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CHAPTER 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 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 hounds, and, if he even so much

as glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of

indignation and wrath. His favourite 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 dignified, and the master laughed harder than

before. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws

slightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that was

more love than humour came into his eyes. He had learned to laugh.

Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and

rolled over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he

feigned anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth

together in snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he never

forgot himself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At the

end of such a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were last and

furious, they would break off suddenly and stand several feet apart,

glaring at each other. And then, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on a

stormy sea, they would begin to laugh. This would always culminate with

the master's arms going around White Fang's neck and shoulders while the

latter crooned and growled his love-song.

But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it.

He stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and

bristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these

liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and

loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He loved

with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love.

The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him

was one of White Fang's chief duties in life. In the Northland he had

evidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in

the Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered

fealty in the new way, by running with the master's horse. The longest day

never played White Fang out. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless

and effortless, and at the end of fifty miles he would come in jauntily

ahead of the horse.

It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one

other mode of expression - remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his

life. The first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited

thoroughbred the method of opening and closing gates without the rider's

dismounting. Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up to

the gate in the effort to close it and each time the horse became frightened

and backed and plunged away. It grew more nervous and excited every

moment. When it reared, the master put the spurs to it and made it drop its

fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would begin kicking with its hind-

legs. White Fang watched the performance with increasing anxiety until

he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front of the horse

and barked savagely and warningly.

Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged

him, he succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master's presence.

A scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the

horse's feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken leg for

the master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the throat of

the offending horse, but was checked by the master's voice.

"Home! Go home!" the master commanded when he had ascertained his injury.

White Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of

writing a note, but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again

he commanded White Fang to go home.

The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and

whined softly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he

cocked his ears, and listened with painful intentness.

"That's all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk. "Go

on home and tell them what's happened to me. Home with you, you wolf.

Get along home!"

White Fang knew the meaning of "home," and though he did not

understand the remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his will

that he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then he

stopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Go home!" came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed.

The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when

White Fang arrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust.

"Weedon's back," Weedon's mother announced.

The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet

him. He avoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a rocking-chair and the railing. He growled and tried to push by

them. Their mother looked apprehensively in their direction.

"I confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said. "I

have a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day."

Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning

the boy and the girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them,

telling them not to bother White Fang.

"A wolf is a wolf!" commented Judge Scott. "There is no trusting one."

"But he is not all wolf," interposed Beth, standing for her brother in his absence.

"You have only Weedon's opinion for that," rejoined the judge. "He

merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as he

will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for his appearance - "

He did not finish his sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely.

"Go away! Lie down, sir!" Judge Scott commanded.

White Fang turned to the love-master's wife. She screamed with fright

as he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric tore

away. By this time he had become the centre of interest.

He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their

faces. His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he

struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the

incommunicable something that strained for utterance.

"I hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother. "I told Weedon

that I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic animal."

"He's trying to speak, I do believe," Beth announced.

At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of barking.

"Something has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively.

They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps,

looking back for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he

had barked and made himself understood.

After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra

Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that

he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the same

opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by measurements and

descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the

Santa Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang's second

winter in the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie's

teeth were no longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a

gentleness that prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she

had made life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around him

he responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more than

ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land

into the woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White

Fang knew it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang

hesitated. But there was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned,

than the customs that had moulded him, than his love for the master, than

the very will to live of himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision,

Collie nipped him and scampered off, he turned and followed after. The

master rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran

with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years

before in the silent Northland forest.
关键字:白牙
生词表:
  • geographical [dʒi:ə´græfik(ə)l] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.地理(学)的 四级词汇
  • ferocity [fə´rɔsiti] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.凶残,凶猛,暴行 六级词汇
  • persecution [,pə:si´kju:ʃən] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.迫害;残害;困扰 四级词汇
  • instinctive [in´stiŋktiv] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.本能的,天性的 六级词汇
  • belligerent [bi´lidʒərənt] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.交战中的;好战的 六级词汇
  • uniformly [´ju:nifɔ:mli] 移动到这儿单词发声 ad.一致地,齐心地 六级词汇
  • collie [´kɔli] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.柯利牧羊犬 六级词汇
  • forgiven [fə´givn] 移动到这儿单词发声 forgive的过去分词 四级词汇
  • episode [´episəud] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.插曲;一段情节 四级词汇
  • outcry [´autkrai] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.喊叫;强烈抗议 四级词汇
  • calmness [´kɑ:mnis] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.平静;安静 六级词汇
  • impending [im´pendiŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.即将发生的 六级词汇
  • experienced [ik´spiəriənst] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.有经验的;熟练的 四级词汇
  • susceptible [sə´septəbəl] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.敏感的;易受影响的 六级词汇
  • affected [ə´fektid] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.做作的;假装的 六级词汇
  • seeming [´si:miŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.表面上的 n.外观 四级词汇
  • culminate [´kʌlmineit] 移动到这儿单词发声 vi.达到顶点 六级词汇
  • warning [´wɔ:niŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.警告;前兆 a.预告的 四级词汇
  • playful [´pleifəl] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.爱玩耍的;幽默的 六级词汇
  • tireless [´taiələs] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.不疲倦的;无轮胎的 六级词汇
  • trying [´traiiŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.难堪的;费劲的 四级词汇
  • whereupon [,weərə´pɔn] 移动到这儿单词发声 ad.在什么上面;因此 四级词汇
  • savagely [´sævidʒli] 移动到这儿单词发声 ad.野蛮地;原始地 四级词汇
  • scamper [´skæmpə] 移动到这儿单词发声 vi.浏览;涉猎 n.蹦跳 四级词汇
  • wistfully [´wistfuli] 移动到这儿单词发声 ad.渴望地;不满足地 六级词汇
  • reluctantly [ri´lʌktəntli] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.不情愿地;勉强地 四级词汇
  • taking [´teikiŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.迷人的 n.捕获物 六级词汇
  • railing [´reiliŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.栏杆 四级词汇
  • unexpectedly [´ʌniks´pektidli] 移动到这儿单词发声 ad.意外地;突然地 四级词汇
  • trusting [´trʌstiŋ] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.信任的;相信的 六级词汇
  • utterance [´ʌtərəns] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.发音;言辞;所说的话 四级词汇
  • dissatisfaction [di,sætis´fækʃən] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.不满 六级词汇
  • unbroken [ʌn´brəukən] 移动到这儿单词发声 a.未破的;不间断的 四级词汇
  • gentleness [´dʒentlnis] 移动到这儿单词发声 n.温和,温柔 四级词汇



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