Part V

Chapter I. THE LONG TRAIL

It was in the air. White Fang sensed it, even before there was evidence of it. A change was coming. He waited for the oncoming event from the gods themselves.

One night, as they talked over supper, Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with almost pleading eyes.

“What 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.

“He’ll kill white men’s dogs as soon as he sees them,” Scott went on. “If he doesn’t bankrupt me, the authorities will take him away from me and kill him.”

“He’s a 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 agreed. “Why you’d have to hire a man especially to take care of him.”

In the silence that followed, White Fang’s low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long, questing sniff. He was outside, listening.

“Yes, he thinks 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 agreeing with you, only…”

“Only what?”

“Only… Well, judging by your actions one’d think you didn’t know your own mind.”

Weedon Scott paused, 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 crazy for me to take that dog with me,” he broke out after another pause.

“I’m agreeing with you,” was Matt’s answer, and again his employer was not quite satisfied with him.

Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal bag on the floor and the love-master packing things into 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 would be left behind.

That night he gave the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days, when he came back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told them his tragedy.

Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.

“He’s gone off his food again,” Matt remarked from his bed.

There was a grunt from Weedon Scott’s bed, and a stir of blankets.

“I wouldn’t wonder if this time he dies without you.”

The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.

“Oh, shut up!” Scott cried out through the darkness. “You are worse than a woman.”

The next day White Fang’s anxiety was even more pronounced. He followed his master everywhere. Through the open door he could see the luggage on the floor. Later on two Indians arrived. They took 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 going 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, he snuggled in, putting his head out of sight between the master’s arm and body.

From the Yukon arose the signal of a river steamboat. “Be quick and lock the front door. I’ll go out the back”, Matt cried.

The two doors closed at the same moment. 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, in great heart-manner of a true 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 as he looked past his master and 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. Scott could only look in wonder.

“Did you lock the front door?” Matt demanded. The other nodded, and asked, “How about the back?”

“I did”.

White Fang flattened his ears, but remained where he was.

“I’ll have to take him 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, escaping Matt.

But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with obedience.

“Won’t come to the hand that has fed him all these months,” the dog-musher muttered. “And you—you have never fed him after the first days of getting acquainted. I can’t 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 cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes.

Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang’s belly.

“We forgot the window. He’s all cut underneath. Must have jumped out clean through the glass!”

But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking. The Aurora’s whistle gave the final announcement of departure. Matt took the bandana off 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!” Matt 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.

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 head and rubbed the ears.

Chapter II. THE SOUTHLAND

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was shocked. Never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now. There were towering buildings, the streets were crowded with perils—waggons, carts, automobiles; great horses and monstrous cable and electric cars, crying like lynxes he had known in the northern woods.

Behind it all was Man. It was colossal. Fear sat upon White Fang. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his pride of strength, he was made to feel small. And there were so many gods! As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-master, whom he followed everywhere.

But then White Fang had a terrible experience of travelling in a baggage car, chained in a corner, among bags and noise, thinking that his master had left him. By it was just a nightmare that was soon over.

Now before him was smiling country, lazy and sunny. He accepted it as he accepted all the doings 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 demon.

“It’s all right, mother,” Scott said as he kept tight hold of White Fang. “He thought you were going to injure me. 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 from the fright.

“He’ll have to learn, and he shall, now,” Scott said.

He spoke softly to White Fang until he had calmed him, then his voice became firm.

“Down, sir! Down!”

White Fang obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly.

“Now, mother.”

Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang.

“Down!” he warned. “Down!”

White Fang, bristling silently, lay 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 bags were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang pursued, sometimes bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to see that no harm is done to his master.

In fifteen minutes, the carriage went in through a stone gateway and to a big, many-windowed house.

As soon as the carriage entered the park, White Fang was met by a sheep-dog. White Fang did not snarl or rush. He stopped awkwardly, because it was a female, and the law of his kind forbade him to fight females. For him to attack her would mean nothing less than a violation of his instinct.

But with the sheep-dog it was not so. Being a female, she had no such instinct. Moreover, being a sheep-dog, she instinctively hated wolves. And she sprang upon him. He snarled as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but did not do anything else, just tried to go around her. But 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. White Fang will have to learn many things, and it’s just as well that he begins now. He’ll manage.”

The carriage drove on, taking the master away. The situation was desperate.

White Fang made another circle. Collie followed. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her. It was his old fighting trick. He struck her. She was overthrown and ran away quickly, falling and rising again, crying with indignation.

White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, that was all he had wanted. She ran after him, never ceasing her outcry. He could teach her things. Without much effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground, he overran her and reached the carriage just in time to see the master going out of it. At this moment, still running at top speed, White Fang was attacked by a deer-hound. It struck him on the side; and because of his speed and the unexpectedness of the attack, White Fang fell on the ground and rolled over. Now he was really angry, and his fangs barely missed the hound’s 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 make the fatal stroke, she came like a tornado—a tornado made up of offended dignity, sane rage and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang in the midst of his spring, and again fell and rolled over.

The next moment the master arrived, and held White Fang, while his father called off the dogs.

“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 to fell once, and here he’s been rolled twice in thirty seconds.”

Other strange gods had appeared from out the house. Some of them stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women, clutched the master around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this. No harm seemed to come of it.

The deer-hound, under the command, “Dick! Lie down, sir!” had gone up the steps and lain down, still growling and watching the intruder. One of the woman-gods held her arms around Collie’s neck and petted and caressed her; but Collie was very much worried by the presence of this wolf. She was sure that the gods were making a mistake.

White Fang could not be left outside—it would have been the death of Dick. So the master let him enter the house. At first he was very cautious, but then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master’s feet, ready to spring to his feet and fight for life with the terrors that must have been in that house.