bear ye got to pay the price of
admission."
"What's that?" Joe asked.
"Got to go still and careful so you'll see him first. If this old wagon
didn't talk so loud and would kind o' go on its tiptoes maybe we'd see
him. He don't like to be seen. Seems so he was kind o' shamed of
himself, an' I wouldn't wonder if he was. He's done a lot o' things to
be 'shamed of."
"What's he done?" Joe asked.
"Ketched sheep and pigs and fawns and run off with 'em."
"What does he do with 'em?"
"Eats 'em up. Now you quit. Here's a lot o' rocks and mud and I got to
tend to business. You tackle yer mother and chase her up and down the
hills a while and let me get my breath."
* * * * *
On the twenty-ninth day after their journey began they came in sight of
the beautiful green valley of the Mohawk. As they looked from the hills
they saw the roof of the forest dipping down to the river shores and
stretching far to the east and west and broken, here and there, by small
clearings. Soon they could see the smoke and spires of the thriving
village of Utica.
Here they bought provisions and a tin trumpet for Joe, and a doll with a
real porcelain face for Betsey, and turned into the great main
thoroughfare of the north leading eastward to Boston and westward to a
shore of the midland seas. This road was once the great trail of the
Iroquois, by them called the Long House, because it had reached from the
Hudson to Lake Erie, and in their day had been well roofed with foliage.
Here the travelers got their first view of a steam engine. The latter
stood puffing and smoking near the village of Utica, to the horror and
amazement of the team and the great excitement of those in the wagon.
The boy clung to his father for fear of it.
Samson longed to get out of the wagon and take a close look at the noisy
monster, but his horses were rearing in their haste to get away, and
even a short stop was impossible. Sambo, with his tail between his
legs, ran ahead, in a panic, and took refuge in some bushes by the
roadside.
"What was that, father?" the boy asked when the horses had ceased to
worry over this new peril.
"A steam engyne," he answered. "Sarah, did ye get a good look at it?"