White Fang
was not his way. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked
White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body.
He followed silently. In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was
infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage of surprise.
The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened,
and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched
and waited. Up that staircase the way led to the love-master and to the
love-master’s dearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The
strange god’s foot lifted. He was beginning the ascent.
Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarl
anticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the
spring that landed him on the strange god’s back. White Fang clung with
his fore-paws to the man’s shoulders, at the same time burying his
fangs into the back of the man’s neck. He clung on for a moment, long
enough to drag the god over backward. Together they crashed to the
floor. White Fang leaped clear, and, as the man struggled to rise, was
in again with the slashing fangs.
Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from downstairs was as that of a
score of battling fiends. There were revolver shots. A man’s voice
screamed once in horror and anguish. There was a great snarling and
growling, and over all arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and
glass.
But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away. The
struggle had not lasted more than three minutes. The frightened
household clustered at the top of the stairway. From below, as from out
an abyss of blackness, came up a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling
through water. Sometimes this gurgle became sibilant, almost a whistle.
But this, too, quickly died down and ceased. Then naught came up out of
the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature struggling sorely
for air.
Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall
were flooded with light. Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand,
cautiously descended. There was no need for this caution. White Fang
had done his work. In the midst of the wreckage of overthrown and
smashed furniture, partly on his side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a
man. Weedon Scott bent over, removed the arm and turned the man’s face
upward. A gaping throat explained the manner of his death.
“Jim Hall,” said Judge Scott, and father and son looked significantly
at each other.
Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His
eyes were closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at
them as they bent over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a
vain effort to wag. Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an
acknowledging growl. But it was a weak growl at best, and it quickly
ceased. His eyelids drooped and went shut, and his whole body seemed to
relax and flatten out upon the floor.
“He’s all in, poor devil,” muttered the master.
“We’ll see about that,” asserted the Judge, as he started for the
telephone.
“Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand,” announced the surgeon,
after he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang.
Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights.
With the exception of the children, the whole family was gathered about
the surgeon to hear his verdict.
“One broken hind-leg,” he went on. “Three broken ribs, one at least of
which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his
body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have
been jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through
him. One chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn’t a chance
in ten thousand.”
“But he mustn’t lose any chance that might be of help to him,” Judge
Scott exclaimed. “Never mind expense. Put him under the X-ray—anything.
Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor Nichols. No
reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the
advantage of every chance.”
The surgeon smiled indulgently. “Of course I understand. He deserves
all that can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a
human being, a sick child. And don’t forget what I told you about
temperature. I’ll be back at ten o’clock again.”
White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott’s suggestion of a trained
nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves
undertook the task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten
thousand denied him by the surgeon.
The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he
had tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived
sheltered lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations.
Compared with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life
without any strength in their grip. White Fang had come straight from
the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to
none. In neither his father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor
in the generations before them. A constitution of iron and the vitality
of the Wild were White Fang’s inheritance, and he clung to life, the
whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the
tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures.
Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and
bandages, White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and
dreamed much, and through his mind passed an unending pageant of
Northland visions. All the ghosts of the past arose and were with him.
Once again he lived in the lair with Kiche, crept trembling to the
knees of Grey Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran for his life before
Lip-lip and all the howling bedlam of the puppy-pack.
He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the
months of famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the
gut-whips of Mit-sah and Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices
crying “Ra! Raa!” when they came to a narrow passage and the team
closed together like a fan to go through. He lived again all his days
with Beauty Smith and the fights he had fought. At such times he
whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they that looked on said that
his dreams were bad.
But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered—the
clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal
screaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a
squirrel to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge.
Then, when he sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an
electric car, menacing and terrible, towering over him like a mountain,
screaming and clanging and spitting fire at him. It was the same when
he challenged the hawk down out of the sky. Down out of the blue it
would rush, as it dropped upon him changing itself into the ubiquitous
electric car. Or again, he would be in the pen of Beauty Smith. Outside
the pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that a fight was on. He
watched the door for his antagonist to enter. The door would open, and
thrust in upon him would come the awful electric car. A thousand times
this occurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and
great as ever.
Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were
taken off. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The
master rubbed his ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master’s
wife called him the “Blessed Wolf,” which name was taken up with
acclaim and all the women called him the Blessed Wolf.
He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from
weakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning,
and all the strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame
because of his weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods
in the service he owed them. Because of this he made heroic efforts to
arise and at last he stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying back
and forth.
“The Blessed Wolf!” chorused the women.
Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.
“Out of your own mouths be it,” he said. “Just as I contended right
along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He’s a wolf.”
“A Blessed Wolf,” amended the Judge’s wife.
“Yes, Blessed Wolf,” agreed the Judge. “And henceforth that shall be my
name for him.”
“He’ll have to learn to walk again,” said the surgeon; “so he might as
well start in right now. It won’t hurt him. Take him outside.”
And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and
tending on him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay
down and rested for a while.
Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into
White Fang’s muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge
through them. The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay
Collie, a half-dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.
White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at
him, and he was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe
helped one sprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but
the master warned him that all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of
one of the women, watched him jealously and with a snarl warned him
that all was not well.
The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched it
curiously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue
of the puppy on his jowl. White Fang’s tongue went out, he knew not
why, and he licked the puppy’s face.
Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance.
He was surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then his
weakness asserted itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on
one side, as he watched the puppy. The other puppies came sprawling
toward him, to Collie’s great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to
clamber and tumble over him. At first, amid the applause of the gods,
he betrayed a trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness.
This passed away as the puppies’ antics and mauling continued, and he
lay with half-shut patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.