White Fang
many persons to be considered. There was Judge Scott, and there was his
wife. There were the master’s two sisters, Beth and Mary. There was his
wife, Alice, and then there were his children, Weedon and Maud,
toddlers of four and six. There was no way for anybody to tell him
about all these people, and of blood-ties and relationship he knew
nothing whatever and never would be capable of knowing. Yet he quickly
worked it out that all of them belonged to the master. Then, by
observation, whenever opportunity offered, by study of action, speech,
and the very intonations of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy
and the degree of favour they enjoyed with the master. And by this
ascertained standard, White Fang treated them accordingly. What was of
value to the master he valued; what was dear to the master was to be
cherished by White Fang and guarded carefully.
Thus it was with the two children. All his life he had disliked
children. He hated and feared their hands. The lessons were not tender
that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the
Indian villages. When Weedon and Maud had first approached him, he
growled warningly and looked malignant. A cuff from the master and a
sharp word had then compelled him to permit their caresses, though he
growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in the growl there was
no crooning note. Later, he observed that the boy and girl were of
great value in the master’s eyes. Then it was that no cuff nor sharp
word was necessary before they could pat him.
Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate. He yielded to the
master’s children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their
fooling as one would endure a painful operation. When he could no
longer endure, he would get up and stalk determinedly away from them.
But after a time, he grew even to like the children. Still he was not
demonstrative. He would not go up to them. On the other hand, instead
of walking away at sight of them, he waited for them to come to him.
And still later, it was noticed that a pleased light came into his eyes
when he saw them approaching, and that he looked after them with an
appearance of curious regret when they left him for other amusements.
All this was a matter of development, and took time. Next in his
regard, after the children, was Judge Scott. There were two reasons,
possibly, for this. First, he was evidently a valuable possession of
the master’s, and next, he was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie
at his feet on the wide porch when he read the newspaper, from time to
time favouring White Fang with a look or a word—untroublesome tokens
that he recognised White Fang’s presence and existence. But this was
only when the master was not around. When the master appeared, all
other beings ceased to exist so far as White Fang was concerned.
White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make
much of him; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master. No
caress of theirs could put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as
they would, they could never persuade him into snuggling against them.
This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he
reserved for the master alone. In fact, he never regarded the members
of the family in any other light than possessions of the love-master.
Also White Fang had early come to differentiate between the family and
the servants of the household. The latter were afraid of him, while he
merely refrained from attacking them. This because he considered that
they were likewise possessions of the master. Between White Fang and
them existed a neutrality and no more. They cooked for the master and
washed the dishes and did other things just as Matt had done up in the
Klondike. They were, in short, appurtenances of the household.
Outside the household there was even more for White Fang to learn. The
master’s domain was wide and complex, yet it had its metes and bounds.
The land itself ceased at the county road. Outside was the common
domain of all gods—the roads and streets. Then inside other fences were
the particular domains of other gods. A myriad laws governed all these
things and determined conduct; yet he did not know the speech of the
gods, nor was there any way for him to learn save by experience. He
obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law.
When this had been done a few times, he learned the law and after that
observed it.
But most potent in his education was the cuff of the master’s hand, the
censure of the master’s voice. Because of White Fang’s very great love,
a cuff from the master hurt him far more than any beating Grey Beaver
or Beauty Smith had ever given him. They had hurt only the flesh of
him; beneath the flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and
invincible. But with the master the cuff was always too light to hurt
the flesh. Yet it went deeper. It was an expression of the master’s
disapproval, and White Fang’s spirit wilted under it.
In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered. The master’s voice
was sufficient. By it White Fang knew whether he did right or not. By
it he trimmed his conduct and adjusted his actions. It was the compass
by which he steered and learned to chart the manners of a new land and
life.
In the Northland, the only domesticated animal was the dog. All other
animals lived in the Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful
spoil for any dog. All his days White Fang had foraged among the live
things for food. It did not enter his head that in the Southland it was
otherwise. But this he was to learn early in his residence in Santa
Clara Valley. Sauntering around the corner of the house in the early
morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped from the chicken-yard.
White Fang’s natural impulse was to eat it. A couple of bounds, a flash
of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in the adventurous
fowl. It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang licked his
chops and decided that such fare was good.
Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the
stables. One of the grooms ran to the rescue. He did not know White
Fang’s breed, so for weapon he took a light buggy-whip. At the first
cut of the whip, White Fang left the chicken for the man. A club might
have stopped White Fang, but not a whip. Silently, without flinching,
he took a second cut in his forward rush, and as he leaped for the
throat the groom cried out, “My God!” and staggered backward. He
dropped the whip and shielded his throat with his arms. In consequence,
his forearm was ripped open to the bone.
The man was badly frightened. It was not so much White Fang’s ferocity
as it was his silence that unnerved the groom. Still protecting his
throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to
the barn. And it would have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared
on the scene. As she had saved Dick’s life, she now saved the groom’s.
She rushed upon White Fang in frenzied wrath. She had been right. She
had known better than the blundering gods. All her suspicions were
justified. Here was the ancient marauder up to his old tricks again.
The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away before
Collie’s wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circled
round and round. But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a
decent interval of chastisement. On the contrary, she grew more excited
and angry every moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to
the winds and frankly fled away from her across the fields.
“He’ll learn to leave chickens alone,” the master said. “But I can’t
give him the lesson until I catch him in the act.”
Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the
master had anticipated. White Fang had observed closely the
chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens. In the night-time, after
they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled
lumber. From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over
the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside. A moment later he was
inside the house, and the slaughter began.
In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white
Leghorn hens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes. He
whistled to himself, softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end,
with admiration. His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but
about the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt. He carried
himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed
praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him no consciousness of
sin. The master’s lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task.
Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there
was nothing but godlike wrath. Also, he held White Fang’s nose down to
the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed him soundly.
White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again. It was against the law,
and he had learned it. Then the master took him into the chicken-yards.
White Fang’s natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering
about him and under his very nose, was to spring upon it. He obeyed the
impulse, but was checked by the master’s voice. They continued in the
yards for half an hour. Time and again the impulse surged over White
Fang, and each time, as he yielded to it, he was checked by the
master’s voice. Thus it was he learned the law, and ere he left the
domain of the chickens, he had learned to ignore their existence.
“You can never cure a chicken-killer.” Judge Scott shook his head sadly
at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given White
Fang. “Once they’ve got the habit and the taste of blood . . .” Again
he shook his head sadly.
But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father. “I’ll tell you what
I’ll do,” he challenged finally. “I’ll lock White Fang in with the
chickens all afternoon.”
“But think of the chickens,” objected the judge.
“And furthermore,” the son went on, “for every chicken he kills, I’ll
pay you one dollar gold coin of the realm.”
“But you should penalise father, too,” interposed Beth.
Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the
table. Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement.
“All right.” Weedon Scott pondered for a moment. “And if, at the end of
the afternoon White Fang hasn’t harmed a chicken, for every ten minutes
of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him,
gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench
and solemnly passing judgment, ‘White Fang, you are smarter than I
thought.’”
From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance. But
it was a fizzle. Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master,
White Fang lay down and went to sleep. Once he got up and walked over
to the trough for a drink of water. The chickens he calmly ignored. So
far as he was concerned they did not exist. At four o’clock he executed
a running jump, gained the roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the
ground outside, whence he sauntered gravely to the house. He had
learned the law. And on the porch, before the delighted family, Judge
Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly and solemnly, sixteen
times, “White Fang, you are smarter than I thought.”
But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often
brought him into disgrace. He had to learn that he must not touch the
chickens that belonged to other gods. Then there were cats, and
rabbits, and turkeys; all these he must let alone. In fact, when he had
but partly learned the law, his impression was that he must leave all
live things alone. Out in the back-pasture, a quail could flutter up