CHAPTER VI--THE LOVE-MASTER

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, 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.