31.2K
Downloads
711
Episodes
Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Tuesday Jul 05, 2011
Tuesday Jul 05, 2011
Dane Allred’s World of Hurt
Car Wash Part Two
In Part One, I had just been thrashed in the car wash by the brushes and completely soaked. After pushing the car back up onto the sensor, the wash resumed. I sat cursing about my stupidity. After a few moments, the car wash stopped again. I waited for a moment to make sure all was clear. I had decided to go to the back of the car to push it out of the bay. The bump on the front of the sensor was big, and I was certain it would take quite a shove.
I got low to the ground and put my shoulder up against the tail lights. With one mighty shove, the car went forward perfectly - back up onto the sensor. This time I was behind the car, and the frenzied foaming brushes followed me right back to the driver's seat. I had fallen for the same joke twice. The car had come off the sensor twice. I had been wet before, but now I was completely soaked. It felt like I had 30 gallons of water poured on me while 100 foamy whips tried to catch me.
As I sat and watched the brushes move around and over the car, I was glad it was getting clean. I also decided that this time when the car wash stopped, whether the wash was done or not, I was going to push the car backwards out of the bay. I may be slow, but I am not totally stupid.
When the suds stopped flying I sat for at least a minute. I rocked back and forth inside the car to try to get it to go again. I looked around to see if anyone was waiting for the wash and laughing. After seeing the coast was clear, I pushed the car out the back of the wash. Except I pushed so hard that I couldn't turn the wheel inside fast enough, so it got stuck in the bend of the entrance. This carwash had a semicircular entrance, and here was my soaked car being attended by its sopping wet owner stuck on the concrete sides of a curving entrance.
A Samaritan was lurking close by, and without commenting on my wet clothes and the fact that I was trying to exit from the entrance of the car wash, he helped push the car back and forth until I could turn the wheel and free myself from the carwash of disaster. We pushed the car back another 30 feet into a parking space and I thanked him for his help. I told him the battery was dead, and that seemed to silence his questions about me being dripping wet. I can imagine his conversation at home that night. "See, the reason I am late dear is that this guy's battery died in the carwash and I helped him push the car out of the entrance. I don't know why, but this guy was all wet, too." This would be where the significant other starts smelling the breath of the good Samaritan.
I stood there by myself for a minute. The car was dead and dripping. I was soaked but not defeated, but I was standing next to the newest mall in the city in sopping wet clothes next to a wet car. I decided that it was time for me to go to the nearby Kmart and get a new battery. Even if the old one was fine, I was not going to stand around and wait for the both of us to dry. I guess I figured that if I was walking around not near a wet car people might think I had just been at a water party. It was August after all, and I was only a few miles from the local water park.
I walked the two blocks to Kmart. The good people there must see mostly everything because no one said a word about my wet clothes. By the time I had walked the battery back to the car (try carrying a car battery two blocks inconspicuously), I was starting to feel refreshed. I was clean; I had just taken a bit of exercise; I was ready to repair my car.
The battery was the only problem. With my trust crescent wrench I removed the old one, put in the new one, and the now dry car started up like a dream. I confidently went back to Kmart and got my core refund for the old battery and drove home in style, ready for a new school year.
I didn't share the story for a few days, just to let the humiliation of the event drain off a bit. I have been back to that carwash since then, but as yet, I have not had to get out again mid-wash.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Jul 05, 2011
Tuesday Jul 05, 2011
Dane Allred’s World of Hurt
Car Wash part one
My oldest daughter was married in my back yard. Preparing for the wedding was when the infamous spading incident happened. Everything went well at the wedding, but one of my cars sat unused for a couple of months. One of my favorite cars, the Mazda was still around at this time, but the battery was completely dead and it hadn't been running all summer. During the school year we usually need two cars, but summer is a different matter, and the pile of grey metal just sat in the driveway waiting for me to replace the battery. A few days after the wedding, I decided it was time to get the car going since fall semester was quickly approaching. I talked Debbie into pulling me around the parking lot with a rope tied to the Tracker, and after a bit the engine kicked in and seemed to be running fine. I went up to Debbie and told her I was going to charge up the battery by driving the car over to Provo and back, and disconnected the rope and went on my way hoping the battery was recharging.
The car was running fine, even after sitting for more than a month without being used. It was terribly dirty from summer storms and swirling dirt, so as I filled the tank I noticed the gas station also offered car washes. I filled the tank without turning off the engine for fear it would die and wouldn't start again. I kept looking at the sign that said to turn off your car before fueling and wondered if I was super-flammable or just regularly-flammable. But the car wash distracted me and I decided to get a car wash while I was there.
I hadn't turned the car off and figured I could keep it running in the car wash and then just drive it home. From the reading on the battery gauge I wasn't convinced the battery was recharging and I didn't want to get stuck somewhere where I couldn't get pull-started again. But I decided on the car wash anyway. What could happen?
I pulled in and as soon as I settled into the slot for the front tire I let the clutch out. Habit. The car promptly died. I winced and I tried to start the car again as the car wash started up. The battery was completely dead and only a new battery would solve the problem. I decided to make the best of the situation and just sit and enjoy the carwash, determining to push the car out of the bay after the wash was done. I looked behind me and was glad to see there was no one waiting for the bay that would see me pushing out my sopping wet car.
I took my foot off the brake and tried to relax. Perhaps I could get a battery at the local Kmart which was only two blocks away. But then the car wash stopped and I was faced with the prospect of pushing a wet car over the sensor.
I got out of the car and noticed that the giant brushes which wash the side of the car were aligned just at the back of the car. I didn't think much of that, but instead jammed my body into the crack of the partially opened door and heaved. The car went forward a few inches back up onto the sensor.
The car wash started up again. The six-foot foam brushes started spinning in circles just behind me, and thoroughly soaked me with their water spray. As I started to hop back into the car, I was whipped several times by the wet, foamy, soapy tentacles of the beast. It was like being beaten with a giant mop.
As I soaked slowly in the driver's seat, I realized what had happened. I had been parked on top of the sensor and when I took my foot off the brake, the car rolled back off the sensing pad and stopped the wash to avoid damage to the equipment. The car wash designers didn't want cars backing up into their expensive machinery while the wash was going.
I felt like an idiot. Plus, it really took quite a bit of effort to get the car just back up onto the sensor. As I sat and waited for the wash to finish, I cursed my stupidity and was also thankful for my luck. I could have been severely injured by the moving parts of the machinery, but my guardian angel was simply laughing at the wet guy sitting in the car.
Seriously, I wonder at times just how I have survived these many accidents. Stupidity may be the key.
You may think this story is at an end, but in Part Two, I’ll get the final rinse.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Jun 28, 2011
Tuesday Jun 28, 2011
Click here for a complete INDEX
One Life
by Dane Allred
Short or long, one life is all we have been given
Time to sing
To dance
And walk a while.
To learn and love
To touch the lives
Of those near and far.
Each day unfolds as
A new hope.
Another possibility.
To do all the things we have to do
One life to do all the things we are here to do
One life to do all the things we want to do.
This day to smell the flowers
Watch the sunset
And breathe in the sweet air of life.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Monday Jun 27, 2011
Monday Jun 27, 2011
Dane Allred’s World of Hurt
Clean The Screen
I’m positively done with the negativity. I’m not going to listen to the naysayers and doomsday prophets anymore. To symbolize this change, I just cleaned off my computer screen and the world is looking much, much better. Don’t have a screen to clean? Think of it this way. Wipe that mud off your face and walk away from those throwing the mud.
I’ve made a conscious decision to stop participating in the mud fight. I’m sure others will keep on throwing the mud, but that doesn’t mean I have to stay and get dirty along with them.
Without sounding too negative in my newly designed positive world, I’m talking about all those people who trade in words like “can’t”, “failure”, “never”, “no”, “futile” or “stupid”.
I confess to listening to those words spouted by the “experts” for many, many years. But I’ve had it. You’d be surprised how much your attitude changes when you embrace what is possible and delete the “impossible” from your language.
As an example, here’s a list of past “impossibilities”. Humans can’t fly. Humans will never walk on the moon. Humans will never cure polio, measles, small pox, etc. I’m taking my new marching orders from someone you may have heard about. Albert Schweitzer was known for getting things done, not for nattering about the negative. His attitude was one of positive thinking, action, and an indomitable spirit.
Here’s a summary for those who doubt. He studied to a theologian. After his training, he could have preached goodness and light for the rest of his life. But he wanted to roll up his sleeves and be part of the solution. So he went back to school and became a doctor. He spent seven more years gaining the knowledge and aptitude to put his belief into action. At the ripe old age of 37 he started practicing medicine in an old chicken coop in Africa. He spent his life trying to get us to stop worrying about the end of the world and get busy making a positive contribution. He didn’t listen to the harping chorus of “no, never, pointless, worthless, ineffective, fruitless, futile, stupid, etc.” Oh, by the way, while doing all this, he also became one of the world’s greatest organ players.
Still not convinced we don’t need to wallow in the mud with the others? Here are some ways I’ve learned to deal with negativity in practical, everyday life. As a worker, I am often presented with problems to be solved. I’ll bet your job is much the same. You are given a problem, your job is to find a solution, and fix it. Then you move on to the next problem. You don’t cry and whine it can’t be done – you find a way to do it or you don’t have your job for very long.
I’ve chosen to accept criticism since I am also a performer. I’ve acted in dozens of stage productions, commercials, and films. When the director offers criticism of my performance, I accept it with a polite “thank you” and figure a way to improve. If that doesn’t work, the director gives me another suggestion, which I accept with “thank you” and the process continues. I don’t throw a tantrum and crawl on the floor, blaming everyone but myself. I accept the shortcoming, and look for ways to overcome it.
Much better than mud throwing.
You can change the channel – can you tune away from the negative and find a way to channel some positivity? You’ll be surprised how optimistic you’ll become listening to your favorite music or watching an inspiring movie or program instead of the continual broadcast of trash talk.
Give thanks – rejecting negativity doesn’t have to be rude. You can remove yourself from the conversation or change the subject. But don’t forget to say “thanks” for the efforts of others. Remember, being positive doesn’t mean throwing mud back. We can choose not to participate, and instead focus on how to fix perceived problems.
Be a solver -- start a solution. I have my way of trying to make the world a better place, and so do you. I hope what you achieve is more than just the same-old name-calling. It’s one of the reasons you are here. We need your help and creativity, not negativity. Why whine, when you can create? Why moan when you can move toward a solution? Let the mud-throwers enjoy themselves as they throw mud, but don’t forget to invite them to the celebration of your success.
There was a time when Dale Carnegie told us to get a “positive attitude”. I know that ingenuity, faith, trust, hope and hard work will always defeat fear. If you are with me, turn this resolution into a physical act. Clean off your screen as a reminder to make the change. Or just wipe that mud off your face.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Thursday Jun 16, 2011
Thursday Jun 16, 2011
My Best Self
by Dane Allred
M -- Make a Positive Contribution
Eleanor Roosevelt once said “When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.”
We are here for a reason. There is something only we can do, because the universe decided we needed to be here at this time, occupying this body in the place we appeared. There was no one else who could be us, with our unique collections of experiences, problems, pains and perceptions. We are the amalgamation of all that we have experienced. Our unique perspective from which we see the world as we look out at all the other people in the world is truly only our own.
The M in My Best Self is a great starting point to reaching our best self because it makes us get outside ourselves. To be our best self, we may need to consider what we do for all the others who are on this spinning marble with us.
This doesn’t mean your positive contribution can’t be something you are doing all the time, or that you can’t make money doing it. But making a positive contribution is more than having a job which will generate taxes for governments to use for others. It means specifically thinking about making this world a better place not just for ourselves, but for others, too.
These don’t have to be world changing events. They can be small, medium or large, but the impact is still the same for us. We are doing something we value and trying to make a positive contribution to one person or more. It doesn’t matter if it changes the world; it may only matter because it changes us.
Your contribution may be something small, and though it may seem small to you, it should mean something to someone else besides you.
I like to garden. I have plenty of free time in the summer since I’m a school teacher. I have a nice yard, and time to do the things it needs. People often ask me in a joking way to come over to their house when I’m done if I want some more yard work.
It’s funny, but it does prove the point. Most people don’t like doing yard work like I do, or maybe I just have a positive attitude about doing something I know needs to be done. I also know that if I do it, I’ll feel better about myself and the yard – a true win/win.
This week I weeded around my mailbox, but since I have been taking care of it for a while, there wasn’t much to do. Technically, my mailbox is right on the edge of my neighbor’s yard, but I couldn’t let the bare patch of weeds stay that way for long. As the flowerbed around the mailbox grew, let’s just say the only direction it could grow was away from my house.
So when neighbors saw me outside weeding a flowerbed in front of my neighbor’s house, they actually said to me, “Why are you weeding someone else’s yard?” To myself I said, “Why not?” If the neighbor didn’t like it, they could tell me to stop.
I spent another couple of hours this week weeding another flowerbed we share along the property line by the mailbox. The couple who owns the house is away during the summer, and I took it upon myself to make what could be a weedy patch look more like a flower garden. A little at a time, I have weeded, planted and watered this strip until it really compliments both of our yards.
And some may say I was doing this only to make my own yard look better, but making a positive contribution can also benefit us. It may not seem selfless, but I really didn’t have to do it. I just wanted to. I put in a couple of hours, and for the rest of the summer, everyone will get to enjoy some flowers instead of the weeds.
Here’s a medium example along the same lines. My neighbor around the corner fell and hurt his back at work, and though he probably could have hired someone to mow his lawn, I decided to do it instead. I didn’t ask him for permission, but just mowed it one day. No one came outside and protested, so I did it again the next week.
It’s more than a couple of hours weeding, but it really isn’t a tremendous amount of time. My lawn is huge, so I spend an hour cutting my lawn every week. Mowing his added about fifteen minutes to my lawn-mowing. But that fifteen minutes were incredibly productive.
It made me feel good, and it made a positive contribution to his life, too. I probably mowed it twenty times during the summer. I didn’t mow it the next summer, but by then he was able to take care of it himself.
So the difference we make doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment. It may be an afternoon weeding, or a summer mowing. I like to perform, and I feel my talents are best used when I get the chance to bring some of the characters from the stage to life for others. There is a great feeling when you perform, and it’s not just the endorphins rushing through your body. I feel at home on the stage, and delight in making people laugh.
But I don’t usually get paid to perform. I have acted in dozens of stage plays and musicals, and the majority of them have been my volunteered time. The venues do collect money for the performances, but most stages work with thread-bare margins so those would be wiped out by paying a salary. So most of the people I work with in stage productions are also not paid.
So perfecting a role for the stage is probably a medium effort, since it involves many weeks of rehearsals at night and on week-ends, plus the time spent during performances. The show I am currently doing started rehearsals about four months ago. We spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights rehearsing, plus some time on Saturday mornings. As the performances approached, we were rehearsing every night for three or four hours. Now that the show is up, we are performing three times a week – about nine or ten hours total.
But the rewards of this kind of effort are off the scale in terms of returns. I am having the time of my life, playing a part I have really want to play. The theatre is enjoying the fruits of our labors, and may be able to continue as a community theatre for another fifty years. This kind of a contribution can extend into the future, but if it shut down tomorrow I would still have volunteered the time.
Plus the audiences get to see a good show – even if it is vain of me to say so. We are getting so many great plaudits from audience members I want to remind them they paid to come and see this and deserved a good show. But in some way, they know they are getting more than their money's worth, and the want to acknowledge it.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Friday May 27, 2011
Friday May 27, 2011
The Next Corner
by Dane Allred
I’m not very good at this life and death thing.
When someone dies,
I always expect to meet them again,
Just around the next corner.
Then we rush to detail what’s been missed,
And you will tell me of the exciting things happening to you,
And I will prattle on about my happenings.
We will brag about our families to each other,
Feeling that we are the most blessed of the two of us.
I can’t wait to see you again,
And I guess that’s why I still feel like you are here,
Just around that next corner.
But that is exactly what will happen.
You are waiting around that corner,
For me to make that turn in my journey,
And I hope I will be prepared for the joy of the moment.
And remember not to brag too much.
Because you deserved better than what you had here,
And I can’t wait to hear how great your journey has become.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Friday May 20, 2011
Friday May 20, 2011
White Fang by Jack London
PART Five
CHAPTER I—THE LONG TRAIL
It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there was tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a change was impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains.
“Listen to that, will you!” the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one night.
Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight.
“I do believe that wolf’s on to you,” the dog-musher said.
Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words.
“What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?” he demanded.
“That’s what I say,” Matt answered. “What the devil can you do with a wolf in California?”
But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in a non-committal sort of way.
“White man’s dogs would have no show against him,” Scott went on. “He’d kill them on sight. If he didn’t bankrupt me with damaged suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him.”
“He’s a downright murderer, I know,” was the dog-musher’s comment.
Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously.
“It would never do,” he said decisively.
“It would never do!” Matt concurred. “Why you’d have to hire a man ’specially to take care of ’m.”
The other suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long, questing sniff.
“There’s no denyin’ he thinks a hell of a lot of you,” Matt said.
The other glared at him in sudden wrath. “Damn it all, man! I know my own mind and what’s best!”
“I’m agreein’ with you, only . . . ”
“Only what?” Scott snapped out.
“Only . . . ” the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and betrayed a rising anger of his own. “Well, you needn’t get so all-fired het up about it. Judgin’ by your actions one’d think you didn’t know your own mind.”
Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently: “You are right, Matt. I don’t know my own mind, and that’s what’s the trouble.”
“Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along,” he broke out after another pause.
“I’m agreein’ with you,” was Matt’s answer, and again his employer was not quite satisfied with him.
“But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you’re goin’ is what gets me,” the dog-musher continued innocently.
“It’s beyond me, Matt,” Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the head.
Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White Fang had already scented it. 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?”
“You just bet I did,” was the fervent reply.
White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, making no attempt to approach.
“I’ll have to take ’m ashore with me.”
Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away from him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legs of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eluding the other’s efforts to capture him.
But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience.
“Won’t come to the hand that’s fed ’m all these months,” the dog-musher muttered resentfully. “And you—you ain’t never fed ’m after them first days of gettin’ acquainted. I’m blamed if I can see how he works it out that you’re the boss.”
Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes.
Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang’s belly.
“We plump forgot the window. He’s all cut an’ gouged underneath. Must ‘a’ butted clean through it, b’gosh!”
But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The Aurora’s whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana from his own neck and started to put it around White Fang’s. Scott grasped the dog-musher’s hand.
“Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf—you needn’t write. You see, I’ve . . . !”
“What!” the dog-musher exploded. “You don’t mean to say . . .?”
“The very thing I mean. Here’s your bandana. I’ll write to you about him.”
Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.
“He’ll never stand the climate!” he shouted back. “Unless you clip ’m in warm weather!”
The gang-plank was hauled in, and the Aurora swung out from the bank. Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang, standing by his side.
“Now growl, damn you, growl,” he said, as he patted the responsive head and rubbed the flattening ears.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Saturday May 14, 2011
Saturday May 14, 2011
Literature Out Loud
White Fang by Jack London
Part Four
CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-MASTER
As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to advertise that he would not submit to punishment. Twenty-four hours had passed since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held up by a sling to keep the blood out of it. In the past White Fang had experienced delayed punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was about to befall him. How could it be otherwise? He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god at that. In the nature of things, and of intercourse with gods, something terrible awaited him.
The god sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous in that. When the gods administered punishment they stood on their legs. Besides, this god had no club, no whip, no firearm. And furthermore, he himself was free. No chain nor stick bound him. He could escape into safety while the god was scrambling to his feet. In the meantime he would wait and see.
The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang’s snarl slowly dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased. Then the god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang’s neck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostile movement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice. But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men.
After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scanned him apprehensively when he came out. He had neither whip nor club nor weapon. Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding something. He sat down as before, in the same spot, several feet away. He held out a small piece of meat. White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility.
Still the punishment delayed. The god merely held near to his nose a piece of meat. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all-wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece of meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously related.
In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang’s feet. He smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he kept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth and swallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him another piece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was tossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time when the god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it.
The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitely cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat the meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with. He ate the meat, and nothing happened. Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and nothing happened. Still the punishment delayed.
He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice was kindness—something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before. He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again came the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends.
Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god’s hand, cunning to hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went on talking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, the voice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand inspired distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-forces that struggled within him for mastery.
He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neither snapped nor sprang away. The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of the god, and he strove to submit.
The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it. And every time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a cavernous growl surged in his throat. White Fang growled and growled with insistent warning. By this means he announced that he was prepared to retaliate for any hurt he might receive. There was no telling when the god’s ulterior motive might be disclosed. At any moment that soft, confidence-inspiring voice might break forth in a roar of wrath, that gentle and caressing hand transform itself into a vice-like grip to hold him helpless and administer punishment.
But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non-hostile pats. White Fang experienced dual feelings. It was distasteful to his instinct. It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward personal liberty. And yet it was not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant, in a physical way. The patting movement slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of the ears about their bases, and the physical pleasure even increased a little. Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and swayed him.
“Well, I’ll be gosh-swoggled!”
So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of dirty dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang.
At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarling savagely at him.
Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.
“If you don’t mind my expressin’ my feelin’s, Mr. Scott, I’ll make free to say you’re seventeen kinds of a damn fool an’ all of ’em different, an’ then some.”
Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over to White Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put out his hand, rested it on White Fang’s head, and resumed the interrupted patting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon the man that stood in the doorway.
“You may be a number one, tip-top minin’ expert, all right all right,” the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, “but you missed the chance of your life when you was a boy an’ didn’t run off an’ join a circus.”
White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap away from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his neck with long, soothing strokes.
It was the beginning of the end for White Fang—the ending of the old life and the reign of hate. A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was dawning. It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott to accomplish this. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than a revolution. He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life itself.
Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that he now did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he now abandoned himself. In short, when all things were considered, he had to achieve an orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the time he came voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his lord. At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb of circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fiber of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallized into set rules, cautions, dislikes, and desires.
Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remolding it into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to the roots of White Fang’s nature, and with kindness touched to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was love. It took the place of like, which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods.
But this love did not come in a day. It began with like and out of it slowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to remain loose, because he liked this new god. This was certainly better than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was necessary that he should have some god. The lordship of man was a need of his nature. The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver’s feet to receive the expected beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and ineradicably, on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine was over and there was fish once more in the village of Grey Beaver.
And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to Beauty Smith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of fealty, he proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his master’s property. He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night-visitor to the cabin fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraise the true value of step and carriage. The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door, he let alone—though he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and he received the endorsement of the master. But the man who went softly, by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy—that was the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.
Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang—or rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid. So he went out of his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he made it a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it at length.
At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting. But there was one thing that he never outgrew—his growling. Growl he would, from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a new note in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling. But White Fang’s throat had become harsh-fibered from the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon Scott’s ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the fierceness—the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and that none but he could hear.
As the days went by, the evolution of like into love was accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamored to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.
White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mold that had formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old code of conduct was changing. In the past he had liked comfort and surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it was different. Because of this new feeling within him, he oft times elected discomfort and pain for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god’s face. At night, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the town.
Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of his deeps had come the new thing—love. That which was given unto him did he return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang’s nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun.
But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly molded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there. His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration. Only by the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and by the unceasing following with his eyes of his god’s every movement. Also, at times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express itself and his physical inability to express it.
He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life. It was borne in upon him that he must let his master’s dogs alone. Yet his dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership. This accomplished, he had little trouble with them. They gave trail to him when he came and went or walked among them, and when he asserted his will they obeyed.
In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt—as a possession of his master. His master rarely fed him. Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fang divined that it was his master’s food he ate and that it was his master who thus fed him vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harness and make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him, that he understood. He took it as his master’s will that Matt should drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his master’s other dogs.
Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with runners under them. And different was the method of driving the dogs. There was no fan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another, hauling on double traces. And here, in the Klondike, the leader was indeed the leader. The wisest as well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyed him and feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain this post was inevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after much inconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt backed his judgment with strong language after the experiment had been tried. But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of his master’s property in the night. Thus he was on duty all the time, ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.
“Makin’ free to spit out what’s in me,” Matt said one day, “I beg to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin’ his face in with your fist.”
A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott’s grey eyes, and he muttered savagely, “The beast!”
In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, the love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang was unversed in such things and did not understand the packing of a grip. He remembered afterwards that his packing had preceded the master’s disappearance; but at the time he suspected nothing. That night he waited for the master to return. At midnight the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rear of the cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the first sound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him out to the cold front stoop, where he crouched, and waited.
But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped outside. White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no common speech by which he might learn what he wanted to know. The days came and went, but never the master. White Fang, who had never known sickness in his life, became sick. He became very sick, so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring him inside the cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White Fang.
Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the following:
“That dam wolf won’t work. Won’t eat. Ain’t got no spunk left. All the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and I don’t know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die.”
It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and allowed every dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay on the floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life. Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head back to its customary position on his fore-paws.
And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had got up on his feet, his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening intently. A moment later, Matt heard a footstep. The door opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. The two men shook hands. Then Scott looked around the room.
“Where’s the wolf?” he asked.
Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the stove. He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching and waiting.
“Holy smoke!” Matt exclaimed. “Look at ’m wag his tail!”
Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time calling him. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet quickly. He was awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near, his eyes took on a strange expression. Something, an incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light and shone forth.
“He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!” Matt commented.
Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels, face to face with White Fang and petting him—rubbing at the roots of the ears, making long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the spine gently with the balls of his fingers. And White Fang was growling responsively, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.
But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever surging and struggling to express itself, succeeding in finding a new mode of expression. He suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his way in between the master’s arm and body. And here, confined, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge and snuggle.
The two men looked at each other. Scott’s eyes were shining.
“Gosh!” said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.
A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, “I always insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at ’m!”
With the return of the love-master, White Fang’s recovery was rapid. Two nights and a day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled-dogs had forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which was his weakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, they sprang upon him.
“Talk about your rough-houses,” Matt murmured gleefully, standing in the doorway and looking on.
“Give ’m hell, you wolf! Give ’m hell!—an’ then some!”
White Fang did not need the encouragement. The return of the love-master was enough. Life was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he felt and that otherwise was without speech. There could be but one ending. The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang.
Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It was the final word. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of which he had always been particularly jealous was his head. He had always disliked to have it touched. It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness. It was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: “I put myself into thy hands. Work thou thy will with me.”
One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of cribbage preliminary to going to bed. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an’ a pair makes six,” Mat was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound of snarling without. They looked at each other as they started to rise to their feet.
“The wolf’s nailed somebody,” Matt said.
A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.
“Bring a light!” Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.
Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his back in the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face and throat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang’s teeth. And there was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood.
All this the two men saw in the first instant. The next instant Weedon Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the master.
Matt helped the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up live fire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caught sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face.
At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow. He held the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer’s benefit—a steel dog-chain and a stout club.
Weedon Scott saw and nodded. Not a word was spoken. The dog-musher laid his hand on Beauty Smith’s shoulder and faced him to the right about. No word needed to be spoken. Beauty Smith started.
In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to him.
“Tried to steal you, eh? And you wouldn’t have it! Well, well, he made a mistake, didn’t he?”
“Must ‘a’ thought he had hold of seventeen devils,” the dog-musher sniggered.
White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his throat.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Monday May 09, 2011
Monday May 09, 2011
Click here for a complete INDEX
Missing You
I miss you.
I miss us.
Because there is no us without you here.
After spending so much time together
We talk alike
We look alike
We think alike.
There are so many things we do together
That I don’t want to do alone.
I could go to a movie by myself,
But it’s not as much fun as with you.
I can eat alone, but that’s no fun either.
You’re not here, so you can’t hear me complaining
And that’s no fun alone.
So I’m telling you now
That I’m missing you.
You’ll be able to read this later
And I wanted to tell you
Before I miss you
Or you miss me
Forever.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Saturday Apr 23, 2011
Saturday Apr 23, 2011
White Fang by Jack London
Part Four
CHAPTER V
THE INDOMITABLE
“It’s hopeless,” Weedon Scott confessed.
He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless.
Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain, bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs. Having received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence.
“It’s a wolf and there’s no taming it,” Weedon Scott announced.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Matt objected. “Might be a lot of dog in ’m, for all you can tell. But there’s one thing I know sure, an’ that there’s no gettin’ away from.”
The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain.
“Well, don’t be a miser with what you know,” Scott said sharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. “Spit it out. What is it?”
The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.
“Wolf or dog, it’s all the same—he’s ben tamed ’ready.”
“No!”
“I tell you yes, an’ broke to harness. Look close there. D’ye see them marks across the chest?”
“You’re right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold of him.”
“And there’s not much reason against his bein’ a sled-dog again.”
“What d’ye think?” Scott queried eagerly. Then the hope died down as he added, shaking his head, “We’ve had him two weeks now, and if anything he’s wilder than ever at the present moment.”
“Give ’m a chance,” Matt counselled. “Turn ’m loose for a spell.”
The other looked at him incredulously.
“Yes,” Matt went on, “I know you’ve tried to, but you didn’t take a club.”
“You try it then.”
The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal. White Fang watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip of its trainer.
“See ’m keep his eye on that club,” Matt said. “That’s a good sign. He’s no fool. Don’t dast tackle me so long as I got that club handy. He’s not clean crazy, sure.”
As the man’s hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled and crouched down. But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the same time contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand, suspended threateningly above him. Matt unsnapped the chain from the collar and stepped back.
White Fang could scarcely realize that he was free. Many months had gone by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed to fight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always been imprisoned again.
He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods was about to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to be assailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all so unprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He was plainly perplexed, and he came back again, pausing a dozen feet away and regarding the two men intently.
“Won’t he run away?” his new owner asked.
Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Got to take a gamble. Only way to find out is to find out.”
“Poor devil,” Scott murmured pityingly. “What he needs is some show of human kindness,” he added, turning and going into the cabin.
He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang. He sprang away from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously.
“Hi-yu, Major!” Matt shouted warningly, but too late.
Major had made a spring for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it, White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but quicker than he was White Fang. Major staggered to his feet, but the blood spouting from his throat reddened the snow in a widening path.
“It’s too bad, but it served him right,” Scott said hastily.
But Matt’s foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang. There was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation. White Fang, snarling fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and investigated his leg.
“He got me all right,” he announced, pointing to the torn trousers and undercloths, and the growing stain of red.
“I told you it was hopeless, Matt,” Scott said in a discouraged voice. “I’ve thought about it off and on, while not wanting to think of it. But we’ve come to it now. It’s the only thing to do.”
As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open the cylinder, and assured himself of its contents.
“Look here, Mr. Scott,” Matt objected; “that dog’s ben through hell. You can’t expect ’m to come out a white an’ shinin’ angel. Give ’m time.”
“Look at Major,” the other rejoined.
The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog. He had sunk down on the snow in the circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp.
“Served ’m right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to take White Fang’s meat, an’ he’s dead-O. That was to be expected. I wouldn’t give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn’t fight for his own meat.”
“But look at yourself, Matt. It’s all right about the dogs, but we must draw the line somewhere.”
“Served me right,” Matt argued stubbornly. “What’d I want to kick ’m for? You said yourself that he’d done right. Then I had no right to kick ’m.”
“It would be a mercy to kill him,” Scott insisted. “He’s untamable.”
“Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin’ chance. He ain’t had no chance yet. He’s just come through hell, an’ this is the first time he’s ben loose. Give ’m a fair chance, an’ if he don’t deliver the goods, I’ll kill ’m myself. There!”
“God knows I don’t want to kill him or have him killed,” Scott answered, putting away the revolver. “We’ll let him run loose and see what kindness can do for him. And here’s a try at it.”
He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and soothingly.
“Better have a club handy,” Matt warned.
Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang’s confidence.
White Fang was suspicious. Something was impending. He had killed this god’s dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected than some terrible punishment? But in the face of it he was indomitable. He bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary and prepared for anything. The god had no club, so he suffered him to approach quite near. The god’s hand had come out and was descending upon his head. White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under it. Here was danger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt. Besides, there was his old antipathy to being touched. He snarled more menacingly, crouched still lower, and still the hand descended. He did not want to bite the hand, and he endured the peril of it until his instinct surged up in him, mastering him with its insatiable yearning for life.
Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash. But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.
Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding it tightly in his other hand. Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to his side. White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing his fangs, his eyes malignant with menace. Now he could expect a beating as fearful as any he had received from Beauty Smith.
“Here! What are you doing?” Scott cried suddenly.
Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle.
“Nothin’,” he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was assumed, “only goin’ to keep that promise I made. I reckon it’s up to me to kill ’m as I said I’d do.”
“No you don’t!”
“Yes I do. Watch me.”
As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now Weedon Scott’s turn to plead.
“You said to give him a chance. Well, give it to him. We’ve only just started, and we can’t quit at the beginning. It served me right, this time. And—look at him!”
White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-musher.
“Well, I’ll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!” was the dog-musher’s expression of astonishment.
“Look at the intelligence of him,” Scott went on hastily. “He knows the meaning of firearms as well as you do. He’s got intelligence and we’ve got to give that intelligence a chance. Put up the gun.”
“All right, I’m willin’,” Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the woodpile.
“But will you look at that!” he exclaimed the next moment.
White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling. “This is worth investigatin’. Watch.”
Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang’s lifted lips descended, covering his teeth.
“Now, just for fun.”
Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. White Fang’s snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement approached its culmination. But the moment before the rifle came to a level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin. Matt stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by White Fang.
The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his employer.
“I agree with you, Mr. Scott. That dog’s too intelligent to kill.”
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Click on Amazon Payment button to order
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
Audio of this piece is available at the bottom of the post.
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin