Chapter V. THE INDOMITABLE

“It’s hopeless,” Weedon Scott confessed.

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

Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his chain, bristling, snarling, ferocious, trying to get at the sled-dogs.

“It’s a wolf and it can’t be tamed,” Weedon Scott announced.

“Wolf or dog, it’s all the same—he’s been tamed already.”

“No!”

“I tell you yes. Look close there. Do you see the marks across the chest?”

“You’re right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got him.”

“And there’s not much reason against his being a sled-dog again.”

“We’ve had him two weeks now, and nothing helps.”

“Give him a chance—yes, 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 how he keeps his eye on that club,” Matt said. “That’s a good sign. He’s no fool. He’s not clean crazy, sure.”

As the man’s hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled and crouched down. But in Matt’s other hand was a club. Matt took off the chain from the animal’s neck and stepped back.

White Fang could hardly realize 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 fought with other dogs.

He did not know what to think of it. Perhaps it was some new devilry of the gods. He walked slowly and cautiously to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He was puzzled, and he came back again, looking at the two men intently.

“Won’t he run away?” his new owner asked.

Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Only way to find out is to find out.”

“Poor devil. What he needs is human kindness,” Scott said, turning and going into the cabin.

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

“Hi-yu, Major!” Matt shouted, but too late.

Major, the dog, jumped for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it, White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but White Fang was quicker. Major stood up, but the blood from his throat reddened the snow.

“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 investigated his leg.

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

“I told you it was hopeless, Matt,” Scott said in a discouraged voice. “I’ve thought about it, while not wanting to think of it. But it’s the only thing to do.”

As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver.

“Look here, Mr. Scott,” Matt objected; “that dog’s been through hell. You can’t expect him to come out a white and shining angel. Give him time.”

“Look at Major,” the other said.

Major had sunk down on the snow in the circle of his blood and was obviously dying.

“Served him right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to take White Fang’s meat, and he’s dead. That was to be expected.”

“But look at yourself, Matt. It’s all right about the dogs, but there must be a limit.”

“Served me right,” Matt argued stubbornly. “What did I want to kick him for? I had no right to kick him.”

“It would be a mercy to kill him. He can’t be tamed.”

“Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a chance. He didn’t have a chance yet. He’s just come through hell, and this is the first time he’s been loose. Give him a fair chance, and if he don’t deliver the goods, I’ll kill him myself.”

“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.”

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

“Better have a club at hand,” Matt warned. Scott shook his head and went on.

White Fang was suspicious. He had killed this god’s dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected than some terrible punishment? But he looked fierce. He bristled and showed his teeth. The god had no club, so he let him approach quite near. The god’s hand had come out and was descending upon his head. White Fang grew tense as he crouched under it. Here was danger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, their mastery, their ability to hurt. Besides, he still didn’t like being touched. He did not want to bite the hand, but in the end his instinct mastered him.

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.

Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding it tightly in his other hand. White Fang crouched down, and backed away, showing his fangs. Now he could expect a beating as terrible 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.

“Nothing,” he said slowly, “only going to keep that promise I made. I’ll kill him as I said I’d do.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do. Watch me.”

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 was snarling, not at Scott, but at the dog-musher.

“Look at the intelligence of him,” Scott went on hastily. “He knows the meaning of firearms. We’ve got to give that intelligence a chance.”

“All right,” Matt agreed, leaving the rifle. “But will you look at that!” he exclaimed the next moment.

White Fang had calmed down and stopped snarling.

“This is interesting. Watch.”

Matt reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang ceased.

“Now, just for fun.”

Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. White Fang’s snarled again. But the moment before the rifle came to a level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin.

“I agree with you, Mr. Scott”, said Matt, “That dog’s too intelligent to kill.”

Chapter VI. THE LOVE-MASTER

White Fang could not believe there would be no punishment. So when he saw Weedon Scott approach he snarled and bristled.

But the god came over and sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous in that. Besides, he himself was free, he could escape into safety any moment. In the meantime he would wait and see.

The god remained quiet, made no movement. White Fang snarled. Then the god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang’s neck. But the god made no hostile movement. 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.

After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scanned him apprehensively when he came out. He had no weapon.

He sat down as before, on the same place. 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.

Still there was no punishment. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fang suspected; and he refused to touch it. In past experience, especially with squaws, meat and punishment had often been related.

In the end, the god threw the meat 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 thrown to him. This was repeated a number of times. But finally the god refused to threw it.

The meat was good, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, he approached the hand. At last he decided to eat the meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god. Also a low growl was in his throat as a warning. He ate the meat. Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and nothing happened. Still there was no punishment.

He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice was kindness—something of which White Fang had no experience. He was aware of a strange satisfaction, as though some need were being satisfied, as though some empty space in him was being filled. Then again came in his instinct and the memory of past experience. The gods were cunning.

Ah, he had thought so! There it is now, the god’s hand, able to hurt, descending upon his head. But the god went on talking. His voice gave confidence, his hand gave distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings. It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the conflict.

He compromised. He snarled and bristled. But he neither snapped nor sprang away. The hand descended nearer and nearer. It touched the ends of his hair. It passed more closely against him. 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 done to him by the hands of men.

The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. White Fang growled and growled with warning. He did not believe.

It was awful to his instinct. And yet it was not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant. Patting movement slowly changed to a rubbing of the ears, and the physical pleasure even increased a little. Yet he continued to fear and to be tensed, expecting something evil.

And then there came Matt. He was surprised by the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang. At the moment his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarling savagely at him.

Weedon Scott stood up and walked over to White Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put his hand on White Fang’s head, and continued the interrupted patting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon his friend.

“You may be a number one mining expert,” the dog-musher said, “but you missed the chance of your life when you didn’t come to work in 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.

It was the beginning of the end for White Fang—the ending of the old life and the reign of hate. A new and fairer life was beginning. It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than a revolution. He had to ignore his instinct, reason and experience.

Weedon Scott had gone to the roots of White Fang’s nature, and with kindness touched the life potencies that had been sleeping in him. One such potency was love—higher than just like.

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. It was necessary that he should have some god. The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he left the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver’s feet to receive the expected beating. And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to Beauty Smith, White Fang remained.

He started with guarding his master’s property. He walked about the cabin while the sled- dogs slept, and the first night-visitor fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to help. But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men.

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 it was a debt that must be paid. So he was especially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he caressed and petted him.

At first suspicious, White Fang grew to like this petting. But there was one thing that he never outgrew—his growling. But it was a growl with a new note in it—the note that was the faintest hint of content and that none except Weedon Scott could hear.

White Fang started feeling the necessity of love as well as he could feel hunger, pain or anger. In his new god’s absence, he felt that there was an empty space in him, a space to be filled.

Because of this new feeling, he sometimes chose discomfort for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning, he waited 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 in the snow 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. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang’s nature opened as a flower opens under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, to express himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too morose. He never ran to meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there.

He tolerated all possessions of his master, including his dogs and Matt. Matt tried to put him into the harness and make him pull the sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang, that he understood. He took it as his master’s will.

The Klondike sleds were different from the Mackenzie toboggans. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another, 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. But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forget to guard his master’s property in the night. Thus he was on duty all the time, ever faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.

In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, the love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang did not understand the packing of bags. 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 finally had to bring him inside the cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt said about White Fang: “That damn wolf won’t work. Won’t eat. Wants to know what has happened to you, and I don’t know how to tell him. Maybe he is going to die.”

And then, one night, Matt heard a low whine from White Fang. He stood up, 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 saw him. He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching and waiting. And—he wagged his tail.

Scott came half across the room. White Fang came to him. 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 there.

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

Weedon Scott did not hear. He was 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 in response, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.

But that was not all. He suddenly put his head between the master’s arm and body. And here, satisfied, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to snuggle.

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

A moment later Matt said, “I always insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at him!”

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 returned to living outdoors. It took him little time to remind the sled-dogs that he was the leader. Life was flowing through him again.

Having learned to snuggle, he often did it. 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 your hands. Do what you will with me.”

One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt were playing cards before going to bed. Suddenly there was a cry and sound of snarling from outside.

“The wolf’s nailed somebody,” Matt said.

“Bring a light!” Scott shouted.

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. He was trying to protect himself from White Fang’s teeth. White Fang was in a rage. 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.

White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, and quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the master.

Matt helped the man to his feet. It was Beauty Smith. He blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. Then he saw White Fang and terror rushed into his face.

At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow: a steel dog-chain and a stout club.

Weedon Scott saw and nodded. 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 went away.

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?”

White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair slowly lying down.