CHAPTER V - 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. Straight-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 monstrousinjustice. 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 stairway">staircase and listened,

and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched

and waited. Up that stairway">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 stairway">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

generati ons 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.
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