CHAPTER VI

THE LOVE-MASTER

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,” Mat 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.