CHAPTER IV--THE CLINGING DEATH

CHAPTER IV--THE CLINGING DEATH


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."