THAT SPOT
Jack London
 
 
I 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 more than my own
brother. If ever I meet Stephen Mackaye again, I shall not be
responsible for my actions. It passes beyond me that a man with whom
I shared food and blanket, and with whom I mushed over the Chilcoot
Trail, should turn out the way he did. I always sized Steve up as a
square man, a kindly comrade, without an iota of anything vindictive
or malicious in his nature. I shall never trust my judgment in men
again. Why, I nursed that man through typhoid fever; we starved
together on the headwaters of the Stewart; and he saved my life on
the Little Salmon. And now, after the years we were together, all I
can say of Stephen Mackaye is that he is the meanest man I ever knew.
 
We started for the Klondike in the fall rush of 1897, and we started
too late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. We packed
our outfit on our backs part way over, when the snow began to fly,
and then we had 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
one hundred and ten dollars for him. He looked worth it. I say
LOOKED, because he was one of the finest-appearing dogs I ever saw.
He weighed sixty pounds, and he had all the lines of a good sled
animal. We never could make out his breed. He wasn't husky, nor
Malemute, nor Hudson Bay; he looked like all of them and he didn't
look like any of them; and on top of it all he had some of the white
man's dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of the mixed yellow-
brown-red-and-dirty-white that was his prevailing colour, there was a
spot of coal-black as big as a water-bucket. That was why we called
him Spot.
 
He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles
stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest-looking
brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent-looking. To
run your eves over him, you'd think he could outpull three dogs of
his own weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw 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 staying lost he was nothing short of
inspired. But when it came to work, the way that intelligence
dribbled out of him and left him a mere clot of wobbling, stupid
jelly would make your heart bleed.
 
There are times when I think it wasn't stupidity. Maybe, like some
men I 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 colour; 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 the 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. There 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 dangdest 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 despatches. 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 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 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 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
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 dogfight 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 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 to 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 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 neighbour) and killed
nineteen of his fancy-bred chickens. I shall have to pay for them.
My neighbours on the other side quarrelled 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.