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

apparentlyharmless 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,

infinitelycautious, 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 physicallypainful. 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,