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.
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, 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-cochère_, 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 out-manoeuvred and out-run, 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 clutching the master
around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this
act. No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were
certainly not threatening. These gods also made overtures to White
Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise
with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in close against
the master’s legs and received reassuring pats on the head.
The hound, under the command, “Dick! Lie down, sir!” had gone up the
steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and
keeping a sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge
by one of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and
caressed her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining
and restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and
confident that the gods were making a mistake.
All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang
followed closely at the master’s heels. Dick, on the porch, growled,
and White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back.
“Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out,”
suggested Scott’s father. “After that they’ll be friends.”
“Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner
at the funeral,” laughed the master.
The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at
Dick, and finally at his son.
“You mean . . .?”
Weedon nodded his head. “I mean just that. You’d have a dead Dick
inside one minute—two minutes at the farthest.”
He turned to White Fang. “Come on, you wolf. It’s you that’ll have to
come inside.”
White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with
tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank
attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation
of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the
house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the
inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not.
Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master’s feet, observing
all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life
with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.
CHAPTER III
THE GOD’S DOMAIN
Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much,
and knew the meaning and necessity of adjustment. Here, in Sierra
Vista, which was the name of Judge Scott’s place, White Fang quickly
began to make himself at home. He had no further serious trouble with
the dogs. They knew more about the ways of the Southland gods than did
he, and in their eyes he had qualified when he accompanied the gods
inside the house. Wolf that he was, and unprecedented as it was, the
gods had sanctioned his presence, and they, the dogs of the gods, could
only recognise this sanction.
Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first,
after which he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the
premises. Had Dick had his way, they would have been good friends;
but White Fang was averse to friendship. All he asked of other dogs was
to be let alone. His whole life he had kept aloof from his kind, and he
still desired to keep aloof. Dick’s overtures bothered him, so he
snarled Dick away. In the north he had learned the lesson that he must
let the master’s dogs alone, and he did not forget that lesson now. But
he insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion, and so thoroughly
ignored Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave him up and
scarcely took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near the
stable.
Not so with Collie. While she accepted him because it was the mandate
of the gods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace.
Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had
perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were
the ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten. All this was a spur to her,
pricking her to retaliation. She could not fly in the face of the gods
who permitted him, but that did not prevent her from making life
miserable for him in petty ways. A feud, ages old, was between them,
and she, for one, would see to it that he was reminded.
So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick upon White Fang and
maltreat him. His instinct would not permit him to attack her, while
her persistence would not permit him to ignore her. When she rushed at
him he turned his fur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth and walked
away stiff-legged and stately. When she forced him too hard, he was
compelled to go about in a circle, his shoulder presented to her, his
head turned from her, and on his face and in his eyes a patient and
bored expression. Sometimes, however, a nip on his hind-quarters
hastened his retreat and made it anything but stately. But as a rule he
managed to maintain a dignity that was almost solemnity. He ignored her
existence whenever it was possible, and made it a point to keep out of
her way. When he saw or heard her coming, he got up and walked off.
There was much in other matters for White Fang to learn. Life in the
Northland was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated
affairs of Sierra Vista. First of all, he had to learn the family of
the master. In a way he was prepared to do this. As Mit-sah and
Kloo-kooch had belonged to Grey Beaver, sharing his food, his fire, and
his blankets, so now, at Sierra Vista, belonged to the love-master all
the denizens of the house.
But in this matter there was a difference, and many differences. Sierra
Vista was a far vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver. There were