---
title: Part V
class: part
---

##

### The Long Trail

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even
before there was tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was
borne in upon him that a change was impending. He knew not how
nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves.
In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the
wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came
inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains.

“Listen to that, will you!” the dug-musher exclaimed
at supper one night.

Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious
whine, like a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible.
Then came the long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god
was still inside and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and
solitary flight.

“I do believe that wolf’s on to you,” the dog-musher
said.

Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost
pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words.

“What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?”
he demanded.

“That’s what I say,” Matt answered. “What
the devil can you do with a wolf in California?”

But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to
be judging him in a non-committal sort of way.

“White man’s dogs would have no show against him,”
Scott went on. “He’d 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 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.

### 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.

“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.

### 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. All 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 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,” interpose 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 under his nose unharmed. All tense and
trembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood
still. He was obeying the will of the gods.

And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start
a jackrabbit and run it. The master himself was looking on and
did not interfere. Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the
chase. And thus he learned that there was no taboo on jackrabbits.
In the end he worked out the complete law. Between him and all
domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If not amity, at
least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals—the
squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who
had never yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey
of any dog. It was only the tame that the gods protected, and
between the tame deadly strife was not permitted. The gods held
the power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were jealous
of their power.

Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities
of the Northland. And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies
of civilisation was control, restraint—a poise of self that was
as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time
as rigid as steel. Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found
he must meet them all—thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose,
running behind the carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage
stopped. Life flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually
impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments
and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress
his natural impulses.

There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach. This
meat he must not touch. There were cats at the houses the master
visited that must be let alone. And there were dogs everywhere
that snarled at him and that he must not attack. And then, on
the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whose attention
he attracted. They would stop and look at him, point him out to
one another, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him.
And these perilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure.
Yet this endurance he achieved. Furthermore, he got over being
awkward and self-conscious. In a lofty way he received the attentions
of the multitudes of strange gods. With condescension he accepted
their condescension. On the other hand, there was something about
him that prevented great familiarity. They patted him on the head
and passed on, contented and pleased with their own daring.

But it was not all easy for White Fang. Running behind the
carriage in the outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small
boys who made a practice of flinging stones at him. Yet he knew
that it was not permitted him to pursue and drag them down. Here
he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate
it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation.

Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement.
He had no abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there
is a certain sense of equity that resides in life, and it was this sense
in him that resented the unfairness of his being permitted no defence
against the stone-throwers. He forgot that in the covenant entered
into between him and the gods they were pledged to care for him and
defend him. But one day the master sprang from the carriage, whip
in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After that they
threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied.

One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way
to town, hanging around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs
that made a practice of rushing out upon him when he went by.
Knowing his deadly method of fighting, the master had never ceased impressing
upon White Fang the law that he must not fight. As a result, having
learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard put whenever he passed
the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, his snarl
kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping
and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time.
The men at the saloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang.
One day they openly sicked the dogs on him. The master stopped
the carriage.

“Go to it,” he said to White Fang.

But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master,
and he looked at the dogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly
at the master.

The master nodded his head. “Go to them, old fellow.
Eat them up.”

White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently
among his enemies. All three faced him. There was a great
snarling and growling, a clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies.
The dust of the road arose in a cloud and screened the battle.
But at the end of several minutes two dogs were struggling in the dirt
and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch, went through
a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed, sliding
over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and without
noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the dog.

With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased.
The word went up and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs
did not molest the Fighting Wolf.

### The Call of Kind

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 hounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously
at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath.
His favourite 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 philosophic 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 humour 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 last 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, was 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 his 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 Sierra
Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that
he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held
to the same opinion, and proved it to everybody’s dissatisfaction
by measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various
works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the
Santa Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang’s
second winter in the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery.
Collie’s teeth were no longer sharp. There was a playfulness
about her nips and a gentleness that prevented them from really hurting
him. He forgot that she had made life a burden to him, and when
she disported herself around him he responded solemnly, striving to
be playful and becoming no more than ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture
land 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.

### The Sleeping Wolf

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring
escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious
man. He had been ill-made in the making. He had not been
born right, and he had not been helped any by the moulding he had received
at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this
man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast—a
human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he
can best be characterised as carnivorous.

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment
failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting
to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely
he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect
of harshness was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation,
and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but
it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had
received from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Francisco
slum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed
into something.

It was during Jim Hall’s third term in prison that he encountered
a guard that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated
him unfairly, lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted
him. The difference between them was that the guard carried a
bunch of keys and a revolver. Jim Hall had only his naked hands
and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard one day and used his
teeth on the other’s throat just like any jungle animal.

After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell.
He lived there three years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the
walls, the roof. He never left this cell. He never saw the
sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight and night was a black
silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw no
human face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved
in to him, he growled like a wild animal. He hated all things.
For days and nights he bellowed his rage at the universe. For
weeks and months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating
his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing
of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain.

And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible,
but nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay
the body of a dead guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail
through the prison to the outer walls, and he had killed with his hands
to avoid noise.

He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards—a live arsenal
that fled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society.
A heavy price of gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted
him with shot-guns. His blood might pay off a mortgage or send
a son to college. Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles
and went out after him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way
of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid
fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and special
train, clung to his trail night and day.

Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded
through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading
the account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters
that the dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places
filled by men eager for the man-hunt.

And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested
on the lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were
held up by armed men and compelled to identify themselves. While
the remains of Jim Hall were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by
greedy claimants for blood-money.

In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so
much with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid.
Judge Scott pooh-poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was
in his last days on the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and
received sentence. And in open court-room, before all men, Jim
Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreak vengeance
on the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime
for which he was sentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of
thieves and police, of “rail-roading.” Jim Hall was
being “rail-roaded” to prison for a crime he had not committed.
Because of the two prior convictions against him, Judge Scott imposed
upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he
was party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and
perjured, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And
Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely
ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judge knew all about it and
was hand in glove with the police in the perpetration of the monstrous
injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living death
was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the
society that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until
dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-coated enemies. To him,
Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge
Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and hurled the threats of his
revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went to his living death .
. . and escaped.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice,
the master’s wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after
Sierra Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep
in the big hall. Now White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he
permitted to sleep in the house; so each morning, early, she slipped
down and let him out before the family was awake.

On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and
lay very quietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read
the message it bore of a strange god’s presence. And to
his ears came sounds of the strange god’s movements. White
Fang burst into no furious outcry. It 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.