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 ge