Chapter: Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter how
remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility
was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team.  For
now the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by
Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received;
hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving
brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever
maddening their eyes.

And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back.  Being sled-leader was
anything but gratifying to him.  To be compelled to run away before the
yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and
mastered, was almost more than he could endure.  But endure it he must,
or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out.  The
moment Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team,
with eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang.

There was no defence for him.  If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would
throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face.  Only remained to him
to run away.  He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and
hind-quarters.  These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the
many merciless fangs.  So run away he did, violating his own nature and
pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long.

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that
nature recoil upon itself.  Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to
grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its
growth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt.
And so with White Fang.  Every urge of his being impelled him to spring
upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods
that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip
of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash.  So White Fang could
only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice
commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature.

If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that
creature.  He asked no quarter, gave none.  He was continually marred and
scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own
marks upon the pack.  Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and
the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White
Fang disdained such protection.  He walked boldly about the camp,
inflicting punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day.
In the time before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned
to get out of his way.  But now it was different.  Excited by the day-
long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on
their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of
mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way
to him.  When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble.  His
progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl.  The very atmosphere he
breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to
increase the hatred and malice within him.

When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang
obeyed.  At first this caused trouble for the other dogs.  All of them
would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned.  Behind
him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand.  So the dogs
came to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to
be let alone.  But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was
allowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could.  After
several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders.  He learned
quickly.  It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if
he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was
vouchsafed him.

But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp.
Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the
previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over
again, to be as immediately forgotten.  Besides, there was a greater
consistence in their dislike of him.  They sensed between themselves and
him a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility.  Like
him, they were domesticated wolves.  But they had been domesticated for
generations.  Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild
was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring.  But
to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild.  He
symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their
teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of
destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark
beyond the camp-fire.

But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep
together.  White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-
handed.  They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have
killed them, one by one, in a night.  As it was, he never had a chance to
kill them.  He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon
him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke.  At
the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him.
The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when
trouble was brewing with White Fang.

On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang.  He
was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise.  He avoided tight
places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him.
While, as for getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them
capable of doing the trick.  His feet clung to the earth with the same
tenacity that he clung to life.  For that matter, life and footing were
synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew it
better than White Fang.

So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were,
softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man's
strength.  White Fang was bitter and implacable.  The clay of him was so
moulded.  He declared a vendetta against all dogs.  And so terribly did
he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not
but marvel at White Fang's ferocity.  Never, he swore, had there been the
like of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise
when they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs.

When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on
another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked
amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the
Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon.  He revelled in the
vengeance he wreaked upon his kind.  They were ordinary, unsuspecting
dogs.  They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his
attack without warning.  They did not know him for what he was, a
lightning-flash of slaughter.  They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and
challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries,
snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and
destroying them before they knew what was happening and while they were
yet in the throes of surprise.

He became an adept at fighting.  He economised.  He never wasted his
strength, never tussled.  He was in too quickly for that, and, if he
missed, was out again too quickly.  The dislike of the wolf for close
quarters was his to an unusual degree.  He could not endure a prolonged
contact with another body.  It smacked of danger.  It made him frantic.
He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing.  It was
the Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him.  This
feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his
puppyhood.  Danger lurked in contacts.  It was the trap, ever the trap,
the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of
him.

In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against
him.  He eluded their fangs.  He got them, or got away, himself untouched
in either event.  In the natural course of things there were exceptions
to this.  There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him,
punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single
dog scored deeply on him.  But these were accidents.  In the main, so
efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed.

Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and
distance.  Not that he did this consciously, however.  He did not
calculate such things.  It was all automatic.  His eyes saw correctly,
and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain.  The parts of
him were better adjusted than those of the average dog.  They worked
together more smoothly and steadily.  His was a better, far better,
nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination.  When his eyes conveyed to
his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious
effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for
its completion.  Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the
drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal
fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack.  Body and brain, his
was a more perfected mechanism.  Not that he was to be praised for it.
Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was
all.

It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon.  Grey Beaver
had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the
late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying
spurs of the Rockies.  Then, after the break-up of the ice on the
Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it
effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle.  Here
stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much
food, and unprecedented excitement.  It was the summer of 1898, and
thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the
Klondike.  Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of
them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had
travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come
from the other side of the world.

Here Grey Beaver stopped.  A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his
ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn
mittens and moccasins.  He would not have ventured so long a trip had he
not expected generous profits.  But what he had expected was nothing to
what he realised.  His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per
cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent.  And like a true Indian, he
settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer
and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men.  As
compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of
beings, a race of superior gods.  They impressed him as possessing
superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests.  White Fang did
not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that
the white gods were more powerful.  It was a feeling, nothing more, and
yet none the less potent.  As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the
tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was
he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs.  Here
was power.  Those white gods were strong.  They possessed greater mastery
over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was
Grey Beaver.  And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-
skinned ones.

To be sure, White Fang only felt these things.  He was not conscious of
them.  Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals
act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling
that the white men were the superior gods.  In the first place he was
very suspicious of them.  There was no telling what unknown terrors were
theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer.  He was curious to
observe them, fearful of being noticed by them.  For the first few hours
he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe
distance.  Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to
them, and he came in closer.

In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them.  His wolfish
appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one
another.  This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they
tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away.  Not one
succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not.

White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods--not more than a
dozen--lived at this place.  Every two or three days a steamer (another
and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for
several hours.  The white men came from off these steamers and went away
on them again.  There seemed untold numbers of these white men.  In the
first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his
life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop,
and then go on up the river out of sight.

But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to
much.  This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came
ashore with their masters.  They were irregular shapes and sizes.  Some
were short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long.  They
had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that.  And
none of them knew how to fight.

As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight with
them.  This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt.
They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around
clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by
dexterity and cunning.  They rushed bellowing at him.  He sprang to the
side.  They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he
struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering
his stroke at the throat.

Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the
dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs
that waited.  White Fang was wise.  He had long since learned that the
gods were made angry when their dogs were killed.  The white men were no
exception to this.  So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed
wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in
and do the cruel finishing work.  It was then that the white men rushed
in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free.
He would stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs,
axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows.  White Fang was
very wise.

But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew
wise with them.  They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to
the bank that they had their fun.  After the first two or three strange
dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own
animals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders.  One
white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes,
drew a revolver.  He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay
dead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into White
Fang's consciousness.

White Fang enjoyed it all.  He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd
enough to escape hurt himself.  At first, the killing of the white men's
dogs had been a diversion.  After a time it became his occupation.  There
was no work for him to do.  Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting
wealthy.  So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable
gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers.  With the arrival of a steamer
the fun began.  After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got
over their surprise, the gang scattered.  The fun was over until the next
steamer should arrive.

But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang.  He
did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even
feared by it.  It is true, he worked with it.  He picked the quarrel with
the strange dog while the gang waited.  And when he had overthrown the
strange dog the gang went in to finish it.  But it is equally true that
he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the
outraged gods.

It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels.  All he had to
do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself.  When they
saw him they rushed for him.  It was their instinct.  He was the Wild--the
unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the
darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close
to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild
out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed.
Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the
Wild been stamped into their natures.  For centuries the Wild had stood
for terror and destruction.  And during all this time free licence had
been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild.  In
doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whose
companionship they shared.

And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the
gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to
experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him.
They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was
theirs just the same.  Not alone with their own eyes did they see the
wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them.  They
saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory
they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud.

All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable.  If the sight of
him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so
much the worse for them.  They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as
legitimate prey he looked upon them.

Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and
fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx.  And
not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of
Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack.  It might have been otherwise, and he
would then have been otherwise.  Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have
passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and
with more liking for dogs.  Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of
affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's
nature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities.  But
these things had not been so.  The clay of White Fang had been moulded
until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious,
the enemy of all his kind.




A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon.  These men had been long
in the country.  They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride
in so classifying themselves.  For other men, new in the land, they felt
nothing but disdain.  The men who came ashore from the steamers were
newcomers.  They were known as _chechaquos_, and they always wilted at
the application of the name.  They made their bread with baking-powder.
This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who,
forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking-
powder.

All of which is neither here nor there.  The men in the fort disdained
the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief.  Especially did they
enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang and his
disreputable gang.  When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a
point always to come down to the bank and see the fun.  They looked
forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while
they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by
White Fang.

But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport.  He
would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle; and when
the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he
would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret.  Sometimes,
when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the
fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself, and would
leap into the air and cry out with delight.  And always he had a sharp
and covetous eye for White Fang.

This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort.  No one knew
his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty
Smith.  But he was anything save a beauty.  To antithesis was due his
naming.  He was pre-eminently unbeautiful.  Nature had been niggardly
with him.  He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame
was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head.  Its apex might be
likened to a point.  In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named
Beauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead."

Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it
slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead.
Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his
features with a lavish hand.  His eyes were large, and between them was
the distance of two eyes.  His face, in relation to the rest of him, was
prodigious.  In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given
him an enormous prognathous jaw.  It was wide and heavy, and protruded
outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest.  Possibly this
appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly
to support so great a burden.

This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination.  But something
lacked.  Perhaps it was from excess.  Perhaps the jaw was too large.  At
any rate, it was a lie.  Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the
weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards.  To complete his
description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,
larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs.  His
eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments
and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes.  It was the same with
his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow,
rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and
bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay
elsewhere.  He was not responsible.  The clay of him had been so moulded
in the making.  He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the
dish-washing and the drudgery.  They did not despise him.  Rather did
they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature
evilly treated in the making.  Also, they feared him.  His cowardly rages
made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee.  But
somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook.

This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious
prowess, and desired to possess him.  He made overtures to White Fang
from the first.  White Fang began by ignoring him.  Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth
and backed away.  He did not like the man.  The feel of him was bad.  He
sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at
soft-spoken speech.  Because of all this, he hated the man.

With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood.
The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and
surcease from pain.  Therefore, the good is liked.  The bad stands for
all things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is
hated accordingly.  White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad.  From the
man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising
from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within.  Not by
reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and
uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous
with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and
wisely to be hated.

White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it.
At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White
Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle.  He had been lying down in
an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived,
slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp.  He did not know
what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking
together.  Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as
though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being, as it
was, fifty feet away.  The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away
to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly
over the ground.

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog.  He had grown rich with his trading
and stood in need of nothing.  Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal,
the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader.
Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon.  He
could fight.  He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes.
(Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with
an eager tongue).  No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.

But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians.  He visited Grey Beaver's camp
often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so.  One of
the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst.  Grey Beaver got the
thirst.  His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for
more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by
the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it.  The
money he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go.
It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the
shorter grew his temper.

In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone.  Nothing
remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that
grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.  Then it was that
Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but
this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey
Beaver's ears were more eager to hear.

"You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word.

The bottles were delivered, but after two days.  "You ketch um dog," were
Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver.

White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of
content.  The dreaded white god was not there.  For days his
manifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more
insistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid
the camp.  He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistent
hands.  He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that
it was best for him to keep out of their reach.

But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and
tied a leather thong around his neck.  He sat down beside White Fang,
holding the end of the thong in his hand.  In the other hand he held a
bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the
accompaniment of gurgling noises.

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the
ground foreran the one who approached.  White Fang heard it first, and he
was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly.
White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but
the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.

Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang.  He snarled
softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the
hands.  One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head.  His
soft snarl grew tense and harsh.  The hand continued slowly to descend,
while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing
shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its
culmination.  Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake.
The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a
sharp click.  Beauty Smith was frightened and angry.  Grey Beaver clouted
White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth
in respectful obedience.

White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement.  He saw Beauty
Smith go away and return with a stout club.  Then the end of the thong
was given over to him by Grey Beaver.  Beauty Smith started to walk away.
The thong grew taut.  White Fang resisted it.  Grey Beaver clouted him
right and left to make him get up and follow.  He obeyed, but with a
rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away.  Beauty
Smith did not jump away.  He had been waiting for this.  He swung the
club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon
the ground.  Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval.  Beauty Smith
tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to
his feet.

He did not rush a second time.  One smash from the club was sufficient to
convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too
wise to fight the inevitable.  So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's
heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath.
But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always
ready to strike.

At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed.  White
Fang waited an hour.  Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the
space of ten seconds was free.  He had wasted no time with his teeth.
There had been no useless gnawing.  The thong was cut across, diagonally,
almost as clean as though done by a knife.  White Fang looked up at the
fort, at the same time bristling and growling.  Then he turned and
trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp.  He owed no allegiance to this
strange and terrible god.  He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to
Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged.

But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference.  Grey
Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him
over to Beauty Smith.  And here was where the difference came in.  Beauty
Smith gave him a beating.  Tied securely, White Fang could only rage
futilely and endure the punishment.  Club and whip were both used upon
him, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his
life.  Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was
mild compared with this.

Beauty Smith enjoyed the task.  He delighted in it.  He gloated over his
victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and
listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and
snarls.  For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel.
Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a
man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he.  All
life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception.  Denied the
expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser
creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him.  But Beauty
Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him.  He
had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence.
This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded
by the world.

White Fang knew why he was being beaten.  When Grey Beaver tied the thong
around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith's
keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to go with
Beauty Smith.  And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he
knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there.
Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the
consequent punishment.  He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and
he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten.  He was wise, and
yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom.  One of
these was fidelity.  He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face
of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him.  He could not help it.
This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him.  It was
the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality
that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has
enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the
companions of man.

After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort.  But this
time Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick.  One does not give up a god
easily, and so with White Fang.  Grey Beaver was his own particular god,
and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him and
would not give him up.  Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but
that had no effect upon him.  Not for nothing had he surrendered himself
body and soul to Grey Beaver.  There had been no reservation on White
Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily.

So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang
applied his teeth to the stick that held him.  The wood was seasoned and
dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get
his teeth to it.  It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck-
arching that he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and
barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an
immense patience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in
gnawing through the stick.  This was something that dogs were not
supposed to do.  It was unprecedented.  But White Fang did it, trotting
away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick
hanging to his neck.

He was wise.  But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to
Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him.  But there was his
faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time.  Again he
yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again
Beauty Smith came to claim him.  And this time he was beaten even more
severely than before.

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip.  He
gave no protection.  It was no longer his dog.  When the beating was over
White Fang was sick.  A soft southland dog would have died under it, but
not he.  His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of
sterner stuff.  He had too great vitality.  His clutch on life was too
strong.  But he was very sick.  At first he was unable to drag himself
along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him.  And then,
blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort.

But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in
vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was
driven.  After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up
the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie.  White Fang remained
on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute.  But
what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness?  To White Fang,
Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god.  He was a mad god at
best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must
submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.




Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend.  He was
kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith
teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments.  The man
early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a
point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him.  This laughter was
uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger
derisively at White Fang.  At such times reason fled from White Fang, and
in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a
ferocious enemy.  He now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever.  To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated
blindly and without the faintest spark of reason.  He hated the chain
that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the
pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at
him in his helplessness.  He hated the very wood of the pen that confined
him.  And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang.  One day
a number of men gathered about the pen.  Beauty Smith entered, club in
hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck.  When his master had
gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get
at the men outside.  He was magnificently terrible.  Fully five feet in
length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far
outweighed a wolf of corresponding size.  From his mother he had
inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without
any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds.  It
was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again.  White Fang paused.  Something
unusual was happening.  He waited.  The door was opened wider.  Then a
huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him.
White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and
fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him.  Here was some thing,
not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate.  He leaped in with a
flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck.  The
mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang.  But
White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding,
and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again
in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy
of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White
Fang.  There was no hope for the mastiff from the first.  He was too
ponderous and slow.  In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back
with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner.  Then there was a
payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men
around his pen.  It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now
vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him.  Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of
satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put
another dog against him.  Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor.  One day, three dogs were turned in upon
him in succession.  Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the
Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen.  And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time.  This was his
severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself
half killed in doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice
was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White
Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson.  White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land.  As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known
far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck
was usually surrounded by curious men.  He raged and snarled at them, or
lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred.  Why should he not hate
them?  He never asked himself the question.  He knew only hate and lost
himself in the passion of it.  Life had become a hell to him.  He had not
been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men.  And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated.  Men
stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then
laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of
him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.
Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity.  Where many another animal
would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived,
and at no expense of the spirit.  Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and
tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there
were no signs of his succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two
of them raged against each other unceasingly.  In the days before, White
Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in
his hand; but this wisdom now left him.  The mere sight of Beauty Smith
was sufficient to send him into transports of fury.  And when they came
to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on
growling and snarling, and showing his fangs.  The last growl could never
be extracted from him.  No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had
always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the
defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the
cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore.  But he
still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men.  He was
exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust
to see him.  He was given no rest.  Did he lie down to sleep, he was
stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's
worth.  In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a
rage most of the time.  But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in
which he lived.  He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and
this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage.  Every word, every
cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own
terrible ferocity.  It was so much added fuel to the flame of his
fierceness.  There could be but one result, and that was that his
ferocity fed upon itself and increased.  It was another instance of the
plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure
of environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal.  At
irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out
of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town.  Usually
this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted
police of the Territory.  After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had
come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived.  In
this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs.  It
was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to
the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other
dogs that died.  He never knew defeat.  His early training, when he
fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead.
There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth.  No dog could
make him lose his footing.  This was the favourite trick of the wolf
breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected
swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him.
Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all
tried it on him, and all failed.  He was never known to lose his footing.
Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but
White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness.  It gave him a tremendous
advantage over his antagonists.  No matter what their fighting
experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he.
Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack.  The
average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling
and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished
before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise.  So often
did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the
other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even
made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his
experience.  He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that
faced him.  He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and
methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely
to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights.  Men despaired of
matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves
against him.  These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a
fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd.
Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang
fought for his life.  Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled
his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp-
clawed feet as well.

But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang.  There were no
more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered
worthy of fighting with him.  So he remained on exhibition until spring,
when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land.  With him came
the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike.  That this dog and
White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the
anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters
of the town.




Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back.

For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack.  He stood still,
ears pricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal
that faced him.  He had never seen such a dog before.  Tim Keenan shoved
the bull-dog forward with a muttered "Go to it."  The animal waddled
toward the centre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly.  He came
to a stop and blinked across at White Fang.

There were cries from the crowd of, "Go to him, Cherokee!  Sick 'm,
Cherokee!  Eat 'm up!"

But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight.  He turned his head and
blinked at the men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a
tail good-naturedly.  He was not afraid, but merely lazy.  Besides, it
did not seem to him that it was intended he should fight with the dog he
saw before him.  He was not used to fighting with that kind of dog, and
he was waiting for them to bring on the real dog.

Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides
of the shoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and
that made slight, pushing-forward movements.  These were so many
suggestions.  Also, their effect was irritating, for Cherokee began to
growl, very softly, deep down in his throat.  There was a correspondence
in rhythm between the growls and the movements of the man's hands.  The
growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing
movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the
next movement.  The end of each movement was the accent of the rhythm,
the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with a jerk.

This was not without its effect on White Fang.  The hair began to rise on
his neck and across the shoulders.  Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward
and stepped back again.  As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward
died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift,
bow-legged run.  Then White Fang struck.  A cry of startled admiration
went up.  He had covered the distance and gone in more like a cat than a
dog; and with the same cat-like swiftness he had slashed with his fangs
and leaped clear.

The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck.
He gave no sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White
Fang.  The display on both sides, the quickness of the one and the
steadiness of the other, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd,
and the men were making new bets and increasing original bets.  Again,
and yet again, White Fang sprang in, slashed, and got away untouched, and
still his strange foe followed after him, without too great haste, not
slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, in a businesslike sort of way.
There was purpose in his method--something for him to do that he was
intent upon doing and from which nothing could distract him.

His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose.  It
puzzled White Fang.  Never had he seen such a dog.  It had no hair
protection.  It was soft, and bled easily.  There was no thick mat of fur
to baffle White Fang's teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his
own breed.  Each time that his teeth struck they sank easily into the
yielding flesh, while the animal did not seem able to defend itself.
Another disconcerting thing was that it made no outcry, such as he had
been accustomed to with the other dogs he had fought.  Beyond a growl or
a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently.  And never did it flag in
its pursuit of him.

Not that Cherokee was slow.  He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but
White Fang was never there.  Cherokee was puzzled, too.  He had never
fought before with a dog with which he could not close.  The desire to
close had always been mutual.  But here was a dog that kept at a
distance, dancing and dodging here and there and all about.  And when it
did get its teeth into him, it did not hold on but let go instantly and
darted away again.

But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat.  The
bull-dog stood too short, while its massive jaws were an added
protection.  White Fang darted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee's
wounds increased.  Both sides of his neck and head were ripped and
slashed.  He bled freely, but showed no signs of being disconcerted.  He
continued his plodding pursuit, though once, for the moment baffled, he
came to a full stop and blinked at the men who looked on, at the same
time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his willingness to
fight.

In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping his
trimmed remnant of an ear.  With a slight manifestation of anger,
Cherokee took up the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle
White Fang was making, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White
Fang's throat.  The bull-dog missed by a hair's-breadth, and cries of
praise went up as White Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the
opposite direction.

The time went by.  White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling,
leaping in and out, and ever inflicting damage.  And still the bull-dog,
with grim certitude, toiled after him.  Sooner or later he would
accomplish his purpose, get the grip that would win the battle.  In the
meantime, he accepted all the punishment the other could deal him.  His
tufts of ears had become tassels, his neck and shoulders were slashed in
a score of places, and his very lips were cut and bleeding--all from
these lightning snaps that were beyond his foreseeing and guarding.

Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet;
but the difference in their height was too great.  Cherokee was too
squat, too close to the ground.  White Fang tried the trick once too
often.  The chance came in one of his quick doublings and
counter-circlings.  He caught Cherokee with head turned away as he
whirled more slowly.  His shoulder was exposed.  White Fang drove in upon
it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with such force
that his momentum carried him on across over the other's body.  For the
first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his footing.
His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed on
his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to
bring his feet to the earth.  As it was, he struck heavily on his side.
The next instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee's teeth
closed on his throat.

It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee
held on.  White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to
shake off the bull-dog's body.  It made him frantic, this clinging,
dragging weight.  It bound his movements, restricted his freedom.  It was
like the trap, and all his instinct resented it and revolted against it.
It was a mad revolt.  For several minutes he was to all intents insane.
The basic life that was in him took charge of him.  The will to exist of
his body surged over him.  He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of
life.  All intelligence was gone.  It was as though he had no brain.  His
reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and move,
at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the
expression of its existence.

Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to
shake off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat.  The bull-
dog did little but keep his grip.  Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to
get his feet to the earth and for a moment to brace himself against White
Fang.  But the next moment his footing would be lost and he would be
dragging around in the whirl of one of White Fang's mad gyrations.
Cherokee identified himself with his instinct.  He knew that he was doing
the right thing by holding on, and there came to him certain blissful
thrills of satisfaction.  At such moments he even closed his eyes and
allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither, willy-nilly, careless
of any hurt that might thereby come to it.  That did not count.  The grip
was the thing, and the grip he kept.

White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out.  He could do
nothing, and he could not understand.  Never, in all his fighting, had
this thing happened.  The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way.
With them it was snap and slash and get away, snap and slash and get
away.  He lay partly on his side, panting for breath.  Cherokee still
holding his grip, urged against him, trying to get him over entirely on
his side.  White Fang resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting their
grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a chewing movement.
Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat.  The bull-dog's method
was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favoured to work in for
more.  Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet.  When White
Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on.

The bulging back of Cherokee's neck was the only portion of his body that
White Fang's teeth could reach.  He got hold toward the base where the
neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method
of fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it.  He spasmodically ripped
and tore with his fangs for a space.  Then a change in their position
diverted him.  The bull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and
still hanging on to his throat, was on top of him.  Like a cat, White
Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his
enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long tearing-strokes.
Cherokee might well have been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted on
his grip and got his body off of White Fang's and at right angles to it.

There was no escaping that grip.  It was like Fate itself, and as
inexorable.  Slowly it shifted up along the jugular.  All that saved
White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur
that covered it.  This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth,
the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth.  But bit by bit, whenever
the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his
mouth.  The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang.  The
latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the
moments went by.

It began to look as though the battle were over.  The backers of Cherokee
waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds.  White Fang's backers were
correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to
one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one.
This man was Beauty Smith.  He took a step into the ring and pointed his
finger at White Fang.  Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully.
This produced the desired effect.  White Fang went wild with rage.  He
called up his reserves of strength, and gained his feet.  As he struggled
around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat,
his anger passed on into panic.  The basic life of him dominated him
again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live.
Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even
uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the
earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.

At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptly
shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-
folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever.  Shouts of
applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!"
"Cherokee!"  To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump
of his tail.  But the clamour of approval did not distract him.  There
was no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws.  The
one might wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang's
throat.

It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators.  There was a
jingle of bells.  Dog-mushers' cries were heard.  Everybody, save Beauty
Smith, looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them.
But they saw, up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and
dogs.  They were evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting
trip.  At sight of the crowd they stopped their dogs and came over and
joined it, curious to see the cause of the excitement.  The dog-musher
wore a moustache, but the other, a taller and younger man, was smooth-
shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding of his blood and the running in
the frosty air.

White Fang had practically ceased struggling.  Now and again he resisted
spasmodically and to no purpose.  He could get little air, and that
little grew less and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened.
In spite of his armour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have
long since been torn open, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so
low down as to be practically on the chest.  It had taken Cherokee a long
time to shift that grip upward, and this had also tended further to clog
his jaws with fur and skin-fold.

In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into
his brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at
best.  When he saw White Fang's eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond
doubt that the fight was lost.  Then he broke loose.  He sprang upon
White Fang and began savagely to kick him.  There were hisses from the
crowd and cries of protest, but that was all.  While this went on, and
Beauty Smith continued to kick White Fang, there was a commotion in the
crowd.  The tall young newcomer was forcing his way through, shouldering
men right and left without ceremony or gentleness.  When he broke through
into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act of delivering another
kick.  All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a state of unstable
equilibrium.  At that moment the newcomer's fist landed a smashing blow
full in his face.  Beauty Smith's remaining leg left the ground, and his
whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned over backward and
struck the snow.  The newcomer turned upon the crowd.

"You cowards!" he cried.  "You beasts!"

He was in a rage himself--a sane rage.  His grey eyes seemed metallic and
steel-like as they flashed upon the crowd.  Beauty Smith regained his
feet and came toward him, sniffling and cowardly.  The new-comer did not
understand.  He did not know how abject a coward the other was, and
thought he was coming back intent on fighting.  So, with a "You beast!"
he smashed Beauty Smith over backward with a second blow in the face.
Beauty Smith decided that the snow was the safest place for him, and lay
where he had fallen, making no effort to get up.

"Come on, Matt, lend a hand," the newcomer called the dog-musher, who had
followed him into the ring.

Both men bent over the dogs.  Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull
when Cherokee's jaws should be loosened.  This the younger man
endeavoured to accomplish by clutching the bulldog's jaws in his hands
and trying to spread them.  It was a vain undertaking.  As he pulled and
tugged and wrenched, he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath,
"Beasts!"

The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting
against the spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the
newcomer lifted his head from his work for a moment and glared at them.

"You damn beasts!" he finally exploded, and went back to his task.

"It's no use, Mr. Scott, you can't break 'm apart that way," Matt said at
last.

The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs.

"Ain't bleedin' much," Matt announced.  "Ain't got all the way in yet."

"But he's liable to any moment," Scott answered.  "There, did you see
that!  He shifted his grip in a bit."

The younger man's excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing.
He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again.  But that did
not loosen the jaws.  Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in
advertisement that he understood the meaning of the blows, but that he
knew he was himself in the right and only doing his duty by keeping his
grip.

"Won't some of you help?" Scott cried desperately at the crowd.

But no help was offered.  Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer
him on and showered him with facetious advice.

"You'll have to get a pry," Matt counselled.

The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and
tried to thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog's jaws.  He shoved, and
shoved hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could
be distinctly heard.  Both men were on their knees, bending over the
dogs.  Tim Keenan strode into the ring.  He paused beside Scott and
touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously:

"Don't break them teeth, stranger."

"Then I'll break his neck," Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and
wedging with the revolver muzzle.

"I said don't break them teeth," the faro-dealer repeated more ominously
than before.

But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work.  Scott never desisted
from his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked:

"Your dog?"

The faro-dealer grunted.

"Then get in here and break this grip."

"Well, stranger," the other drawled irritatingly, "I don't mind telling
you that's something I ain't worked out for myself.  I don't know how to
turn the trick."

"Then get out of the way," was the reply, "and don't bother me.  I'm
busy."

Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice
of his presence.  He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on
one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other
side.  This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the
jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White
Fang's mangled neck.

"Stand by to receive your dog," was Scott's peremptory order to
Cherokee's owner.

The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee.

"Now!" Scott warned, giving the final pry.

The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously.

"Take him away," Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee back
into the crowd.

White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up.  Once he gained
his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted
and sank back into the snow.  His eyes were half closed, and the surface
of them was glassy.  His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue
protruded, draggled and limp.  To all appearances he looked like a dog
that had been strangled to death.  Matt examined him.

"Just about all in," he announced; "but he's breathin' all right."

Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang.

"Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?" Scott asked.

The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang,
calculated for a moment.

"Three hundred dollars," he answered.

"And how much for one that's all chewed up like this one?" Scott asked,
nudging White Fang with his foot.

"Half of that," was the dog-musher's judgment.  Scott turned upon Beauty
Smith.

"Did you hear, Mr. Beast?  I'm going to take your dog from you, and I'm
going to give you a hundred and fifty for him."

He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills.

Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the
proffered money.

"I ain't a-sellin'," he said.

"Oh, yes you are," the other assured him.  "Because I'm buying.  Here's
your money.  The dog's mine."

Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away.

Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike.  Beauty Smith
cowered down in anticipation of the blow.

"I've got my rights," he whimpered.

"You've forfeited your rights to own that dog," was the rejoinder.  "Are
you going to take the money? or do I have to hit you again?"

"All right," Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear.  "But I
take the money under protest," he added.  "The dog's a mint.  I ain't a-
goin' to be robbed.  A man's got his rights."

"Correct," Scott answered, passing the money over to him.  "A man's got
his rights.  But you're not a man.  You're a beast."

"Wait till I get back to Dawson," Beauty Smith threatened.  "I'll have
the law on you."

"If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I'll have you run
out of town.  Understand?"

Beauty Smith replied with a grunt.

"Understand?" the other thundered with abrupt fierceness.

"Yes," Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, sir," Beauty Smith snarled.

"Look out!  He'll bite!" some one shouted, and a guffaw of laughter went
up.

Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who
was working over White Fang.

Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking
on and talking.  Tim Keenan joined one of the groups.

"Who's that mug?" he asked.

"Weedon Scott," some one answered.

"And who in hell is Weedon Scott?" the faro-dealer demanded.

"Oh, one of them crackerjack minin' experts.  He's in with all the big
bugs.  If you want to keep out of trouble, you'll steer clear of him,
that's my talk.  He's all hunky with the officials.  The Gold
Commissioner's a special pal of his."

"I thought he must be somebody," was the faro-dealer's comment.  "That's
why I kept my hands offen him at the start."




"It's hopeless," Weedon Scott confessed.

He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who
responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless.

Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain,
bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs.  Having
received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means
of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even
then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his
existence.

"It's a wolf and there's no taming it," Weedon Scott announced.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Matt objected.  "Might be a lot of dog in
'm, for all you can tell.  But there's one thing I know sure, an' that
there's no gettin' away from."

The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide
Mountain.

"Well, don't be a miser with what you know," Scott said sharply, after
waiting a suitable length of time.  "Spit it out.  What is it?"

The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.

"Wolf or dog, it's all the same--he's ben tamed 'ready."

"No!"

"I tell you yes, an' broke to harness.  Look close there.  D'ye see them
marks across the chest?"

"You're right, Matt.  He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold of
him."

"And there's not much reason against his bein' a sled-dog again."

"What d'ye think?" Scott queried eagerly.  Then the hope died down as he
added, shaking his head, "We've had him two weeks now, and if anything
he's wilder than ever at the present moment."

"Give 'm a chance," Matt counselled.  "Turn 'm loose for a spell."

The other looked at him incredulously.

"Yes," Matt went on, "I know you've tried to, but you didn't take a
club."

"You try it then."

The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal.  White
Fang watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip
of its trainer.

"See 'm keep his eye on that club," Matt said.  "That's a good sign.  He's
no fool.  Don't dast tackle me so long as I got that club handy.  He's
not clean crazy, sure."

As the man's hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled
and crouched down.  But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the
same time contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand,
suspended threateningly above him.  Matt unsnapped the chain from the
collar and stepped back.

White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free.  Many months had gone
by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that
period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had
been loosed to fight with other dogs.  Immediately after such fights he
had always been imprisoned again.

He did not know what to make of it.  Perhaps some new devilry of the gods
was about to be perpetrated on him.  He walked slowly and cautiously,
prepared to be assailed at any moment.  He did not know what to do, it
was all so unprecedented.  He took the precaution to sheer off from the
two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin.
Nothing happened.  He was plainly perplexed, and he came back again,
pausing a dozen feet away and regarding the two men intently.

"Won't he run away?" his new owner asked.

Matt shrugged his shoulders.  "Got to take a gamble.  Only way to find
out is to find out."

"Poor devil," Scott murmured pityingly.  "What he needs is some show of
human kindness," he added, turning and going into the cabin.

He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang.  He
sprang away from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously.

"Hi-yu, Major!" Matt shouted warningly, but too late.

Major had made a spring for the meat.  At the instant his jaws closed on
it, White Fang struck him.  He was overthrown.  Matt rushed in, but
quicker than he was White Fang.  Major staggered to his feet, but the
blood spouting from his throat reddened the snow in a widening path.

"It's too bad, but it served him right," Scott said hastily.

But Matt's foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang.  There
was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation.  White Fang, snarling
fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and
investigated his leg.

"He got me all right," he announced, pointing to the torn trousers and
undercloths, and the growing stain of red.

"I told you it was hopeless, Matt," Scott said in a discouraged voice.
"I've thought about it off and on, while not wanting to think of it.  But
we've come to it now.  It's the only thing to do."

As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open
the cylinder, and assured himself of its contents.

"Look here, Mr. Scott," Matt objected; "that dog's ben through hell.  You
can't expect 'm to come out a white an' shinin' angel.  Give 'm time."

"Look at Major," the other rejoined.

The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog.  He had sunk down on the snow
in the circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp.

"Served 'm right.  You said so yourself, Mr. Scott.  He tried to take
White Fang's meat, an' he's dead-O.  That was to be expected.  I wouldn't
give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat."

"But look at yourself, Matt.  It's all right about the dogs, but we must
draw the line somewhere."

"Served me right," Matt argued stubbornly.  "What'd I want to kick 'm
for?  You said yourself that he'd done right.  Then I had no right to
kick 'm."

"It would be a mercy to kill him," Scott insisted.  "He's untamable."

"Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin' chance.  He
ain't had no chance yet.  He's just come through hell, an' this is the
first time he's ben loose.  Give 'm a fair chance, an' if he don't
deliver the goods, I'll kill 'm myself.  There!"

"God knows I don't want to kill him or have him killed," Scott answered,
putting away the revolver.  "We'll let him run loose and see what
kindness can do for him.  And here's a try at it."

He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and
soothingly.

"Better have a club handy," Matt warned.

Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang's confidence.

White Fang was suspicious.  Something was impending.  He had killed this
god's dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected
than some terrible punishment?  But in the face of it he was indomitable.
He bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary
and prepared for anything.  The god had no club, so he suffered him to
approach quite near.  The god's hand had come out and was descending upon
his head.  White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under
it.  Here was danger, some treachery or something.  He knew the hands of
the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt.  Besides, there
was his old antipathy to being touched.  He snarled more menacingly,
crouched still lower, and still the hand descended.  He did not want to
bite the hand, and he endured the peril of it until his instinct surged
up in him, mastering him with its insatiable yearning for life.

Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or
slash.  But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang,
who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.

Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding
it tightly in his other hand.  Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to
his side.  White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing
his fangs, his eyes malignant with menace.  Now he could expect a beating
as fearful as any he had received from Beauty Smith.

"Here!  What are you doing?" Scott cried suddenly.

Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle.

"Nothin'," he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was assumed,
"only goin' to keep that promise I made.  I reckon it's up to me to kill
'm as I said I'd do."

"No you don't!"

"Yes I do.  Watch me."

As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now
Weedon Scott's turn to plead.

"You said to give him a chance.  Well, give it to him.  We've only just
started, and we can't quit at the beginning.  It served me right, this
time.  And--look at him!"

White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was
snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-
musher.

"Well, I'll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!" was the dog-musher's
expression of astonishment.

"Look at the intelligence of him," Scott went on hastily.  "He knows the
meaning of firearms as well as you do.  He's got intelligence and we've
got to give that intelligence a chance.  Put up the gun."

"All right, I'm willin'," Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the
woodpile.

"But will you look at that!" he exclaimed the next moment.

White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling.  "This is worth
investigatin'.  Watch."

Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled.
He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang's lifted lips descended,
covering his teeth.

"Now, just for fun."

Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder.  White
Fang's snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement
approached its culmination.  But the moment before the rifle came to a
level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin.  Matt
stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been
occupied by White Fang.

The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his
employer.

"I agree with you, Mr. Scott.  That dog's too intelligent to kill."




As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to
advertise that he would not submit to punishment.  Twenty-four hours had
passed since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held
up by a sling to keep the blood out of it.  In the past White Fang had
experienced delayed punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was
about to befall him.  How could it be otherwise?  He had committed what
was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of
a white-skinned superior god at that.  In the nature of things, and of
intercourse with gods, something terrible awaited him.

The god sat down several feet away.  White Fang could see nothing
dangerous in that.  When the gods administered punishment they stood on
their legs.  Besides, this god had no club, no whip, no firearm.  And
furthermore, he himself was free.  No chain nor stick bound him.  He
could escape into safety while the god was scrambling to his feet.  In
the meantime he would wait and see.

The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang's snarl slowly
dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased.  Then the
god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White
Fang's neck and the growl rushed up in his throat.  But the god made no
hostile movement, and went on calmly talking.  For a time White Fang
growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established
between growl and voice.  But the god talked on interminably.  He talked
to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before.  He talked
softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched
White Fang.  In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his
instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god.  He had a
feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men.

After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin.  White Fang
scanned him apprehensively when he came out.  He had neither whip nor
club nor weapon.  Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding
something.  He sat down as before, in the same spot, several feet away.
He held out a small piece of meat.  White Fang pricked his ears and
investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at
the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready
to spring away at the first sign of hostility.

Still the punishment delayed.  The god merely held near to his nose a
piece of meat.  And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong.  Still
White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short
inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it.  The gods were all-
wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind
that apparently harmless piece of meat.  In past experience, especially
in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously
related.

In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang's feet.  He
smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it.  While he smelled
it he kept his eyes on the god.  Nothing happened.  He took the meat into
his mouth and swallowed it.  Still nothing happened.  The god was
actually offering him another piece of meat.  Again he refused to take it
from the hand, and again it was tossed to him.  This was repeated a
number of times.  But there came a time when the god refused to toss it.
He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it.

The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry.  Bit by bit,
infinitely cautious, he approached the hand.  At last the time came that
he decided to eat the meat from the hand.  He never took his eyes from
the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair
involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck.  Also a low growl rumbled
in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with.  He ate the
meat, and nothing happened.  Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and
nothing happened.  Still the punishment delayed.

He licked his chops and waited.  The god went on talking.  In his voice
was kindness--something of which White Fang had no experience whatever.
And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never
experienced before.  He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as
though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being
were being filled.  Then again came the prod of his instinct and the
warning of past experience.  The gods were ever crafty, and they had
unguessed ways of attaining their ends.

Ah, he had thought so!  There it came now, the god's hand, cunning to
hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head.  But the god went
on talking.  His voice was soft and soothing.  In spite of the menacing
hand, the voice inspired confidence.  And in spite of the assuring voice,
the hand inspired distrust.  White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings,
impulses.  It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control
he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-
forces that struggled within him for mastery.

He compromised.  He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears.  But he
neither snapped nor sprang away.  The hand descended.  Nearer and nearer
it came.  It touched the ends of his upstanding hair.  He shrank down
under it.  It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him.
Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together.
It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct.
He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at
the hands of men.  But it was the will of the god, and he strove to
submit.

The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement.
This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it.
And every time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a
cavernous growl surged in his throat.  White Fang growled and growled
with insistent warning.  By this means he announced that he was prepared
to retaliate for any hurt he might receive.  There was no telling when
the god's ulterior motive might be disclosed.  At any moment that soft,
confidence-inspiring voice might break forth in a roar of wrath, that
gentle and caressing hand transform itself into a vice-like grip to hold
him helpless and administer punishment.

But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non-
hostile pats.  White Fang experienced dual feelings.  It was distasteful
to his instinct.  It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward
personal liberty.  And yet it was not physically painful.  On the
contrary, it was even pleasant, in a physical way.  The patting movement
slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of the ears about their bases,
and the physical pleasure even increased a little.  Yet he continued to
fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately
suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and
swayed him.

"Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled!"

So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of
dirty dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by
the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang.

At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back,
snarling savagely at him.

Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.

"If you don't mind my expressin' my feelin's, Mr. Scott, I'll make free
to say you're seventeen kinds of a damn fool an' all of 'em different,
an' then some."

Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over
to White Fang.  He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then
slowly put out his hand, rested it on White Fang's head, and resumed the
interrupted patting.  White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed
suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon the man that
stood in the doorway.

"You may be a number one, tip-top minin' expert, all right all right,"
the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, "but you missed the chance
of your life when you was a boy an' didn't run off an' join a circus."

White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap
away from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his
neck with long, soothing strokes.

It was the beginning of the end for White Fang--the ending of the old
life and the reign of hate.  A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was
dawning.  It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of
Weedon Scott to accomplish this.  And on the part of White Fang it
required nothing less than a revolution.  He had to ignore the urges and
promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life
itself.

Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that
he now did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he
now abandoned himself.  In short, when all things were considered, he had
to achieve an orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the
time he came voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his
lord.  At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without
form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him.  But
now it was different.  The thumb of circumstance had done its work only
too well.  By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf,
fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable.  To accomplish the change
was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no
longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the
warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and
unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his
instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes,
and desires.

Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that
pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and
remoulding it into fairer form.  Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb.  He
had gone to the roots of White Fang's nature, and with kindness touched
to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished.  One such
potency was _love_.  It took the place of _like_, which latter had been
the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods.

But this love did not come in a day.  It began with _like_ and out of it
slowly developed.  White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to
remain loose, because he liked this new god.  This was certainly better
than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was
necessary that he should have some god.  The lordship of man was a need
of his nature.  The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him
in that early day when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Grey
Beaver's feet to receive the expected beating.  This seal had been
stamped upon him again, and ineradicably, on his second return from the
Wild, when the long famine was over and there was fish once more in the
village of Grey Beaver.

And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to
Beauty Smith, White Fang remained.  In acknowledgment of fealty, he
proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his master's property.
He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night-
visitor to the cabin fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came
to the rescue.  But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between
thieves and honest men, to appraise the true value of step and carriage.
The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door,
he let alone--though he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and
he received the endorsement of the master.  But the man who went softly,
by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy--that was
the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and who
went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.

Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang--or rather,
of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang.  It was a
matter of principle and conscience.  He felt that the ill done White Fang
was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid.  So he went out of
his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf.  Each day he made it
a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it at length.

At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting.
But there was one thing that he never outgrew--his growling.  Growl he
would, from the moment the petting began till it ended.  But it was a
growl with a new note in it.  A stranger could not hear this note, and to
such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of
primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling.  But White Fang's
throat had become harsh-fibred from the making of ferocious sounds
through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair
of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to
express the gentleness he felt.  Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and
sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the
fierceness--the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and
that none but he could hear.

As the days went by, the evolution of _like_ into _love_ was accelerated.
White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness
he knew not what love was.  It manifested itself to him as a void in his
being--a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled.  It
was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of
the new god's presence.  At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-
thrilling satisfaction.  But when away from his god, the pain and the
unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with
its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.

White Fang was in the process of finding himself.  In spite of the
maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had
formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion.  There was a
burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses.  His old
code of conduct was changing.  In the past he had liked comfort and
surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his
actions accordingly.  But now it was different.  Because of this new
feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain for the sake
of his god.  Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging,
or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless
cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's face.  At night, when the god
returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had
burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and
the word of greeting.  Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with
his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the
town.

_Like_ had been replaced by _love_.  And love was the plummet dropped
down into the deeps of him where like had never gone.  And responsive out
of his deeps had come the new thing--love.  That which was given unto him
did he return.  This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant
god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands
under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative.  He was too old, too firmly
moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways.  He was too
self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation.  Too long had
he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness.  He had never barked
in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god
approached.  He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in
the expression of his love.  He never ran to meet his god.  He waited at
a distance; but he always waited, was always there.  His love partook of
the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration.  Only by
the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and by the
unceasing following with his eyes of his god's every movement.  Also, at
times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an
awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express
itself and his physical inability to express it.

He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life.  It
was borne in upon him that he must let his master's dogs alone.  Yet his
dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an
acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership.  This accomplished, he
had little trouble with them.  They gave trail to him when he came and
went or walked among them, and when he asserted his will they obeyed.

In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt--as a possession of his master.
His master rarely fed him.  Matt did that, it was his business; yet White
Fang divined that it was his master's food he ate and that it was his
master who thus fed him vicariously.  Matt it was who tried to put him
into the harness and make him haul sled with the other dogs.  But Matt
failed.  It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and
worked him, that he understood.  He took it as his master's will that
Matt should drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his
master's other dogs.

Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with
runners under them.  And different was the method of driving the dogs.
There was no fan-formation of the team.  The dogs worked in single file,
one behind another, hauling on double traces.  And here, in the Klondike,
the leader was indeed the leader.  The wisest as well as strongest dog
was the leader, and the team obeyed him and feared him.  That White Fang
should quickly gain this post was inevitable.  He could not be satisfied
with less, as Matt learned after much inconvenience and trouble.  White
Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt backed his judgment with
strong language after the experiment had been tried.  But, though he
worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of
his master's property in the night.  Thus he was on duty all the time,
ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.

"Makin' free to spit out what's in me," Matt said one day, "I beg to
state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you did
for that dog.  You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin' his face
in with your fist."

A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott's grey eyes, and he
muttered savagely, "The beast!"

In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang.  Without warning,
the love-master disappeared.  There had been warning, but White Fang was
unversed in such things and did not understand the packing of a grip.  He
remembered afterwards that his packing had preceded the master's
disappearance; but at the time he suspected nothing.  That night he
waited for the master to return.  At midnight the chill wind that blew
drove him to shelter at the rear of the cabin.  There he drowsed, only
half asleep, his ears keyed for the first sound of the familiar step.
But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him out to the cold front
stoop, where he crouched, and waited.

But no master came.  In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped
outside.  White Fang gazed at him wistfully.  There was no common speech
by which he might learn what he wanted to know.  The days came and went,
but never the master.  White Fang, who had never known sickness in his
life, became sick.  He became very sick, so sick that Matt was finally
compelled to bring him inside the cabin.  Also, in writing to his
employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White Fang.

Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the
following:

"That dam wolf won't work.  Won't eat.  Aint got no spunk left.  All the
dogs is licking him.  Wants to know what has become of you, and I don't
know how to tell him.  Mebbe he is going to die."

It was as Matt had said.  White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and
allowed every dog of the team to thrash him.  In the cabin he lay on the
floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life.
Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he
never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head
back to its customary position on his fore-paws.

And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and
mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang.  He had got
upon his feet, his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening
intently.  A moment later, Matt heard a footstep.  The door opened, and
Weedon Scott stepped in.  The two men shook hands.  Then Scott looked
around the room.

"Where's the wolf?" he asked.

Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the
stove.  He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs.  He
stood, watching and waiting.

"Holy smoke!" Matt exclaimed.  "Look at 'm wag his tail!"

Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time
calling him.  White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet
quickly.  He was awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near,
his eyes took on a strange expression.  Something, an incommunicable
vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light and shone forth.

"He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!" Matt
commented.

Weedon Scott did not hear.  He was squatting down on his heels, face to
face with White Fang and petting him--rubbing at the roots of the ears,
making long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the
spine gently with the balls of his fingers.  And White Fang was growling
responsively, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.

But that was not all.  What of his joy, the great love in him, ever
surging and struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new
mode of expression.  He suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his
way in between the master's arm and body.  And here, confined, hidden
from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge
and snuggle.

The two men looked at each other.  Scott's eyes were shining.

"Gosh!" said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.

A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, "I always
insisted that wolf was a dog.  Look at 'm!"

With the return of the love-master, White Fang's recovery was rapid.  Two
nights and a day he spent in the cabin.  Then he sallied forth.  The sled-
dogs had forgotten his prowess.  They remembered only the latest, which
was his weakness and sickness.  At the sight of him as he came out of the
cabin, they sprang upon him.

"Talk about your rough-houses," Matt murmured gleefully, standing in the
doorway and looking on.

"Give 'm hell, you wolf!  Give 'm hell!--an' then some!"

White Fang did not need the encouragement.  The return of the love-master
was enough.  Life was flowing through him again, splendid and
indomitable.  He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of
much that he felt and that otherwise was without speech.  There could be
but one ending.  The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not
until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by
meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang.

Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often.  It was the
final word.  He could not go beyond it.  The one thing of which he had
always been particularly jealous was his head.  He had always disliked to
have it touched.  It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the
trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts.  It
was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free.  And now,
with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting
himself into a position of hopeless helplessness.  It was an expression
of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: "I
put myself into thy hands.  Work thou thy will with me."

One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of
cribbage preliminary to going to bed.  "Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an' a
pair makes six," Matt was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound
of snarling without.  They looked at each other as they started to rise
to their feet.

"The wolf's nailed somebody," Matt said.

A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.

"Bring a light!" Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.

Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his
back in the snow.  His arms were folded, one above the other, across his
face and throat.  Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang's
teeth.  And there was need for it.  White Fang was in a rage, wickedly
making his attack on the most vulnerable spot.  From shoulder to wrist of
the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were
ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and
streaming blood.

All this the two men saw in the first instant.  The next instant Weedon
Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear.  White
Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly
quieted down at a sharp word from the master.

Matt helped the man to his feet.  As he arose he lowered his crossed
arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith.  The dog-musher let go
of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked
up live fire.  Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about
him.  He caught sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face.

At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow.  He held
the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer's
benefit--a steel dog-chain and a stout club.

Weedon Scott saw and nodded.  Not a word was spoken.  The dog-musher laid
his hand on Beauty Smith's shoulder and faced him to the right about.  No
word needed to be spoken.  Beauty Smith started.

In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to
him.

"Tried to steal you, eh?  And you wouldn't have it!  Well, well, he made
a mistake, didn't he?"

"Must 'a' thought he had hold of seventeen devils," the dog-musher
sniggered.

White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair
slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his
throat.




PART V

 White Fang becomes the leader of Mit-sah's sled team and the other dogs now hate him even more for it. He learns to run, run, run and only stop when Mit-sah tells him. Otherwise, the rest of the pack would destroy him. The Dark Side is strong in him: he hates other dogs. At age five, Grey Beaver takes him on another long trip and White Fang pretty much pounds on every dog he meets. Lots and lots of anger in this furry dude. They arrive at Fort Yukon, where the gold rush is on, and Grey Beaver makes a killing in the trade game. White Fang also gets his first look at white men, and is less than impressed by their dogs. He leads a pack in killing a few and feels proud of himself for it. Even prouder that he can abandon the pack to punishment and avoid blame himself. He's really becoming quite evil. White residents of Fort Yukon, called "Sour-doughs," take great delight in watching White Fang cause havoc. One man in particular, called Beauty Smith, really enjoys the whole dogs-getting-killed thing. He wants to own White Fang, but White Fang is having none of it. Beauty turns to Grey Beaver, getting him drunk and turning him into an alcoholic. White Fang is tied up and Beauty leads him away. A few beatings ensure that White Fang stays in line. White Fang chews through the thong and goes back to Grey Beaver's camp. Beauty drags him back and guess what? More beatings. He then ties up White Fang with a stick, but White Fang chews through it. Again, he goes back to Grey Beaver and again, he gets the holy snot beaten out of him. Grey Beaver just sits and watches. White Fang resolves to obey this new "mad god." Beauty keeps White Fang chained up and mocks him constantly. White Fang decides to hate everyone and everything. He's big and scary. White Fang is unchained and left to roam around in his pen. One day, a mastiff gets shoved into the pen. And... fight. White Fang savages the mastiff, Beauty collects money on bets and the other dog is dragged away. More dogfights follow. There's even one where he had to fight two dogs at once; naturally he kills them both. Beauty eventually takes him to Dawson by steamboat. He's left in a cage, where men can poke him with sticks. This, of course, does wonders for his temper. But White Fang is made of win. Beauty eventually has to pit him against wolves and a lynx just to keep things interesting. He kills them all, and the fights eventually dry up: no one wants to fight him anymore. He's just plain unbeatable. Finally, a man named Tim Keenan comes to the Yukon, bringing with him the first bulldog anyone's ever seen. And... fight. Next chapter. Cherokee the bulldog throws down against White Fang. At first, he doesn't want to fight, but Keenan rubs his fur the wrong way--literally--and the battle is on. White Fang strikes first; the bulldog doesn't seem to react. He keeps striking. The bulldog doesn't respond, and White Fang can't get at the animal's throat, which would end the fight quickly. Finally, White Fang drives into his shoulder. The bone knocks him back and he loses his footing. Uh oh. That's the first time that's ever happened to him. Cherokee snaps his jaws on White Fang's throat and won't let go no matter what. It looks like it's all over for our poor put-upon hero. Beauty points his finger at White Fang and laughs, which sets White Fang off. Even so, it's not enough. Beauty, realizing that White Fang will lose, jumps into the ring and starts beating him. Why he would do that is beyond us--there's a killer bulldog in with him--but nobody ever accused Beauty of being smart. A tall man breaks out of the crowd and does what we've all secretly wanted to do for several chapters: beat the snot out of Beauty. The man, Weedon Scott, calls his musher, Matt over to the dogs. They try to beat Cherokee into letting White Fang go, but they can't. Scott pushes his revolver butt into Cherokee's teeth, trying to pry him loose. Tim Keenan comes over and makes some noise about not hurting his dog, but Scott silences him with a mighty Glare of Death. Slowly, they manage to free White Fang. The men then order Tim to remove his frothing bulldog. Scott pays Beauty $150 for White Fang--half of what a healthy sled dog is worth--and threatens further poundings if Beauty doesn't agree. Beauty threatens to call the law on Scott. Scott promises to run him out of town. Keenan asks who Scott is, he's told that Scott is a bigwig with the mining companies. Keenan's thankful he didn't challenge the Glare of Death. Scott and Matt debate White Fang's fate. He's chained up and savage, though Matt is keeping the other sled dogs away from him. Matt points out the harness marks on White Fang's body, indicating that he's been tamed. Oh really? Hmm... Matt walks over to White Fang with a club and unchains him. White Fang is afraid of the club for some reason, and doesn't bite back. White Fang stays put. He can't leave and is frankly kind of weirded out by acts of kindness from men. Scott throws White Fang a piece of meat. One of the other dogs, Major, tries to take it and White Fang makes him pay by tearing out his throat. Matt kicks White Fang and gets bit for his trouble. Scott wants to kill him--considering it a mercy--but Matt wants to give White Fang a chance. Scott reaches out slowly to touch White Fang and gets bit. Matt gives up and go gets his rifle to shoot White Fang. Now Scott pleads for the animal's life. Matt puts down the rifle and White Fang stops snarling at him. They decide that he's too smart to kill. Scott comes back to White Fang, and the wolf gets ready for the inevitable beating. Instead, Scott sits down nearby. This weirds White Fang out considerably. Scott offers White Fang a piece of meat. White Fang is deeply suspicious, but eventually eats it after Scott tosses it to him. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Multiple times. Finally, White Fang lets himself take the meat from Scott's hand. Good doggie. Scott talks to him in kind words, resulting in more weirding out from White Fang. He even starts petting him, which White Fang believes is some sort of evil ruse. It isn't, and White Fang soon begins enjoying it. Slowly, Scott turns White Fang away from the Dark Side. The wolf begins to understand love, and even does selfless things for the sake of it. He pummels Scott's dogs, but only to show them who's boss. Once they figure it out, he leaves them alone. Scott goes away one day and doesn't come back. White Fang starts pining for him and becomes sick. When he comes back, White Fang actually wags his tail. His recovery proceeds very quickly. When White Fang steps outside, the other dogs jump on him, thinking he's still weak. He thrashes them--again--and all is well. One night, Scott and Matt are roused by sounds of White Fang going all psycho on someone. Turns out, that someone is Beauty Smith, who came with a dog chain and club trying to steal White Fang back. White Fang drops the pain hammer on his former master, to Scott's unspoken satisfaction.

