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self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and
qualifying himself for civilization.
Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement. He had
no abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there is a certain sense of
equity that resides in life, and it was this sense in him that resented the
unfairness of his being permitted no defence against the stone-throwers. He
forgot that in the covenant entered into between him and the gods they were
pledged to care for him and defend him. But one day the master sprang from the
carriage, whip in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After that
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they threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied.
One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way to town, hanging
around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice of
rushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting,
the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must
not fight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard
put whenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each
time, his snarl kept the three dogs at a distance, but they trailed along
behind, yelping and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time.
The men at the saloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang. One day
they openly sicked the dogs on him. The master stopped the carriage.
"Go to it," he said to White Fang.
But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master, and he looked at
the dogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the master.
The master nodded his head. "Go to them, old fellow. Eat them up."
White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently among his
enemies. All three faced him. There was a great snarling and growling, a
clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a
cloud and screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs were
struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch,
went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed,
sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and
without noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the
dog.
With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased. The word went up
and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not molest the
Fighting Wolf.
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IV
The Call of Kind
The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in the
Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he
in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Human
kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower
planted in good soil.
And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law even
better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the law
more punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurking
ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely
slept.
He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind was
concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under the
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persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with
Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of
his life had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to the
human.
Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in
them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always 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 naked fangs and writhing
lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing
dog back on its haunches.
But there was one trial in White Fang's life Collie. She never gave him a
moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She defied all
efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang. Ever in his
ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never forgiven him the
chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the 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 policeman following him around
the stable and the grounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously at a
pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. His
favorite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws,
and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her.
With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He had
learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, and
calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostile
environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. In
time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, 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 long summer" 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 same fashion, especially in the heat
of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experienced faint longings for the
Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was to make him uneasy and
restless without his knowing what was the matter.
White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and the
throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressing
his love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He had always been
susceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him with
madness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angry
with the love-master, and when that god elected to laugh at him in a
good-natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He could feel 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 do something. At first he
was dignified, and the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be more
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