Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet;but the difference in their height was too great.Cherokee was too squat, too close to the ground.White Fang tried the trick once too often.The chance came in one of his quick doublings and counter-circlings.He caught Cherokee with head turned away as he whirled more slowly.His shoulder was exposed.White Fang drove in upon it; but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with such force that his momentum carried him on across over the other's body.For the first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his footing.His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed on his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to bring his feet to the earth.As it was, he struck heavily on his side.The next instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee's teeth closed on his throat.
It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee held on.White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to shake off the bulldog's body.It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging weight.It bound his movements, restricted his freedom.It was like the trap, and all his instinct resented it and revolted against it.It was a mad revolt.For several minutes he was to all intents insane.The basic life that was in him took charge of him.The will to exist of his body surged over him.He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of life.All intelligence was gone.It was as though he had no brain.His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the expression of its existence.
Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to shake off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat.The bulldog did little but keep his grip.Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to get his feet to the earth and for a moment to brace himself against White Fang.
But the next moment his footing would be lost and he would be dragging around in the whirl of one of White Fang's mad gyrations.Cherokee identified himself with his instinct.He knew that he was doing the right thing by holding on, and there came to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction.
At such moments he even closed his eyes and allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither, willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might thereby come to it.That did not count.The grip was the thing, and the grip he kept.
White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out.He could do nothing, and he could not understand.Never, in all his fighting, had this thing happened.The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way.With them it was snap and slash and get away, snap and slash and get away.He lay partly on his side, panting for breath.Cherokee, still holding his grip, urged against him, trying to get him over entirely on his side.White Fang resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a chewing movement.Each shift brought the grip closer in to his throat.The bulldog's method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favored to work in for more.Opportunity favored when White Fang remained quiet.When White Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on.
The bulging back of Cherokee's neck was the only portion of his body that White Fang's teeth could reach.He got hold toward the base where the neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method of fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it.He spasmodically ripped and tore with his fangs for a space.Then a change in their position diverted him.The bulldog had managed to roll him over on his back, and still hanging on to his throat, was on top of him.Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long, tearing strokes.Cherokee might well have been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted on his grip and got his body off of White Fang's and at right angles to it.
There was no escaping that grip.It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable.
Slowly it shifted up along the jugular.All that saved White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it.
This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth, the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth.But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth.The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang.The latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the moments went by.
It began to look as though the battle were over.The backers of Cherokee waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds.White Fang's backers were correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one.This man was Beauty Smith.He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at White Fang.
Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully.This produced the desired effect.White Fang went wild with rage.He called up his reserves of strength and gained his feet.As he struggled around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic.
The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live.Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.
At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bulldog promptly shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever.Shouts of applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!" "Cherokee!"To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump of his tail.
