THE DOGS OF FORT RESOLUTION 161 



and the dogs are turned loose to fend for themselves. 

 Gratitude for past services or future does not enter 

 into the owner's thoughts to secure a fair allowance of 

 food. All their training and instinct prompts them to 

 hang about camp, where, kicked, stoned, beaten, and 

 starved, they steal and hunt as best they may, until 

 the sad season of summer is worn away and merry 

 winter with its toil and good food is back once more. 



From leaving Fort MacMurray we saw daily the 

 starving dog, and I fed them when I could. At Smith 

 Landing the daily dog became a daily fifty. One big 

 fellow annexed us. "I found them first," he seemed 

 to say, and no other dog came about our camp without 

 a fight. 



Of course he fared well on our scraps, but many a 

 time it made my heart ache and my food-store suffer 

 to see the gaunt skeletons in the bushes, just beyond 

 his sphere of influence, watching for a chance to rush 

 in and secure a mouthful of — anything to stay the 

 devastating pang. My journal of the time sets forth 

 in full detail the diversity of their diet, not only every 

 possible scrap of fish and meat or whatsoever smelled 

 of fish or meat, but rawhide, leather, old boots, flour- 

 bags, potato-peelings, soap, wooden fragments of meat- 

 boxes, rags that have had enough animal contact to 

 be odorous. An ancient dish-cloth, succulent with ac- 

 tive service, was considered a treat to be bolted whole; 

 and when in due course the cloth was returned to 

 earth, it was intact, bleached, purged, and purified as 

 by chemic fires and ready for a new round of benev- 

 olences. 



