White Fang
kill them on sight. If he didn’t bankrupt me with damaged suits, the
authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him.”
“He’s a downright murderer, I know,” was the dog-musher’s comment.
Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously.
“It would never do,” he said decisively.
“It would never do!” Matt concurred. “Why you’d have to hire a man
’specially to take care of ’m.”
The other’s suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence
that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and
then the long, questing sniff.
“There’s no denyin’ he thinks a hell of a lot of you,” Matt said.
The other glared at him in sudden wrath. “Damn it all, man! I know my
own mind and what’s best!”
“I’m agreein’ with you, only . . . ”
“Only what?” Scott snapped out.
“Only . . . ” the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and
betrayed a rising anger of his own. “Well, you needn’t get so all-fired
het up about it. Judgin’ by your actions one’d think you didn’t know
your own mind.”
Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more
gently: “You are right, Matt. I don’t know my own mind, and that’s
what’s the trouble.”
“Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along,”
he broke out after another pause.
“I’m agreein’ with you,” was Matt’s answer, and again his employer was
not quite satisfied with him.
“But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you’re goin’ is
what gets me,” the dog-musher continued innocently.
“It’s beyond me, Matt,” Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the
head.
Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the
fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it.
Also, there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid
atmosphere of the cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and
unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White Fang had already scented
it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for another flight. And
since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to
be left behind.
That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy
days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it
vanished and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey
Beaver’s tepee, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told
to them his woe.
Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.
“He’s gone off his food again,” Matt remarked from his bunk.
There was a grunt from Weedon Scott’s bunk, and a stir of blankets.
“From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn’t wonder
this time but what he died.”
The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.
“Oh, shut up!” Scott cried out through the darkness. “You nag worse
than a woman.”
“I’m agreein’ with you,” the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was
not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered.
The next day White Fang’s anxiety and restlessness were even more
pronounced. He dogged his master’s heels whenever he left the cabin,
and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open
door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had
been joined by two large canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the
master’s blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang
whined as he watched the operation.
Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they
shouldered the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who
carried the bedding and the grip. But White Fang did not follow them.
The master was still in the cabin. After a time, Matt returned. The
master came to the door and called White Fang inside.
“You poor devil,” he said gently, rubbing White Fang’s ears and tapping
his spine. “I’m hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot
follow. Now give me a growl—the last, good, good-bye growl.”
But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful,
searching look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between
the master’s arm and body.
“There she blows!” Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarse
bellowing of a river steamboat. “You’ve got to cut it short. Be sure
and lock the front door. I’ll go out the back. Get a move on!”
The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for
Matt to come around to the front. From inside the door came a low
whining and sobbing. Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs.
“You must take good care of him, Matt,” Scott said, as they started
down the hill. “Write and let me know how he gets along.”
“Sure,” the dog-musher answered. “But listen to that, will you!”
Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their
masters lie dead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward
in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and
bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief.
The _Aurora_ was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and
her decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold
seekers, all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been
originally to get to the Inside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking
hands with Matt, who was preparing to go ashore. But Matt’s hand went
limp in the other’s grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on
something behind him. Scott turned to see. Sitting on the deck several
feet away and watching wistfully was White Fang.
The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only
look in wonder.
“Did you lock the front door?” Matt demanded. The other nodded, and
asked, “How about the back?”
“You just bet I did,” was the fervent reply.
White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he
was, making no attempt to approach.
“I’ll have to take ’m ashore with me.”
Matt made a couple 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 ’m 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 plump forgot the window. He’s all cut an’ gouged underneath. Must
‘a’ 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 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.
“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.
CHAPTER II
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 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.
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!”
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.