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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.
The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to come around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing. Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs. "You must take good care of him, Matt," Scott said, as they started down the hill. "Write and let me know how he gets along." "Sure," the dog-musher answered. "But listen to that, will you!"
"That's why I kept my hands offen him at the start." "It's hopeless," Weedon Scott confessed. He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless. Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain, bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs.
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.
"I'm agreein' with you, only . . . " "Only what?" Scott snapped out. "Only . . . " the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and betrayed a rising anger of his own. "Well, you needn't get so all-fired het up about it. Judgin' by your actions one'd think you didn't know your own mind." Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently: "You are right, Matt.
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.
"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.
But there's one thing I know sure, an' that there's no gettin' away from." The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain. "Well, don't be a miser with what you know," Scott said sharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. "Spit it out. What is it?" The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.
"I'm agreein' with you," the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered. The next day White Fang's anxiety and restlessness were even more pronounced. He dogged his master's heels whenever he left the cabin, and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor.
Just now he was a dog-musher and freighter, charging twenty-eight cents a pound for the winter haul from Sixty Mile to Mucluc and for bacon thirty-three cents, as was the custom. His poke was fat with dust. He had the price of many drinks. Yet no barkeeper would serve him. Whiskey, the hottest, swiftest, completest gratifier of civilization, was not for him.
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