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 -- wagons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars 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 Gray 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 saying 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.
"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.
