We’ve only just started, and we can’t quit at the beginning.
It served me right, this time.
And—look at him!”
White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-musher.
“Well, I’ll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!” was the dog-musher’s expression of astonishment.
“Look at the intelligence of him,” Scott went on hastily. “He knows the meaning of firearms as well as you do.
He’s got intelligence and we’ve got to give that intelligence a chance.
Put up the gun.”
“All right, I’m willin’,” Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the woodpile.
“But will you look at that!” he exclaimed the next moment.
White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling.
“This is worth investigatin’.
Watch.”
Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled.
He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang’s lifted lips descended, covering his teeth.
“Now, just for fun.”
Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder.
White Fang’s snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement approached its culmination.
But the moment before the rifle came to a level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin.
Matt stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by White Fang.
The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his employer.
“I agree with you, Mr. Scott.
That dog’s too intelligent to kill.”
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.