longest cue in British Columbia.  The cue and the dog formed the
combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and tragedy burning.
Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the winter, and Tao alone
pulled his sledge and outfit.  It was no more than an ordinary task for
the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung subserviently but with hidden
triumph passed outfit after outfit exhausted by the way.  He had reached
Copper Creek Camp, which was boiling and frothing with the excitement of
gold-maddened men, and was congratulating himself that he would soon be
at the camps west of the Peace, when the thing happened.  A drunken
Irishman, filled with a grim and unfortunate sense of humor, spotted Shan
Tung's wonderful cue and coveted it.  Wherefore there followed a bit of
excitement in which Shan Tung passed into his empyrean home with a bullet
through his heart, and the drunken Irishman was strung up for his misdeed
fifteen minutes later.  Tao, the Great Dane, was taken by the leader of
the men who pulled on the rope.  Tao's new master was a "drifter," and as
he drifted, his face was always set to the north, until at last a new
humor struck him and he turned eastward to the Mackenzie.  As the seasons
passed, Tao found mates along the way and left a string of his progeny
behind him, and he had new masters, one after another, until he was grown
old and his muzzle was turning gray.  And never did one of these masters