Page 42 of 52

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.