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My sled dogs were there, and, as I had not seen them for more than a year, that was a joyful reunion. Nanook's bark of welcome, which no one but I ever got with quite the same inflection, was as grateful to me as all the licking and slobbering of the others, for Nanook is a very independent beast, reserved in his demonstrations and not wearing his heart on his sleeve, so to speak.
We knew naught of it until the next morning, when, breakfast done and the sled lashed, we were ready to hitch the dogs and depart. They had been put in the horse stable for there was no dog house; the health resorter, actual or prospective, is not likely to be a dog man one supposes; but they were loose in the morning and came to the call, all but one Nanook.
"I know how you feel," he said slowly and kindly; "I've got a dog I think a heap of myself, but that dog ain't nothin' to me an' I'll do it for you." Nanook knew perfectly well that it was all over with him. Head and tail down, the picture of resigned dejection, he stood like a petrified dog. And when I put my face down to his and said "Good-bye," he licked me for the first time in his life.
All the other dogs were of the last two years and thought they belonged to Arthur, who fed them and handled them most. But Nanook and Lingo had seen boys come and boys go, and they knew better. Six years is not very much of a man's life, but it is all a dog's life; all his effective working life. Nanook had given it all to me, willingly, gladly. He pulled so freely because he loved to pull.
And whenever the horse and his rider passed, Nanook would open the gate and lead the whole pack in a noisy pursuit that changed the canter to a run and brought us natural but mortifying remonstrance. The rider had just passed and the dogs had pursued as usual, and I had rushed out and recalled them with difficulty. Nanook I had by the collar.
It was so pointed that a passer-by, who had paused to see the proceedings and was leaning on the fence, said to me: "Well, you know where you can go to. That's the doggonedest dog I ever seen!" It was a pleasure to come back to Nanook after any long absence a pleasure I was used to look forward to.
As I reckoned it up, Nanook had fallen just short of pulling my sled ten thousand miles. If he had finished this season with me he would have done fully that, and I had intended to pension him after this winter, to provide that so long as he lived he should have his fish and rice every day.
There was no special fawning or demonstration of affection; he was not that kind; that I might have from any of the others; but from none but Nanook the bark of welcome with my particular inflection in it that no one else ever got. "Well, well; here's the boss again; glad to see you back"; that was about all it said.
Through the snow, over the brush, in and out amongst the stumps the chase proceeded, until Nanook was finally caught and my companion recovered most of the paper, for the dog had wolfed the grub as he ran.
He delighted in the winter, in the snow and the cold; rejoiced to be on the trail, rejoiced to work. When we made ready to depart after a few days at a mission or in a town, Nanook was beside himself with joy.
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