He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for another flight.
And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to be left behind.
That night he lifted the long wolf-howl.
As he had howled, in his puppy days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver’s tepee, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe.
Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.
“He’s gone off his food again,” Matt remarked from his bunk.
There was a grunt from Weedon Scott’s bunk, and a stir of blankets.
“From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn’t wonder this time but what he died.”
The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.
“Oh, shut up!” Scott cried out through the darkness. “You nag worse than a woman.”
“I’m agreein’ with you,” the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered.
The next day White Fang’s anxiety and restlessness were even more pronounced.
He dogged his master’s heels whenever he left the cabin, and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside.
Through the open door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor.
The grip had been joined by two large canvas bags and a box.
Matt was rolling the master’s blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin.
White Fang whined as he watched the operation.
Later on two Indians arrived.
He watched them closely as they shouldered the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and the grip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin.
After a time, Matt returned.
The master came to the door and called White Fang inside.
“You poor devil,” he said gently, rubbing White Fang’s ears and tapping his spine.
“I’m hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot follow.
Now give me a growl—the last, good, good-bye growl.”
But White Fang refused to growl.
Instead, and after a wistful, searching look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master’s arm and body.
“There she blows!” Matt cried.
From the Yukon arose the hoarse bellowing of a river steamboat.
“You’ve got to cut it short.
Be sure and lock the front door.
I’ll go out the back.
Get a move on!”
The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to come around to the front.
From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing.
Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs.
“You must take good care of him, Matt,” Scott said, as they started down the hill. “Write and let me know how he gets along.”
“Sure,” the dog-musher answered.
“But listen to that, will you!”
Both men stopped.
White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters lie dead.
He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief.
The Aurora was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside.
Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who was preparing to go ashore.
But Matt’s hand went limp in the other’s grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him.
Scott turned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully was White Fang.
The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents.
Scott could only look in wonder.
“Did you lock the front door?” Matt demanded.
The other nodded, and asked,
“How about the back?”