ads:
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
ads:
Livros Grátis
http://www.livrosgratis.com.br
Milhares de livros grátis para download.
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
ads:
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.
Livros Grátis
( http://www.livrosgratis.com.br )
Milhares de Livros para Download:
Baixar livros de Administração
Baixar livros de Agronomia
Baixar livros de Arquitetura
Baixar livros de Artes
Baixar livros de Astronomia
Baixar livros de Biologia Geral
Baixar livros de Ciência da Computação
Baixar livros de Ciência da Informação
Baixar livros de Ciência Política
Baixar livros de Ciências da Saúde
Baixar livros de Comunicação
Baixar livros do Conselho Nacional de Educação - CNE
Baixar livros de Defesa civil
Baixar livros de Direito
Baixar livros de Direitos humanos
Baixar livros de Economia
Baixar livros de Economia Doméstica
Baixar livros de Educação
Baixar livros de Educação - Trânsito
Baixar livros de Educação Física
Baixar livros de Engenharia Aeroespacial
Baixar livros de Farmácia
Baixar livros de Filosofia
Baixar livros de Física
Baixar livros de Geociências
Baixar livros de Geografia
Baixar livros de História
Baixar livros de Línguas
Baixar livros de Literatura
Baixar livros de Literatura de Cordel
Baixar livros de Literatura Infantil
Baixar livros de Matemática
Baixar livros de Medicina
Baixar livros de Medicina Veterinária
Baixar livros de Meio Ambiente
Baixar livros de Meteorologia
Baixar Monografias e TCC
Baixar livros Multidisciplinar
Baixar livros de Música
Baixar livros de Psicologia
Baixar livros de Química
Baixar livros de Saúde Coletiva
Baixar livros de Serviço Social
Baixar livros de Sociologia
Baixar livros de Teologia
Baixar livros de Trabalho
Baixar livros de Turismo
