The
months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in the Southland,
and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he in the
geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Human kindness was
like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good
soil.
And
yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law even better
than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the law more
punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity,
as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.
He
never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind was
concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under the
persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty
Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of his
life had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to the
human.
Besides,
all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in them their
instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always with snarl and growl
and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand, learned that it was not
necessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked fangs and writhing lips were
uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing dog back
on its haunches.
But
there was one trial in White Fang's life -- Collie. She never gave him a
moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She defied all
efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang. Ever in his
ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never forgiven him the
chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the belief that his
intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the act, and treated him
accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a policeman following him around
the stable and the grounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously at a
pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. His
favorite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws,
and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her.
With
the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He had learned
control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, and calmness,
and philosophical tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostile environment.
Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. In time, the
unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, faded away. Life was
soft and easy. It flowed along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe lurked by the
way.
He
missed the snow without being aware of it. "An unduly long summer"
would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was, he merely
missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion, especially
in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experienced faint longings
for the Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was to make him uneasy
and restless without his knowing what was the matter.
White Fang had never
been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and the throwing of a crooning
note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressing his love. Yet it was
given him to discover a third way. He had always been susceptible to the
laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him with madness, made him frantic
with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angry with the love-master, and
when that god elected to laugh at him in a good-natured, bantering way, he was
nonplussed. He could feel the pricking and stinging of the old anger as it
strove to rise up in him, but it strove against love. He could not be angry;
yet he had to do something. At first he was dignified, and the master laughed
the harder. Then he tried to be more dignified, and the master laughed harder
than before. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws
slightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that was
more love than humor came into his eyes. He had learned to laugh.
Likewise
he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and rolled over, and be
the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he feigned anger, bristling
and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth together in snaps that had all
the seeming of deadly intention. But he never forgot himself. Those snaps were
always delivered on the empty air. At the end of such a romp, when blow and
cuff and snap and snarl were fast and furious, they would break off suddenly
and stand several feet apart, glaring at each other. And then, just as
suddenly, like the sun rising on a stormy sea, they would begin to laugh. This
would always culminate with the master's arms going around White Fang's neck
and shoulders while the latter crooned and growled his love-song. But nobody
else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on his
dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane were
anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no reason
that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there, everybody's
property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart and refused to
cheapen himself or his love.
The
master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was one of
White Fang's chief duties in life. In the Northland he had evidenced his fealty
by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nor did
dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered fealty in the new way, by
running with the master's horse. The longest day never played White Fang out.
His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless, and effortless, and at the end
of fifty miles he would come in jauntily ahead of the horse.
It
was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other mode of
expression -- remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his life. The first
time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited thoroughbred the
method of opening and closing gates without the rider's dismounting. Time and
again and many times he ranged the horse up to the gate in the effort to close
it, and each time the horse became frightened and backed and plunged away. It
grew more nervous and excited every moment. When it reared, the master put the
spurs to it and made it drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would
begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance with increasing
anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front of
the horse and barked savagely and warningly.
Though
he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him, he succeeded
only once, and then it was not in the master's presence. A scamper across the
pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the horse's feet, a violent sheer,
a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken leg for the master were the cause of
it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the throat of the offending horse, but was
checked by the master's voice.
"Home! Go
home!" the master commanded, when he had ascertained his injury. White
Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of writing a note, but
searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again he commanded White Fang
to go home.
The latter regarded him
wistfully, started away, then returned and whined softly. The master talked to
him gently but seriously, and he cocked his ears and listened with painful
intentness.
"That's
all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk. "Go on
home and tell them what's happened to me. Home with you, you wolf. Get along
home!"
White
Fang knew the meaning of "home," and though he did not understand the
remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his will that he should go
home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then he stopped, undecided, and
looked back over his shoulder.
"Go
home!" came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed.
The
family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White Fang
arrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust.
"Weedon's
back," Weedon's mother announced.
The
children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him. He avoided
them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a rocking-chair
and the railing. He growled and tried to push by them. Their mother looked
apprehensively in their direction.
"I
confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said. "I have
a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day."
Growling
savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the boy and the
girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them, telling them not to
bother White Fang. "A wolf is a wolf," commented Judge Scott.
"There is no trusting one."
"But
he is not all wolf," interposed Beth, standing for her brother in his
absence.
"You
have only Weedon's opinion for that," rejoined the Judge. "He merely
surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as he will tell
you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for his appearance -- " He did
not finish the sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely.
"Go away! Lie down, sir!" Judge Scott commanded.
White Fang turned to the
love-master's wife. She screamed with fright as he seized her dress in his
teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric tore away. By this time he had
become the centre of interest. He had ceased from his growling and stood, head
up, looking into their faces. His throat worked spasmodically, but made no
sound, while he struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid
himself of the incommunicable something that strained for utterance.
"I
hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother. "I told Weedon that
I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic animal."
"He's
trying to speak, I do believe," Beth announced.
At
this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of barking.
"Something
has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively.
They
were all on their feet, now, and White Fang ran down the steps, looking back
for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he had barked and
made himself understood.
After
this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the
The
days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the
One
day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture and into the
woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White Fang knew
it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang hesitated. But
there was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned, than the customs
that had moulded him, than his love for the master, than the very will to live
of himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and
scampered off, he turned and followed after. The master rode alone that day;
and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother,
Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland
forest. [2,148 words = 128.880/tot. sec. = words per minute]