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 endingabruptly 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 loot, 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 revolvermuzzle.

"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 abruptfierceness.

"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."
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