Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull when Cherokee’s jaws should be loosened. This the younger man endeavoured to accomplish by clutching the bulldog’s jaws in his hands and trying to spread them. It was a vain undertaking. As he pulled and tugged and wrenched, he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath, “Beasts!” The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting against the spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the newcomer lifted his head from his work for a moment and glared at them. “You damn beasts!” he finally exploded, and went back to his task. “It’s no use, Mr. Scott, you can’t break ’m apart that way,” Matt said at last. The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs. “Ain’t bleedin’ much,” Matt announced. “Ain’t got all the way in yet.” “But he’s liable to any moment,” Scott answered. “There, did you see that! He shifted his grip in a bit.” The younger man’s excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing. He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again. But that did not loosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in advertisement that he understood the meaning of the blows, but that he knew he was himself in the right and only doing his duty by keeping his grip. “Won’t some of you help?” Scott cried desperately at the crowd. But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him on and showered him with facetious advice. “You’ll have to get a pry,” Matt counselled. The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and tried to thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog’s jaws. He shoved, and shoved hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could be distinctly heard. Both men were on their knees, bending over the dogs. Tim Keenan strode into the ring. He paused beside Scott and touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously: “Don’t break them teeth, stranger.” “Then I’ll break his neck,” Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle. “I said don’t break them teeth,” the faro-dealer repeated more ominously than before. But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work. Scott never desisted from his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked: “Your dog?” The faro-dealer grunted. “Then get in here and break this grip.” “Well, stranger,” the other drawled irritatingly, “I don’t mind telling you that’s something I ain’t worked out for myself. I don’t know how to turn the trick.” “Then get out of the way,” was the reply, “and don’t bother me. I’m busy.” Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice of his presence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White Fang’s mangled neck.