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 led 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, succeeding 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.

****

Top of Page

< BACK    NEXT >

| Home | Reading Room | White Fang