White Fang
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