He’s a Klondike dog, you know.”
“Yes’m,” Miller said absently.
He lifted one of Wolf’s fore legs and examined the foot-pads, pressing them and denting them with his thumb.
“Kind of soft,” he remarked.
“He ain’t been on trail for a long time.”
“I say,” Walt broke in, “it is remarkable the way he lets you handle him.”
Skiff Miller arose, no longer awkward with admiration of Madge, and in a sharp, businesslike manner asked,
“How long have you had him?”
But just then the dog, squirming and rubbing against the newcomer’s legs, opened his mouth and barked.
It was an explosive bark, brief and joyous, but a bark.
“That’s a new one on me,” Skiff Miller remarked.
Walt and Madge stared at each other.
The miracle had happened. Wolf had barked.
“It’s the first time he ever barked,” Madge said.
“First time I ever heard him, too,” Miller volunteered.
Madge smiled at him.
The man was evidently a humorist.
“Of course,” she said, “since you have only seen him for five minutes.”
Skiff Miller looked at her sharply, seeking in her face the guile her words had led him to suspect.
“I thought you understood,” he said slowly.
“I thought you’d tumbled to it from his makin’ up to me.
He’s my dog.
His name ain’t Wolf.
It’s Brown.”
“Oh, Walt!” was Madge’s instinctive cry to her husband.
Walt was on the defensive at once.
“How do you know he’s your dog?” he demanded.
“Because he is,” was the reply.
“Mere assertion,” Walt said sharply. In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then asked, with a nod of his head toward Madge:
“How d’you know she’s your wife?
You just say, ‘Because she is,’ and I’ll say it’s mere assertion.
The dog’s mine.
I bred ’m an’ raised ’m, an’ I guess I ought to know.
Look here. I’ll prove it to you.”
Skiff Miller turned to the dog.
“Brown!”
His voice rang out sharply, and at the sound the dog’s ears flattened down as to a caress.
“Gee!”
The dog made a swinging turn to the right.
“Now mush-on!”
And the dog ceased his swing abruptly and started straight ahead, halting obediently at command.
“I can do it with whistles,” Skiff Miller said proudly.
“He was my lead dog.”
“But you are not going to take him away with you?” Madge asked tremulously.
The man nodded.
“Back into that awful Klondike world of suffering?”
He nodded and added:
“Oh, it ain’t so bad as all that.
Look at me. Pretty healthy specimen, ain’t I?”
“But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the starvation, the frost!