[Previous page]... of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid
away from him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged
between the legs of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he
slid about the deck, eluding the other's efforts to capture him.
But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt
obedience.
'Won't come to the hand that's fed 'm all these months,' the
dog-musher muttered resentfully. 'And you- you ain't never fed after
them first days of gettin' acquainted. I'm blamed if I can see how
he works it out that you're the boss.'
Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and
pointed out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the
eyes.
Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang's belly.
'We plumb forgot the windows. He's all cut an' gouged underneath.
Must butted clean through it, b'gosh!'
But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The
Aurora's whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men were
scurrying down the gangplank 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-by, 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 gangplank.
'He'll never stand the climate!' he shouted back. 'Unless you clip
'm in warm weather!'
The gangplank was hauled in, and the Aurora swung out from the bank.
Weedon Scott waved a last good-by. 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.
CHAPTER TWO.
The Southland.
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 marvelous 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- wagons,
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 Gray 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.
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 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!'
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
hayfields 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
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 forelegs 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.
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 come to real running, White Fang could
teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to
the utmost, 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 porte-cochere, he came upon the
carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this
moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware
of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him.
White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the
hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his
forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled
to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a
spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose
wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed
the hound's soft throat.
The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie
that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and
deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing
in, Collie arrived. She had been outmaneuvered and outrun, to say
nothing of her having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel,
and her arrival was like that of a tornado- made up of offended
dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive hatred for this marauder
from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles in the midst of
his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled over.
The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White
Fang, while the father called off the dogs.
'I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from
the Arctic,' the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his
caressing hand. 'In all his life he's only been known once to go off
his feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds.'
The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared
from out the house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance;
but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutchin...
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