Read Online Tails to Wag by Nancy Butler - Free Book Online

“Now mush-on!” And the dog ceased his swing abruptly and started straight ahead, halting obediently at command.
    â€œI can do it with whistles,” Skiff Miller said proudly. “He was my lead dog.”
    â€œBut you are not going to take him away with you?” Madge asked tremulously.
    The man nodded.
    â€œBack 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?”
    â€œBut the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the starvation, the frost! Oh, I’ve read about it and I know.”
    â€œI nearly ate him once, over on Little Fish River,” Miller volunteered grimly. “If I hadn’t got a moose that day was all that saved ’m.”
    â€œI’d have died first!” Madge cried.
    â€œThings is different down here,” Miller explained. “You don’t have to eat dogs. You think different just about the time you’re all in. You’ve never ben all in, so you don’t know anything about it.”
    â€œThat’s the very point,” she argued warmly. “Dogs are not eaten in California. Why not leave him here? He is happy. He’ll never want for food—you know that. He’ll never suffer from cold and hardship. Here all is softness and gentleness. Neither the human nor nature is savage. He will never know a whip lash again. And as for the weather—why, it never snows here.”
    â€œBut it’s all-fired hot in summer, beggin’ your pardon,” Skiff Miller laughed.
    â€œBut you do not answer,” Madge continued passionately. “What have you to offer him in that northland life?”
    â€œGrub, when I’ve got it, and that’s most of the time,” came the answer.
    â€œAnd the rest of the time?”
    â€œNo grub.”
    â€œAnd the work?”
    â€œYes, plenty of work,” Miller blurted out impatiently. “Work without end, an’ famine, an’ frost, an all the rest of the miseries—that’s what he’ll get when he comes with me. But he likes it. He is used to it. He knows that life. He was born to it an’ brought up to it. An’ you don’t know anything about it. You don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s where the dog belongs, and that’s where he’ll be happiest.”
    â€œThe dog doesn’t go,” Walt announced in a determined voice. “So there is no need of further discussion.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Skiff Miller demanded, his brows lowering and an obstinate flush of blood reddening his forehead.
    â€œI said the dog doesn’t go, and that settles it. I don’t believe he’s your dog. You may have seen him sometime. You may even sometime have driven him for his owner. But his obeying the ordinary driving commands of the Alaskan trail is no demonstration that he is yours. Any dog in Alaska would obey you as he obeyed. Besides, he is undoubtedly a valuable dog, as dogs go in Alaska, and that is sufficient explanation of your desire to get possession of him. Anyway, you’ve got to prove property.”
    Skiff Miller, cool and collected, the obstinate flush a trifle deeper on his forehead, his huge muscles bulging under the black cloth of his coat, carefully looked the poet up and down as though measuring the strength of his slenderness.
    The Klondiker’s face took on a contemptuous expression as he said finally, “I reckon there’s nothin’ in sight to prevent me takin’ the dog right here an’ now.”
    Walt’s face reddened, and the striking-muscles of his arms and shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered apprehensively into the breach.
    â€œMaybe Mr. Miller is right,” she said. “I am afraid that he is. Wolf does seem to know him, and certainly he answers to the name of ‘Brown.’ He made