Checkpoint LAT Medley: Wolf and That Spot

TEXT 1

Excerpt from Wolf

by Albert Payson Terhune

There were three dogs on The Place—collies all. There was a long shelf It he master's study whereon shimmered and glinted a rank of silver cups of varying sizes and shapes won by two of the dogs. The Place's third dog was Wolf. But neither cup nor ribbon did Wolf have to show as an excuse for his presence on earth.

1. The collie is supposed to be descended directly from the wolf, and Wolf looked far more like his original ancestors than like a thoroughbred collie. From puppyhood he had been the living image, except in color, of a timber-wolf, and it was from this queer throw-back trait that he had won his name.

2. Lad was the Mistress’ dog. Bruce was the Master’s. Wolf belonged to the Boy, having been born on the  latter’s birthday.

3. For the first six months of his life Wolf lived at The Place on sufferance.¹ Nobody except the Boy took any special interest in him. He was kept only because his better-formed brothers had died in early puppyhood and because the Boy, from the outset, had loved him.

4. At six months it was discovered that he was a natural watchdog. Also, that he never barked except to give an alarm. A collie is, perhaps, the most excitable of all large dogs. The veriest trifle will set him off into a thunderous paroxysm ² of barking. But Wolf, the Boy noted, never barked without strong cause.

5. He had the rare genius for guarding that so few of his breed possess. For not one dog in ten merits the title of watchdog. The duties that should go with that office are far more than the mere clamorous announcement of a stranger’s approach, or even the attacking of such a stranger.

6. The born watchdog patrols his beat once in so often during the night. At all times he must sleep with one ear and one eye alert. By day or by night he must discriminate between the visitor whose presence is permitted and the trespasser whose presence is not. He must know what class of undesirable to scare off with a growl and what class needs stronger measures. He must also know the boundaries of his own master’s land.

7. Few of these things can be taught; all of them must be instinctive. Wolf had been born with them.               Most dogs are not.

8. His value as a watchdog gave Wolf a settled position of his own on The Place. Lad was growing old and a little deaf. He slept, at night, under the piano in the music-room. Bruce was worth too much money to be left at large in the nighttime for any clever dog-thief to steal. So, he slept in the study. Rex, a huge mongrel, was tied up at night, at the lodge, a furlong away. Thus, Wolf alone was left on guard at the house. The piazza was his sentry-box. From this shelter he was wont to set forth three or four times a night, in all sorts of weather, to make his rounds.

9. The Place covered twenty-five acres. It ran from the high road, a furlong above the house, down to the lake that bordered it on two sides. On the third side was the forest. Boating- parties, late at night, had a pleasant way of trying to raid the lakeside apple orchard. Tramps now and then strayed down the drive from the main road. Prowlers, crossing the woods, sometimes sought to use The Place’s sloping lawn as a shortcut to the turnpike below the falls.

10. For each and all of these intruders Wolf had an ever-ready welcome. A whirl of madly pattering feet through the dark, a snarling growl far down in the throat, a furry shape catapulting into the air—and the trespasser had his choice between scurrying retreat or a double set of fangs in the easiest-reached part of his anatomy.

11. The Boy was inordinately proud of his pet’s watchdog prowess. He was prouder yet of Wolf ’s almost incredible sharpness of intelligence, his quickness to learn, his knowledge of word meaning, his zest for romping, his perfect obedience, the tricks he had taught himself without human tutelage³—in short, all the things that were a sign of the brain he had inherited from Lad.

12. But none of these talents overcame the sad fact that Wolf was not a show dog and that he looked positively underbred and shabby alongside of his sire or of Bruce. Which rankled at the Boy’s heart; even while loyalty to his adored pet would not let him confess to himself or to anyone else that Wolf was not the most flawlessly perfect dog on earth.

13. Under-sized (for a collie), slim, graceful, fierce, affectionate, Wolf was the Boy’s darling, and he was Lad’s successor as official guardian of The Place. But all his youthful life, thus far, had brought him nothing more than this—while Lad and Bruce had been winning prize after prize at one local dog show after another within a radius of thirty miles.

TEXT 2

That Spot by Jack London

They set out for the Klondike during the fall rush of 1897. They started too late to pass through the Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. Their gear was strapped to their backs when the snow began to fall, so they had to buy sledding dogs to haul it the rest of the way. That's how they came to acquire the dog named Spot. There was a spot of coal-black fur as big as a water bucket. That's why he was called Spot. He was one of the finest dogs they had ever seen, and Spot was expensive. He appeared to be worth it, was he?

1. 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 dogfight we’d ever heard. It was that Spot came back and knocking the team into shape.

2. 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 into Dawson with government dispatches. That Spot was only three days in coming back, and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough house.

3. 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 anyone 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.

4. 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. […]

5. 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.

6. “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 […] 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.

7. The dark days were over. The nightmare had been lifted. That Spot was gone.

8. Three weeks later, one morning, Steve and I were standing on the riverbank 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.

9. 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 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.

10. 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?

11. How did he know we were in Dawson, anyway? I leave it to you