1906 white fang jack london - pinkmonke - Pink Monkey

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quickly. He was awkward from self-consciousness, but as he drew
near, his eyes took on a strange expression. Something, an
incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light
and shone forth.
‘He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone,’ Matt
commented.
Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels,
face to face with White Fang and petting him- rubbing at the roots
of the ears, making long, caressing strokes down the neck to the
shoulders, tapping the spine gently with the balls of his fingers.
And White Fang was growling responsively, the crooning note of
the growl more pronounced than ever.
But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever
surging and struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a
new mode of expression. He suddenly thrust his head forward and
nudged his way in between the master’s arm and body. And here,
confined, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling,
he continued to nudge and snuggle.
The two men looked at each other. Scott’s eyes were shining.
‘Gosh!’ said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.
A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, ‘I always
insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at ‘m!’ With the return of the
love-master, White Fang’s recovery was rapid. Two nights and a
day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled-dogs had
forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which
was his weakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out
of the cabin, they sprang about him.
‘Talk about your rough-houses,’ Matt murmured gleefully,
standing in the doorway and looking on. ‘Give ‘m hell, you wolf!
Give ‘m hell!- and then some!’ White Fang did not need the
encouragement. The return of the love-master was enough. Life
was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He
fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he
felt and that otherwise was without speech. There could be but one
ending. The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not
until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by
meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang.
Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It
was the final word. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of
which he had always been particularly jealous, was his head. He
had always disliked to have it touched. It was the Wild in him, the
fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky
impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct that
that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his