Explore "Grist" by Murray Leinster on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He threw back his head and howled eerily. His muzzle lifted to the / stars and the most mournful sound known to man poured from his throat / and was echoed and reëchoed by the hooded cedars and the rocks about / him. He could not have told you why he howled. Dogs are not prone to / introspection. But he knew that his master, who should be in the cabin / yonder, would never come out again. He knew that the dying wisps of / smoke from the chimney would never billow out in thick gray clouds / again. And he knew that the other man-who had come out so hastily and / gone swinging down the river trail-would never, never return.
Cheechako was chained. It had originally been a mark of disgrace, an / unbearable humiliation to a malamute pup, but he did not mind it any / longer. His master had made sleeping quarters for him that were vastly / warmer than a snow-bed even in the coldest weather, and Cheechako / wholeheartedly approved. He was comfortable, he was fed, and Carson / released him now and then to stretch his legs and swore at him / affectionately from time to time, and no reasonable dog will demand / any more. Or so Cheechako viewed it, anyhow.