Then there was a
payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand.
White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men
around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now
vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of
satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put
another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon
him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the
Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his
severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself
half killed in doing it.
In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice
was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White
Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known
far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck
was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or
lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred.
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