CHAPTER II - 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 ears 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 saving 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" title="ad.不高兴地">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-COCHERE, 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.
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