The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work inthe Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Notalone was he in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland oflife. Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourishedlike a flower planted in good soil.
And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew thelaw even better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and heobserved the law more punctiliously; but still there was about him asuggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him andthe wolf in him merely slept.
He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as hiskind was concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In hispuppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and inhis fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion fordogs. The natural course of his life had been diverted, and, recoiling fromhis kind, he had clung to the human.
Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. Hearoused in them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted himalways 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 nakedfangs and writhing lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send abellowing on-rushing dog back on its haunches.
But there was one trial in White Fang's life - Collie. She never gavehim a moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. Shedefied all efforts of the master to make her become friends with WhiteFang. Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She hadnever forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held tothe 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 policemanfollowing him around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even so muchas glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry ofindignation and wrath. His favourite way of ignoring her was to lie down,with his head on his fore-paws, and pretend sleep. This alwaysdumfounded and silenced her.
With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. Hehad learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved astaidness, and calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in ahostile environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhereabout him. In time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace everimpending, 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 longsummer," 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 samefashion, especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun,he experienced faint longings for the Northland. Their only effect uponhim, however, was to make him uneasy and restless without his knowingwhat was the matter.
White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snugglingand the throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way ofexpressing his love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He hadalways been susceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affectedhim with madness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it inhim to be angry with the love-master, and when that god elected to laughat him in a good- natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He couldfeel 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 dosomething. At first he was dignified, and the master laughed the harder.
Then he tried to be more dignified, and the master laughed harder thanbefore. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jawsslightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that wasmore love than humour came into his eyes. He had learned to laugh.
Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down androlled over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return hefeigned anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teethtogether in snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he neverforgot himself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At theend of such a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were last andfurious, they would break off suddenly and stand several feet apart,glaring at each other. And then, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on astormy sea, they would begin to laugh. This would always culminate withthe master's arms going around White Fang's neck and shoulders while thelatter 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 andbristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master theseliberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here andloving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He lovedwith single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love.
The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany himwas one of White Fang's chief duties in life. In the Northland he hadevidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds inthe Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he renderedfealty in the new way, by running with the master's horse. The longest daynever played White Fang out. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tirelessand effortless, and at the end of fifty miles he would come in jauntilyahead of the horse.
It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved oneother mode of expression - remarkable in that he did it but twice in all hislife. The first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spiritedthoroughbred the method of opening and closing gates without the rider'sdismounting. Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up tothe gate in the effort to close it and each time the horse became frightenedand backed and plunged away. It grew more nervous and excited everymoment. When it reared, the master put the spurs to it and made it drop itsfore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance with increasing anxiety untilhe could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front of the horseand barked savagely and warningly.
Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouragedhim, he succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master's presence.
A scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under thehorse's feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken leg forthe master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the throat ofthe 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 ofwriting a note, but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Againhe commanded White Fang to go home.
The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned andwhined softly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and hecocked his ears, and listened with painful intentness.
"That's all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk. "Goon 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 notunderstand the remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his willthat he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then hestopped, 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, whenWhite 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 meethim. 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 bythem. Their mother looked apprehensively in their direction.
"I confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said. "Ihave a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day."Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturningthe 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. "Hemerely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as hewill 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 frightas he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric toreaway. By this time he had become the centre of interest.
He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into theirfaces. His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while hestruggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of theincommunicable something that strained for utterance.
"I hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother. "I told Weedonthat 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 hehad barked and made himself understood.
After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the SierraVista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted thathe was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the sameopinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by measurements anddescriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history.
The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over theSanta Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang's secondwinter in the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie'steeth were no longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and agentleness that prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that shehad made life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around himhe responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more thanridiculous.
One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture landinto the woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and WhiteFang knew it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fanghesitated. 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, thanthe 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. Themaster rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ranwith Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long yearsbefore in the silent Northland forest.
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