Aurora’s
whistle hooted a final announcement of
departure. Men were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt
loosened the bandana from his own neck and started to put it around White
Fang’s. Scott grasped the dog-musher’s hand.
“Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf—you needn’t write. You see,
I’ve . . . !”
“What!” the dog-musher exploded. “You don’t mean to say . . .?”
“The very thing I mean. Here’s your bandana. I’ll write to you about him.”
Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.
171
“He’ll never stand the climate!” he shouted back. “Unless you clip ’m in
warm weather!”
The gang-plank was hauled in, and the
Aurora
swung out from the
bank. Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over
White Fang, standing by his side.
“Now growl, damn you, growl,” he said, as he patted the responsive head
and rubbed the flattening ears.
172
C
HAPTER
2.
T
HE
S
OUTHLAND
White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was
appalled. Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of
consciousness, he had associated power with godhead. And never had the
white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy
pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known were replaced by
towering buildings. The streets were crowded with perils—waggons, carts,
automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous
cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching
their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the
northern woods.
All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was
man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery
over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat
upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and
puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey
Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made
to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy
by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets smote upon his
ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and endless rush and
movement of things. As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-
master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter what happened never
losing sight of him.
But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city—an
experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him
for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master,
chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat
and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes
about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into the piles,
or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who
awaited them.
173
And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the
master. Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled
out the master’s canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to
mount guard over them.
“’Bout time you come,” growled the god of the car, an hour later, when
Weedon Scott appeared at the door. “That dog of yourn won’t let me lay a
finger on your stuff.”
White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city
was gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and
when he had entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the
city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before
him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But
he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he
accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It
was their way.
There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the
master. The woman’s arms went out and clutched the master around the
neck—a hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from
the embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling,
raging demon.
“It’s all right, mother,” Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang
and placated him. “He thought you were going to injure me, and he
wouldn’t stand for it. It’s all right. It’s all right. He’ll learn soon enough.”
“And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is
not around,” she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright.
She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently.
“He’ll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement,” Scott said.
He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice
became firm.
“Down, sir! Down with you!”
174
This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang
obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly.
“Now, mother.”
Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang.
“Down!” he warned. “Down!”
White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and
watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the
embrace from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags
were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master
followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now
bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to
see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth.
At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone
gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut
trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and
there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the
young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold;
while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of
the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-
porched, many-windowed house.
Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the
carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright-
eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him
and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair
bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never
completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing
himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so
desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in the act of
attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a barrier
between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a violation
of his instinct.
175
But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no
such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of
the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to
her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from
the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of
hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid
the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her
teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed
away, stiff-legged with self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He
dodged this way and that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She
remained always between him and the way he wanted to go.
“Here, Collie!” called the strange man in the carriage.
Weedon Scott laughed.
“Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn
many things, and it’s just as well that he begins now. He’ll adjust himself all
right.”
The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang’s way. He tried to
outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she ran on
the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her two
rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other lawn,
and again she headed him off.
The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it
disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed
another circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned
upon her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her
squarely. Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that
she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop,
clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation.
White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had
wanted. She took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the
straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could
teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost,
176
advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all the time
White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort, gliding like
a ghost over the ground.
As he rounded the house to the
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