White Fang, Jack London [classic romance novels .txt] 📗

corner of the house in the early morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped from the chicken-yard.  White Fang’s natural impulse was to eat it.  A couple of bounds, a flash of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in the adventurous fowl.  It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang licked his chops and decided that such fare was good.

Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the stables.  One of the grooms ran to the rescue.  He did not know White Fang’s breed, so for weapon he took a light buggy-whip.  At the first cut of the whip, White Fang left the chicken for the man.  A club might have stopped White Fang, but not a whip.  Silently, without flinching, he took a second cut in his forward rush, and as he leaped for the throat the groom cried out, “My God!” and staggered backward.  He dropped the whip and shielded his throat with his arms.  In consequence, his forearm was ripped open to the bone.

The man was badly frightened.  It was not so much White Fang’s ferocity as it was his silence that unnerved the groom.  Still protecting his throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to the barn.  And it would have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared on the scene.  As she had saved Dick’s life, she now saved the groom’s.  She rushed upon White Fang in frenzied wrath.  She had been right.  She had known better than the blundering gods.  All her suspicions were justified.  Here was the ancient marauder up to his old tricks again.

The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away before Collie’s wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circled round and round.  But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a decent interval of chastisement.  On the contrary, she grew more excited and angry every moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to the winds and frankly fled away from her across the fields.

“He’ll learn to leave chickens alone,” the master said.  “But I can’t give him the lesson until I catch him in the act.”

Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the master had anticipated.  White Fang had observed closely the chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens.  In the night-time, after they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled lumber.  From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside.  A moment later he was inside the house, and the slaughter began.

In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white Leghorn hens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes.  He whistled to himself, softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end, with admiration.  His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but about the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt.  He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious.  There was about him no consciousness of sin.  The master’s lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task.  Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike wrath.  Also, he held White Fang’s nose down to the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed him soundly.

White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again.  It was against the law, and he had learned it.  Then the master took him into the chicken-yards.  White Fang’s natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering about him and under his very nose, was to spring upon it.  He obeyed the impulse, but was checked by the master’s voice.  They continued in the yards for half an hour.  Time and again the impulse surged over White Fang, and each time, as he yielded to it, he was checked by the master’s voice.  Thus it was he learned the law, and ere he left the domain of the chickens, he had learned to ignore their existence.

“You can never cure a chicken-killer.”  Judge Scott shook his head sadly at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given White Fang.  “Once they’ve got the habit and the taste of blood . . .”  Again he shook his head sadly.

But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father.  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he challenged finally.  “I’ll lock White Fang in with the chickens all afternoon.”

“But think of the chickens,” objected the judge.

“And furthermore,” the son went on, “for every chicken he kills, I’ll pay you one dollar gold coin of the realm.”

“But you should penalise father, too,” interpose Beth.

Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the table.  Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement.

“All right.” Weedon Scott pondered for a moment.  “And if, at the end of the afternoon White Fang hasn’t harmed a chicken, for every ten minutes of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him, gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench and solemnly passing judgment, ‘White Fang, you are smarter than I thought.’”

From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance.  But it was a fizzle.  Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White Fang lay down and went to sleep.  Once he got up and walked over to the trough for a drink of water.  The chickens he calmly ignored.  So far as he was concerned they did not exist.  At four o’clock he executed a running jump, gained the roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the ground outside, whence he sauntered gravely to the house.  He had learned the law.  And on the porch, before the delighted family, Judge Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly and solemnly, sixteen times, “White Fang, you are smarter than I thought.”

But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often brought him into disgrace.  He had to learn that he must not touch the chickens that belonged to other gods.  Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; all these he must let alone.  In fact, when he had but partly learned the law, his impression was that he must leave all live things alone.  Out in the back-pasture, a quail could flutter up under his nose unharmed.  All tense and trembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood still.  He was obeying the will of the gods.

And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start a jackrabbit and run it.  The master himself was looking on and did not interfere.  Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase.  And thus he learned that there was no taboo on jackrabbits.  In the end he worked out the complete law.  Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities.  If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain.  But the other animals—the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man.  They were the lawful prey of any dog.  It was only the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted.  The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were jealous of their power.

Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of the Northland.  And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint—a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel.  Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all—thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage stopped.  Life flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress his natural impulses.

There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach.  This meat he must not touch.  There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be let alone.  And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that he must not attack.  And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whose attention he attracted.  They would stop and look at him, point him out to one another, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him.  And these perilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure.  Yet this endurance he achieved.  Furthermore, he got over being awkward and self-conscious.  In a lofty way he received the attentions of the multitudes of strange gods.  With condescension he accepted their condescension.  On the other hand, there was something about him that prevented great familiarity.  They patted him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their own daring.

But it was not all easy for White Fang.  Running behind the carriage in the outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a practice of flinging stones at him.  Yet he knew that it was not permitted him to pursue and drag them down.  Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation.

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 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