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 abrupt fierceness.
“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.”
CHAPTER V—THE INDOMITABLE
“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.
Having received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence.
“It’s a wolf and there’s no taming it,” Weedon Scott announced.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Matt objected. “Might be a lot of dog in ’m, for all you can tell.
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.
“Wolf or dog, it’s all the same—he’s ben tamed ’ready.”
“No!”
“I tell you yes, an’ broke to harness.
Look close there.
D’ye see them marks across the chest?”