[Previous page]...ms had crystallized into set rules,
cautions, dislikes, and desires.
Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance
that pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and
remoulding it into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this
thumb. He had gone to the roots of White Fang's nature, and with
kindness touched to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh
perished. One such potency was love. It took the place of like,
which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his
intercourse with the gods.
But this love did not come in a day. It began with like and out of
it slowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was
allowed to remain loose, because he liked this new god. This was
certainly better than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty
Smith, and it was necessary that he should have some god. The lordship
of man was a need of his nature. The seal of his dependence on man had
been set upon him in that early day when he turned his back on the
Wild and crawled to Gray Beaver's feet to receive the expected
beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and
ineradicably, on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine
was over and there was fish once more in the village of Gray Beaver.
And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon
Scott to Beauty Smith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of
fealty, he proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his
master's property. He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs
slept, and the first night-visitor to the cabin fought him off with
a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But White Fang soon
learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraise
the true value of step and carriage. The man who traveled,
loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door, he let alone- though
he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and he received the
indorsement of the master. But the man who went softly, by
circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy- that was
the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and
who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.
Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang- or
rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It
was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done
White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid. So
he went out of his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf.
Each day he made it a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it
at length.
At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this
petting. But there was one thing that he never outgrew- his
growling. Growl he would, from the moment the petting began until it
ended. But it was a growl with a new note in it. A stranger could
not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White
Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and
blood-curdling. But White Fang's throat had become harsh-fibred from
the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his
first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could
not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness
he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and sympathy were fine
enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the fierceness- the
note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and that none
but he could hear.
As the days went by, the evolution of like into love was
accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in
his consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to
him as a void in his being- a hungry, aching, yearning void that
clamored to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received
easement only by the touch of the new god's presence. At such times
love was a joy to him, a wild, keen- thrilling satisfaction. But
when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void
in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the
hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.
White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the
maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had
formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a
burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His
old code of conduct was changing. In the past he had liked comfort and
surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had
adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it was different. Because of
this new feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain
for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning, instead of
roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait
for hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's
face. At night, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the
warm sleeping place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive
the friendly snap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat
itself, he would forego to be with his god, to receive a caress from
him or to accompany him down into the town.
Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet dropped
down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And
responsive, out of his deep's had come the new thing- love. That which
was given unto him did he return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a
warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a
flower expands under the sun.
But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly
moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too
self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had
he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness. He had never
barked in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome
when his god approached. He was never in the way, never extravagant
nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to meet his
god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always
there. His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb,
inarticulate, a silent adoration. Only by the steady regard of his
eyes did he express his love, and by the unceasing following with
his eyes of his god's movement. Also, at times, when his god looked at
him and spoke to him, he betrayed an awkward self-consciousness,
caused by the struggle of his love to express itself and his
physical inability to express it.
He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life.
It was borne in upon him that he must let his master's dogs alone. Yet
his dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them
into an acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership. This
accomplished, he had little trouble with them. They gave trail to
him when he came and went or walked among them, and when he asserted
his will they obeyed.
In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt- as a possession of his
master. His master rarely fed him; Matt did that, it was his business;
yet White Fang divined that it was his master who thus fed him
vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harness and
make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not
until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him,
that he understood. He took it as his master's will that Matt should
drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his master's
other dogs.
Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds
with runners under them. And different was the method of driving the
dogs. There was no fan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in
single file, one behind another, hauling on double traces. And here,
in the Klondike, the leader was indeed the leader. The wisest as
well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyed him and
feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain the post was
inevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after
much inconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for
himself, and Matt backed his judgment with strong language after the
experiment had been tried. But, though he worked in the sled in the
day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of his master's property
in the night. Thus he was on duty all the time, ever vigilant and
faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.
'Makin' free to spit out what's in me,' Matt said, one day, 'I beg
to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you
did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin'
his face in with your fist.'
A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott's gray eyes, and he
muttered savagely, 'The beast!'
In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without
warning, the love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but
White Fang was unversed in such things and did not understand the
packing of a grip. He remembered afterward that this packing had
preceded the master's disappearance; but at the time he suspected
nothing. That night he waited for the master to return. At midnight
the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rear of the
cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the
first sound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his
anxiety drove him out to the cold front stoop, where he crouched and
waited.
But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt
stepped outside. White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no
common speech by which he might learn what he wanted to know. The days
came and went, but never the master. White Fang, who had never known
sickness, became so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring
him inside the cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a
postscript to White Fang.
Weedon Scott, reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon
the following.
'That dam wolf won't work. Won't eat. Ain't got no spunk left. All
the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and I
don't know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die.'
It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart,
and allowed every dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay
on the floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in
life. Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the
same; he never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then
drop his head back to its customary position on his forepaws.
And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and
mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had
got upon his feet, his ears cocked toward the door, and he was
listening intently. A moment later, Matt heard a footstep. The door
opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. The two men shook hands. Then
Scott looked around the room.
'Where's the wolf?' he asked.
Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to
the stove. He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs.
He stood, watching and waiting.
'Holy Smoke!' Matt exclaimed. 'Look at 'm wag his tail!'
Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same
time calling him. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound,
yet 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 tha...
[Next page]