Page:Silversheene (1924).djvu/88



VER since the discovery of gold in Alaska in 1887, there has been a more or less thriving traffic in dogs for the Alaska sled teams, carried on along the Pacific Coast. This business was not legitimate, but nefarious to the last degree. It was done usually by such men as rob hen roosts and do other petty larceny. But in this case the crime seems even more contemptible because it often robbed the household of a dog who was one of the family.

Often the companion of little children was sacrificed to man's greed for gold. Thus it happened that dog-snatchers were always on the watch for dogs which would work into one of the northern dog teams. When, as in the case of Pedro Garcia, one could pay off an old score and get fifty dol-