Chapter: 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

 Cherokee, the bulldog, and White Fang eye each other nervously in the circle. Neither is used to fighting this other type of dog and look at each other with confusion. Egged on by its owner, the bulldog makes a run for White Fang; he responds fiercely, yet is puzzled by the dog. The bulldog has a lot of thick flesh, and White Fang's teeth sink in, but the bulldog does not seem to mind. The bulldog is confused by White Fang's quickness. Finally, the bulldog sinks its teeth into White Fang's throat and will not let go. White Fang can do nothing to shake the dog off. Finally, just as White Fang is beginning to die, a man comes into the midst of the fighting and separates the dogs. Another man is with him and they pay Beauty Smith one hundred and fifty dollars for White Fang, even when he says he won't sell him. The men are Weedon Scott, a mining expert and Matt, a dog musher. They want to try to tame White Fang. They let him off the leash, and Scott feeds him meat. White Fang kills another dog who tries to get the meat, and rips open Matt's leg. Scott pulls his revolver, deciding that shooting White Fang is the humane way to end his life. But Matt defends White Fang, and they decide to try again. Scott goes to White Fang and tries to pet him but White Fang rips his hand open. Matt goes to get a rifle, and this time Scott defends White Fang. But more than that, White Fang recognizes the rifle for what it is and hides behind the cabin. They decide he is intelligent and decide to try again. A day later, Scott approaches White Fang again, and the dog shrinks back, knowing that he is going to be punished. But Scott sits down and speaks quietly to White Fang. Then he gets some meat and tosses it to White Fang. In Scott's voice is kindness, which White Fang has never heard before. Scott pets White Fang, and White Fang, very uncomfortably, tolerates it. Bit by bit, White Fang grows to like Scott, and slowly grows to love him. White Fang also becomes a great help to the house, both by working on the sled and by guarding it by night. One day Scott leaves for Circle City and White Fang, left with Matt, will not eat and loses heart. When Scott returns, White Fang wags his tail and looks at him with love, nudging him with his muzzle and snuggling with his master. One night while Scott and Matt are playing a game of cribbage, they hear a snarl and a cry outside. They hurry to the steps and see that White Fang has attacked a man. Then with another look, they see that it is Beauty Smith who came with a club and a chain to try to steal White Fang.

