White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility.
Still the punishment delayed.
The god merely held near to his nose a piece of meat.
And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong.
Still White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it.
The gods were all-wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece of meat.
In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously related.
In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang’s feet.
He smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he kept his eyes on the god.
Nothing happened.
He took the meat into his mouth and swallowed it.
Still nothing happened.
The god was actually offering him another piece of meat.
Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was tossed to him.
This was repeated a number of times.
But there came a time when the god refused to toss it.
He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it.
The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry.
Bit by bit, infinitely cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat the meat from the hand.
He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with.
He ate the meat, and nothing happened.
Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and nothing happened.
Still the punishment delayed.
He licked his chops and waited.
The god went on talking.
In his voice was kindness—something of which White Fang had no experience whatever.
And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before.
He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled.
Then again came the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience.
The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends.
Ah, he had thought so!
There it came now, the god’s hand, cunning to hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head.
But the god went on talking.
His voice was soft and soothing.
In spite of the menacing hand, the voice inspired confidence.
And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand inspired distrust.
White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses.
It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-forces that struggled within him for mastery.
He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neither snapped nor sprang away.
The hand descended.
Nearer and nearer it came.
It touched the ends of his upstanding hair.
He shrank down under it.
It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him.
Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together.
It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct.
He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.
But it was the will of the god, and he strove to submit.
The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement.
This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it.