e."

White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with
tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank
attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation
of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the
house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the
inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not.
Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing
all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life
with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.

CHAPTER III--THE GOD'S DOMAIN

Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much,
and knew the meaning and necessity of adjustment. Here, in Sierra Vista,
which was the name of Judge Scott's place, White Fang quickly began to
make himself at home. He had no further serious trouble with the dogs.
They knew more about the ways of the Southland gods than did he, and in
their eyes he had qualified when he accompanied the gods inside the
house. Wolf that he was, and unprecedented as it was, the gods had
sanctioned his presence, and they, the dogs of the gods, could only
recognise this sanction.

Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after
which he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises. Had
Dick had his way, they would have been good friends. All but White Fang
was averse to friendship. All he asked of other dogs was to be let
alone. His whole life he had kept aloof from his kind, and he still
desired to keep aloof. Dick's overtures bothered him, so he snarled Dick
away. In the north he had learned the lesson that he must let the
master's dogs alone, and he did not forget that lesson now. But he
insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion, and so thoroughly ignored
Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave him up and scarcely
took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near the stable.

Not so with Collie. While she accepted him because it was the mandate of
the gods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace. Woven
into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had
perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the
ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten. All this was a spur to her, pricking
her to retaliation. She could not fly in the fa