White Fang - Jack London (read a book .TXT) 📗

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 outmanoeuvred and outrun, 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.

III 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