partly on his side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon Scott bent
over, removed the arm and turned the man’s face upward. A gaping throat
explained the manner of his death.
“Jim Hall,” said Judge Scott, and father and son looked significantly at each
other.
Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His eyes
were closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at them as they
bent over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort to
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wag. Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an acknowledging
growl. But it was a weak growl at best, and it quickly ceased. His eyelids
drooped and went shut, and his whole body seemed to relax and flatten out
upon the floor.
“He’s all in, poor devil,” muttered the master.
“We’ll see about that,” asserted the Judge, as he started for the telephone.
“Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand,” announced the surgeon, after
he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang.
Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric
lights. With the exception of the children, the whole family was gathered
about the surgeon to hear his verdict.
“One broken hind-leg,” he went on. “Three broken ribs, one at least of
which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his
body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been
jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One
chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn’t a chance in ten
thousand.”
“But he mustn’t lose any chance that might be of help to him,” Judge Scott
exclaimed. “Never mind expense. Put him under the X-ray—
anything. Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor
Nichols. No reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the
advantage of every chance.”
The surgeon smiled indulgently. “Of course I understand. He deserves all
that can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a human
being, a sick child. And don’t forget what I told you about temperature. I’ll
be back at ten o’clock again.”
White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott’s suggestion of a trained
nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves
undertook the task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten
thousand denied him by the surgeon.
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The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he had
tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived sheltered
lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared
with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any
strength in their grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where
the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his
father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor in the generations
before them. A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White
Fang’s inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of
him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all
creatures.
Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and
bandages, White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and
dreamed much, and through his mind passed an unending pageant of
Northland visions. All the ghosts of the past arose and were with him. Once
again he lived in the lair with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of Grey
Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip and all the
howling bedlam of the puppy-pack.
He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the months
of famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips of Mit-
sah and Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying “Ra! Raa!” when
they came to a narrow passage and the team closed together like a fan to
go through. He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith and the fights he
had fought. At such times he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they
that looked on said that his dreams were bad.
But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered—the
clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal
screaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrel
to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge. Then, when
he sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an electric car,
menacing and terrible, towering over him like a mountain, screaming and
clanging and spitting fire at him. It was the same when he challenged the
hawk down out of the sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as it
dropped upon him changing itself into the ubiquitous electric car. Or again,
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he would be in the pen of Beauty Smith. Outside the pen, men would be
gathering, and he knew that a fight was on. He watched the door for his
antagonist to enter. The door would open, and thrust in upon him would
come the awful electric car. A thousand times this occurred, and each time
the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as ever.
Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were
taken off. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The
master rubbed his ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master’s wife
called him the “Blessed Wolf,” which name was taken up with acclaim and
all the women called him the Blessed Wolf.
He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from
weakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning, and
all the strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame because of his
weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in the service he
owed them. Because of this he made heroic efforts to arise and at last he
stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying back and forth.
“The Blessed Wolf!” chorused the women.
Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.
“Out of your own mouths be it,” he said. “Just as I contended right
along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He’s a wolf.”
“A Blessed Wolf,” amended the Judge’s wife.
“Yes, Blessed Wolf,” agreed the Judge. “And henceforth that shall be my
name for him.”
“He’ll have to learn to walk again,” said the surgeon; “so he might as well
start in right now. It won’t hurt him. Take him outside.”
And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and tending
on him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay down and
rested for a while.
Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into White
Fang’s muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through
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them. The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-
dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.
White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at
him, and he was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe helped
one sprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master
warned him that all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of one of the
women, watched him jealously and with a snarl warned him that all was not
well.
The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched it
curiously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue of
the puppy on his jowl. White Fang’s tongue went out, he knew not why,
and he licked the puppy’s face.
Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the
performance. He was surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then
his weakness asserted itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on
one side, as he watched the puppy. The other puppies came sprawling
toward him, to Collie’s great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to
clamber and tumble over him. At first, amid the applause of the gods, he
betrayed a trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed
away as the puppies’ antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut
patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.
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