Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a
ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated
blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain
that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the
pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at
him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that
confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.
But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One
day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club
in hand, and took the chain off from White Fang’s neck. When his master
had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying
to get at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five
feet in length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he
far outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had
inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed,
without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety
pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest
condition.
The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused.
Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider.
Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind
him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the
size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some
thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in
with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff’s neck.
The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White
Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading
and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and
leaping out again in time to escape punishment.
The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an
ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by
White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was
too ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang
back with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there
was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith’s hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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