White Fang by Jack London.
PART 1. CHAPTER I—THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side
the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped
by a recent wind of their white covering of
frost, and they seemed to lean towards each
other, black and ominous, in the fading light.
A vast silence reigned over the land. The
land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without
movement, so lone and cold that the spirit
of it was not even that of sadness. There
was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter
more terrible than any sadness—a laughter
that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx,
a laughter cold as the frost and partaking
of the grimness of infallibility. It was the
masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity
laughing at the futility of life and the effort
of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted
Northland Wild.
But there was life, abroad in the land and
defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a
string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur
was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in
the air as it left their mouths, spouting
forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon
the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals
of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs,
and leather traces attached them to a sled
which dragged along behind. The sled was without
runners. It was made of stout birch-bark,
and its full surface rested on the snow. The
front end of the sled was turned up, like
a scroll, in order to force down and under
the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave
before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was
a long and narrow oblong box. There were other
things on the sled—blankets, an axe, and
a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent,
occupying most of the space, was the long
and narrow oblong box.
In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes,
toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled
a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay
a third man whose toil was over,—a man whom
the Wild had conquered and beaten down until
he would never move nor struggle again. It
is not the way of the Wild to like movement.
Life is an offence to it, for life is movement;
and the Wild aims always to destroy movement.
It freezes the water to prevent it running
to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees
till they are frozen to their mighty hearts;
and most ferociously and terribly of all does
the Wild harry and crush into submission man—man
who is the most restless of life, ever in
revolt against the dictum that all movement
must in the end come to the cessation of movement.
But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable,
toiled the two men who were not yet dead.
Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned
leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were
so coated with the crystals from their frozen
breath that their faces were not discernible.
This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques,
undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral
of some ghost. But under it all they were
men, penetrating the land of desolation and
mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent
on colossal adventure, pitting themselves
against the might of a world as remote and
alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.
They travelled on without speech, saving their
breath for the work of their bodies. On every
side was the silence, pressing upon them with
a tangible presence. It affected their minds
as the many atmospheres of deep water affect
the body of the diver. It crushed them with
the weight of unending vastness and unalterable
decree. It crushed them into the remotest
recesses of their own minds, pressing out
of them, like juices from the grape, all the
false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values
of the human soul, until they perceived themselves
finite and small, specks and motes, moving
with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst
the play and inter-play of the great blind
elements and forces.
An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale
light of the short sunless day was beginning
to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the
still air. It soared upward with a swift rush,
till it reached its topmost note, where it
persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly
died away. It might have been a lost soul
wailing, had it not been invested with a certain
sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front
man turned his head until his eyes met the
eyes of the man behind. And then, across the
narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.
A second cry arose, piercing the silence with
needle-like shrillness. Both men located the
sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the
snow expanse they had just traversed. A third
and answering cry arose, also to the rear
and to the left of the second cry.
“They’re after us, Bill,” said the man
at the front.
His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he
had spoken with apparent effort.
“Meat is scarce,” answered his comrade.
“I ain’t seen a rabbit sign for days.”
Thereafter they spoke no more, though their
ears were keen for the hunting-cries that
continued to rise behind them.
At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs
into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge
of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin,
at the side of the fire, served for seat and
table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far
side of the fire, snarled and bickered among
themselves, but evinced no inclination to
stray off into the darkness.
“Seems to me, Henry, they’re stayin’
remarkable close to camp,” Bill commented.
Henry, squatting over the fire and settling
the pot of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded.
Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat
on the coffin and begun to eat.
“They know where their hides is safe,”
he said. “They’d sooner eat grub than
be grub. They’re pretty wise, them dogs.”
Bill shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know.”
His comrade looked at him curiously. “First
time I ever heard you say anything about their
not bein’ wise.”
“Henry,” said the other, munching with
deliberation the beans he was eating, “did
you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked
up when I was a-feedin’ ’em?”
“They did cut up more’n usual,” Henry
acknowledged.
“How many dogs ’ve we got, Henry?”
“Six.”
“Well, Henry . . . ” Bill stopped for
a moment, in order that his words might gain
greater significance. “As I was sayin’,
Henry, we’ve got six dogs. I took six fish
out of the bag. I gave one fish to each dog,
an’, Henry, I was one fish short.”
“You counted wrong.”
“We’ve got six dogs,” the other reiterated
dispassionately. “I took out six fish. One
Ear didn’t get no fish. I came back to the
bag afterward an’ got ’m his fish.”
“We’ve only got six dogs,” Henry said.
“Henry,” Bill went on. “I won’t say
they was all dogs, but there was seven of
’m that got fish.”
Henry stopped eating to glance across the
fire and count the dogs.
“There’s only six now,” he said.
“I saw the other one run off across the
snow,” Bill announced with cool positiveness.
“I saw seven.”
Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said,
“I’ll be almighty glad when this trip’s
over.”
“What d’ye mean by that?” Bill demanded.
“I mean that this load of ourn is gettin’
on your nerves, an’ that you’re beginnin’
to see things.”
“I thought of that,” Bill answered gravely.
“An’ so, when I saw it run off across
the snow, I looked in the snow an’ saw its
tracks. Then I counted the dogs an’ there
was still six of ’em. The tracks is there
in the snow now. D’ye want to look at ’em?
I’ll show ’em to you.”
Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence,
until, the meal finished, he topped it with
a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand and said:
“Then you’re thinkin’ as it was—”
A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere
in the darkness, had interrupted him. He stopped
to listen to it, then he finished his sentence
with a wave of his hand toward the sound of
the cry, “—one of them?”
Bill nodded. “I’d a blame sight sooner
think that than anything else. You noticed
yourself the row the dogs made.”
Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning
the silence into a bedlam. From every side
the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their
fear by huddling together and so close to
the fire that their hair was scorched by the
heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting
his pipe.
“I’m thinking you’re down in the mouth
some,” Henry said.
“Henry . . . ” He sucked meditatively
at his pipe for some time before he went on.
“Henry, I was a-thinkin’ what a blame
sight luckier he is than you an’ me’ll
ever be.”
He indicated the third person by a downward
thrust of the thumb to the box on which they
sat.
“You an’ me, Henry, when we die, we’ll
be lucky if we get enough stones over our
carcases to keep the dogs off of us.”
“But we ain’t got people an’ money an’
all the rest, like him,” Henry rejoined.
“Long-distance funerals is somethin’ you
an’ me can’t exactly afford.”
“What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like
this, that’s a lord or something in his
own country, and that’s never had to bother
about grub nor blankets; why he comes a-buttin’
round the Godforsaken ends of the earth—that’s
what I can’t exactly see.”
“He might have lived to a ripe old age if
he’d stayed at home,” Henry agreed.
Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed
his mind. Instead, he pointed towards the
wall of darkness that pressed about them from
every side. There was no suggestion of form
in the utter blackness; only could be seen
a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry
indicated with his head a second pair, and
a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had
drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair
of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again
a moment later.
The unrest of the dogs had been increasing,
and they stampeded, in a surge of sudden fear,
to the near side of the fire, cringing and
crawling about the legs of the men. In the
scramble one of the dogs had been overturned
on the edge of the fire, and it had yelped
with pain and fright as the smell of its singed
coat possessed the air. The commotion caused
the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for
a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it
settled down again as the dogs became quiet.
“Henry, it’s a blame misfortune to be
out of ammunition.”
Bill had finished his pipe and was helping
his companion to spread the bed of fur and
blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had
laid over the snow before supper. Henry grunted,
and began unlacing his moccasins.
“How many cartridges did you say you had
left?” he asked.
“Three,” came the answer. “An’ I wisht
’twas three hundred. Then I’d show ’em
what for, damn ’em!”
He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming
eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins
before the fire.
“An’ I wisht this cold snap’d break,”
he went on. “It’s ben fifty below for
two weeks now. An’ I wisht I’d never started
on this trip, Henry. I don’t like the looks
of it. I don’t feel right, somehow. An’
while I’m wishin’, I wisht the trip was
over an’ done with, an’ you an’ me a-sittin’
by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now
an’ playing cribbage—that’s what I wisht.”
Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he
dozed off he was aroused by his comrade’s
voice.
“Say, Henry, that other one that come in
an’ got a fish—why didn’t the dogs pitch
into it? That’s what’s botherin’ me.”
“You’re botherin’ too much, Bill,”
came the sleepy response. “You was never
like this before. You jes’ shut up now,
an’ go to sleep, an’ you’ll be all hunkydory
in the mornin’. Your stomach’s sour, that’s
what’s botherin’ you.”
The men slept, breathing heavily, side by
side, under the one covering. The fire died
down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the
circle they had flung about the camp. The
dogs clustered together in fear, now and again
snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew
close. Once their uproar became so loud that
Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully,
so as not to disturb the sleep of his comrade,
and threw more wood on the fire. As it began
to flame up, the circle of eyes drew farther
back. He glanced casually at the huddling
dogs. He rubbed his eyes and looked at them
more sharply. Then he crawled back into the
blankets.
“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”
Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking,
and demanded, “What’s wrong now?”
“Nothin’,” came the answer; “only
there’s seven of ’em again. I just counted.”
Henry acknowledged receipt of the information
with a grunt that slid into a snore as he
drifted back into sleep.
In the morning it was Henry who awoke first
and routed his companion out of bed. Daylight
was yet three hours away, though it was already
six o’clock; and in the darkness Henry went
about preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled
the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.
“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how
many dogs did you say we had?”
“Six.”
“Wrong,” Bill proclaimed triumphantly.
“Seven again?” Henry queried.
“No, five; one’s gone.”
“The hell!” Henry cried in wrath, leaving
the cooking to come and count the dogs.
“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded.
“Fatty’s gone.”
“An’ he went like greased lightnin’
once he got started. Couldn’t ’ve seen
’m for smoke.”
“No chance at all,” Henry concluded. “They
jes’ swallowed ’m alive. I bet he was
yelpin’ as he went down their throats, damn
’em!”
“He always was a fool dog,” said Bill.
“But no fool dog ought to be fool enough
to go off an’ commit suicide that way.”
He looked over the remainder of the team with
a speculative eye that summed up instantly
the salient traits of each animal. “I bet
none of the others would do it.”
“Couldn’t drive ’em away from the fire
with a club,” Bill agreed. “I always did
think there was somethin’ wrong with Fatty
anyway.”
And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on
the Northland trail—less scant than the
epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.
CHAPTER II—THE SHE-WOLF
Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed
to the sled, the men turned their backs on
the cheery fire and launched out into the
darkness. At once began to rise the cries
that were fiercely sad—cries that called
through the darkness and cold to one another
and answered back. Conversation ceased. Daylight
came at nine o’clock. At midday the sky
to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked
where the bulge of the earth intervened between
the meridian sun and the northern world. But
the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light
of day that remained lasted until three o’clock,
when it, too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic
night descended upon the lone and silent land.
As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to
right and left and rear drew closer—so close
that more than once they sent surges of fear
through the toiling dogs, throwing them into
short-lived panics.
At the conclusion of one such panic, when
he and Henry had got the dogs back in the
traces, Bill said:
“I wisht they’d strike game somewheres,
an’ go away an’ leave us alone.”
“They do get on the nerves horrible,”
Henry sympathised.
They spoke no more until camp was made.
Henry was bending over and adding ice to the
babbling pot of beans when he was startled
by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from
Bill, and a sharp snarling cry of pain from
among the dogs. He straightened up in time
to see a dim form disappearing across the
snow into the shelter of the dark. Then he
saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant,
half crestfallen, in one hand a stout club,
in the other the tail and part of the body
of a sun-cured salmon.
“It got half of it,” he announced; “but
I got a whack at it jes’ the same. D’ye
hear it squeal?”
“What’d it look like?” Henry asked.
“Couldn’t see. But it had four legs an’
a mouth an’ hair an’ looked like any dog.”
“Must be a tame wolf, I reckon.”
“It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’
in here at feedin’ time an’ gettin’
its whack of fish.”
That night, when supper was finished and they
sat on the oblong box and pulled at their
pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in
even closer than before.
“I wisht they’d spring up a bunch of moose
or something, an’ go away an’ leave us
alone,” Bill said.
Henry grunted with an intonation that was
not all sympathy, and for a quarter of an
hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring
at the fire, and Bill at the circle of eyes
that burned in the darkness just beyond the
firelight.
“I wisht we was pullin’ into McGurry right
now,” he began again.
“Shut up your wishin’ and your croakin’,”
Henry burst out angrily. “Your stomach’s
sour. That’s what’s ailin’ you. Swallow
a spoonful of sody, an’ you’ll sweeten
up wonderful an’ be more pleasant company.”
In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid
blasphemy that proceeded from the mouth of
Bill. Henry propped himself up on an elbow
and looked to see his comrade standing among
the dogs beside the replenished fire, his
arms raised in objurgation, his face distorted
with passion.
“Hello!” Henry called. “What’s up
now?”
“Frog’s gone,” came the answer.
“No.”
“I tell you yes.”
Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the
dogs. He counted them with care, and then
joined his partner in cursing the power of
the Wild that had robbed them of another dog.
“Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch,”
Bill pronounced finally.
“An’ he was no fool dog neither,” Henry
added.
And so was recorded the second epitaph in
two days.
A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four
remaining dogs were harnessed to the sled.
The day was a repetition of the days that
had gone before. The men toiled without speech
across the face of the frozen world. The silence
was unbroken save by the cries of their pursuers,
that, unseen, hung upon their rear. With the
coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the
cries sounded closer as the pursuers drew
in according to their custom; and the dogs
grew excited and frightened, and were guilty
of panics that tangled the traces and further
depressed the two men.
“There, that’ll fix you fool critters,”
Bill said with satisfaction that night, standing
erect at completion of his task.
Henry left the cooking to come and see. Not
only had his partner tied the dogs up, but
he had tied them, after the Indian fashion,
with sticks. About the neck of each dog he
had fastened a leather thong. To this, and
so close to the neck that the dog could not
get his teeth to it, he had tied a stout stick
four or five feet in length. The other end
of the stick, in turn, was made fast to a
stake in the ground by means of a leather
thong. The dog was unable to gnaw through
the leather at his own end of the stick. The
stick prevented him from getting at the leather
that fastened the other end.
Henry nodded his head approvingly.
“It’s the only contraption that’ll ever
hold One Ear,” he said. “He can gnaw through
leather as clean as a knife an’ jes’ about
half as quick. They all’ll be here in the
mornin’ hunkydory.”
“You jes’ bet they will,” Bill affirmed.
“If one of em’ turns up missin’, I’ll
go without my coffee.”
“They jes’ know we ain’t loaded to kill,”
Henry remarked at bed-time, indicating the
gleaming circle that hemmed them in. “If
we could put a couple of shots into ’em,
they’d be more respectful. They come closer
every night. Get the firelight out of your
eyes an’ look hard—there! Did you see
that one?”
For some time the two men amused themselves
with watching the movement of vague forms
on the edge of the firelight. By looking closely
and steadily at where a pair of eyes burned
in the darkness, the form of the animal would
slowly take shape. They could even see these
forms move at times.
A sound among the dogs attracted the men’s
attention. One Ear was uttering quick, eager
whines, lunging at the length of his stick
toward the darkness, and desisting now and
again in order to make frantic attacks on
the stick with his teeth.
“Look at that, Bill,” Henry whispered.
Full into the firelight, with a stealthy,
sidelong movement, glided a doglike animal.
It moved with commingled mistrust and daring,
cautiously observing the men, its attention
fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the full
length of the stick toward the intruder and
whined with eagerness.
“That fool One Ear don’t seem scairt much,”
Bill said in a low tone.
“It’s a she-wolf,” Henry whispered back,
“an’ that accounts for Fatty an’ Frog.
She’s the decoy for the pack. She draws
out the dog an’ then all the rest pitches
in an’ eats ’m up.”
The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a
loud spluttering noise. At the sound of it
the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.
“Henry, I’m a-thinkin’,” Bill announced.
“Thinkin’ what?”
“I’m a-thinkin’ that was the one I lambasted
with the club.”
“Ain’t the slightest doubt in the world,”
was Henry’s response.
“An’ right here I want to remark,” Bill
went on, “that that animal’s familyarity
with campfires is suspicious an’ immoral.”
“It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’
wolf ought to know,” Henry agreed. “A
wolf that knows enough to come in with the
dogs at feedin’ time has had experiences.”
“Ol’ Villan had a dog once that run away
with the wolves,” Bill cogitates aloud.
“I ought to know. I shot it out of the pack
in a moose pasture over ‘on Little Stick.
An’ Ol’ Villan cried like a baby. Hadn’t
seen it for three years, he said. Ben with
the wolves all that time.”
“I reckon you’ve called the turn, Bill.
That wolf’s a dog, an’ it’s eaten fish
many’s the time from the hand of man.”
“An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that’s
a dog’ll be jes’ meat,” Bill declared.
“We can’t afford to lose no more animals.”
“But you’ve only got three cartridges,”
Henry objected.
“I’ll wait for a dead sure shot,” was
the reply.
In the morning Henry renewed the fire and
cooked breakfast to the accompaniment of his
partner’s snoring.
“You was sleepin’ jes’ too comfortable
for anything,” Henry told him, as he routed
him out for breakfast. “I hadn’t the heart
to rouse you.”
Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that
his cup was empty and started to reach for
the pot. But the pot was beyond arm’s length
and beside Henry.
“Say, Henry,” he chided gently, “ain’t
you forgot somethin’?”
Henry looked about with great carefulness
and shook his head. Bill held up the empty
cup.
“You don’t get no coffee,” Henry announced.
“Ain’t run out?” Bill asked anxiously.
“Nope.”
“Ain’t thinkin’ it’ll hurt my digestion?”
“Nope.”
A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill’s face.
“Then it’s jes’ warm an’ anxious I
am to be hearin’ you explain yourself,”
he said.
“Spanker’s gone,” Henry answered.
Without haste, with the air of one resigned
to misfortune Bill turned his head, and from
where he sat counted the dogs.
“How’d it happen?” he asked apathetically.
Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know.
Unless One Ear gnawed ’m loose. He couldn’t
a-done it himself, that’s sure.”
“The darned cuss.” Bill spoke gravely
and slowly, with no hint of the anger that
was raging within. “Jes’ because he couldn’t
chew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose.”
“Well, Spanker’s troubles is over anyway;
I guess he’s digested by this time an’
cavortin’ over the landscape in the bellies
of twenty different wolves,” was Henry’s
epitaph on this, the latest lost dog. “Have
some coffee, Bill.”
But Bill shook his head.
“Go on,” Henry pleaded, elevating the
pot.
Bill shoved his cup aside. “I’ll be ding-dong-danged
if I do. I said I wouldn’t if ary dog turned
up missin’, an’ I won’t.”
“It’s darn good coffee,” Henry said
enticingly.
But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast
washed down with mumbled curses at One Ear
for the trick he had played.
“I’ll tie ’em up out of reach of each
other to-night,” Bill said, as they took
the trail.
They had travelled little more than a hundred
yards, when Henry, who was in front, bent
down and picked up something with which his
snowshoe had collided. It was dark, and he
could not see it, but he recognised it by
the touch. He flung it back, so that it struck
the sled and bounced along until it fetched
up on Bill’s snowshoes.
“Mebbe you’ll need that in your business,”
Henry said.
Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that
was left of Spanker—the stick with which
he had been tied.
“They ate ’m hide an’ all,” Bill announced.
“The stick’s as clean as a whistle. They’ve
ate the leather offen both ends. They’re
damn hungry, Henry, an’ they’ll have you
an’ me guessin’ before this trip’s over.”
Henry laughed defiantly. “I ain’t been
trailed this way by wolves before, but I’ve
gone through a whole lot worse an’ kept
my health. Takes more’n a handful of them
pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill,
my son.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Bill
muttered ominously.
“Well, you’ll know all right when we pull
into McGurry.”
“I ain’t feelin’ special enthusiastic,”
Bill persisted.
“You’re off colour, that’s what’s
the matter with you,” Henry dogmatised.
“What you need is quinine, an’ I’m goin’
to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry.”
Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis,
and lapsed into silence. The day was like
all the days. Light came at nine o’clock.
At twelve o’clock the southern horizon was
warmed by the unseen sun; and then began the
cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three
hours later, into night.
It was just after the sun’s futile effort
to appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from
under the sled-lashings and said:
“You keep right on, Henry, I’m goin’
to see what I can see.”
“You’d better stick by the sled,” his
partner protested. “You’ve only got three
cartridges, an’ there’s no tellin’ what
might happen.”
“Who’s croaking now?” Bill demanded
triumphantly.
Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone,
though often he cast anxious glances back
into the grey solitude where his partner had
disappeared. An hour later, taking advantage
of the cut-offs around which the sled had
to go, Bill arrived.
“They’re scattered an’ rangin’ along
wide,” he said: “keeping up with us an’
lookin’ for game at the same time. You see,
they’re sure of us, only they know they’ve
got to wait to get us. In the meantime they’re
willin’ to pick up anything eatable that
comes handy.”
“You mean they think they’re sure of us,”
Henry objected pointedly.
But Bill ignored him. “I seen some of them.
They’re pretty thin. They ain’t had a
bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an’
Frog an’ Spanker; an’ there’s so many
of ’em that that didn’t go far. They’re
remarkable thin. Their ribs is like wash-boards,
an’ their stomachs is right up against their
backbones. They’re pretty desperate, I can
tell you. They’ll be goin’ mad, yet, an’
then watch out.”
A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling
behind the sled, emitted a low, warning whistle.
Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped
the dogs. To the rear, from around the last
bend and plainly into view, on the very trail
they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking
form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted
with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait.
When they halted, it halted, throwing up its
head and regarding them steadily with nostrils
that twitched as it caught and studied the
scent of them.
“It’s the she-wolf,” Bill answered.
The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he
walked past them to join his partner in the
sled. Together they watched the strange animal
that had pursued them for days and that had
already accomplished the destruction of half
their dog-team.
After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted
forward a few steps. This it repeated several
times, till it was a short hundred yards away.
It paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce
trees, and with sight and scent studied the
outfit of the watching men. It looked at them
in a strangely wistful way, after the manner
of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was
none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness
bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs,
as merciless as the frost itself.
It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising
the lines of an animal that was among the
largest of its kind.
“Stands pretty close to two feet an’ a
half at the shoulders,” Henry commented.
“An’ I’ll bet it ain’t far from five
feet long.”
“Kind of strange colour for a wolf,” was
Bill’s criticism. “I never seen a red
wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me.”
The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured.
Its coat was the true wolf-coat. The dominant
colour was grey, and yet there was to it a
faint reddish hue—a hue that was baffling,
that appeared and disappeared, that was more
like an illusion of the vision, now grey,
distinctly grey, and again giving hints and
glints of a vague redness of colour not classifiable
in terms of ordinary experience.
“Looks for all the world like a big husky
sled-dog,” Bill said. “I wouldn’t be
s’prised to see it wag its tail.”
“Hello, you husky!” he called. “Come
here, you whatever-your-name-is.”
“Ain’t a bit scairt of you,” Henry laughed.
Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and
shouted loudly; but the animal betrayed no
fear. The only change in it that they could
notice was an accession of alertness. It still
regarded them with the merciless wistfulness
of hunger. They were meat, and it was hungry;
and it would like to go in and eat them if
it dared.
“Look here, Henry,” Bill said, unconsciously
lowering his voice to a whisper because of
what he imitated. “We’ve got three cartridges.
But it’s a dead shot. Couldn’t miss it.
It’s got away with three of our dogs, an’
we oughter put a stop to it. What d’ye say?”
Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously
slipped the gun from under the sled-lashing.
The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but
it never got there. For in that instant the
she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail into
the clump of spruce trees and disappeared.
The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled
long and comprehendingly.
“I might have knowed it,” Bill chided
himself aloud as he replaced the gun. “Of
course a wolf that knows enough to come in
with the dogs at feedin’ time, ’d know
all about shooting-irons. I tell you right
now, Henry, that critter’s the cause of
all our trouble. We’d have six dogs at the
present time, ’stead of three, if it wasn’t
for her. An’ I tell you right now, Henry,
I’m goin’ to get her. She’s too smart
to be shot in the open. But I’m goin’
to lay for her. I’ll bushwhack her as sure
as my name is Bill.”
“You needn’t stray off too far in doin’
it,” his partner admonished. “If that
pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges’d
be wuth no more’n three whoops in hell.
Them animals is damn hungry, an’ once they
start in, they’ll sure get you, Bill.”
They camped early that night. Three dogs could
not drag the sled so fast nor for so long
hours as could six, and they were showing
unmistakable signs of playing out. And the
men went early to bed, Bill first seeing to
it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach
of one another.
But the wolves were growing bolder, and the
men were aroused more than once from their
sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that
the dogs became frantic with terror, and it
was necessary to replenish the fire from time
to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders
at safer distance.
“I’ve hearn sailors talk of sharks followin’
a ship,” Bill remarked, as he crawled back
into the blankets after one such replenishing
of the fire. “Well, them wolves is land
sharks. They know their business better’n
we do, an’ they ain’t a-holdin’ our
trail this way for their health. They’re
goin’ to get us. They’re sure goin’
to get us, Henry.”
“They’ve half got you a’ready, a-talkin’
like that,” Henry retorted sharply. “A
man’s half licked when he says he is. An’
you’re half eaten from the way you’re
goin’ on about it.”
“They’ve got away with better men than
you an’ me,” Bill answered.
“Oh, shet up your croakin’. You make me
all-fired tired.”
Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but
was surprised that Bill made no similar display
of temper. This was not Bill’s way, for
he was easily angered by sharp words. Henry
thought long over it before he went to sleep,
and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed
off, the thought in his mind was: “There’s
no mistakin’ it, Bill’s almighty blue.
I’ll have to cheer him up to-morrow.”
CHAPTER III—THE HUNGER CRY
The day began auspiciously. They had lost
no dogs during the night, and they swung out
upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness,
and the cold with spirits that were fairly
light. Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings
of the previous night, and even waxed facetious
with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned
the sled on a bad piece of trail.
It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside
down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a
huge rock, and they were forced to unharness
the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle.
The two men were bent over the sled and trying
to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling
away.
“Here, you, One Ear!” he cried, straightening
up and turning around on the dog.
But One Ear broke into a run across the snow,
his traces trailing behind him. And there,
out in the snow of their back track, was the
she-wolf waiting for him. As he neared her,
he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down
to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped.
He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet
desirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing
her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a
menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps,
playfully, and then halted. One Ear drew near
to her, still alert and cautious, his tail
and ears in the air, his head held high.
He tried to sniff noses with her, but she
retreated playfully and coyly. Every advance
on his part was accompanied by a corresponding
retreat on her part. Step by step she was
luring him away from the security of his human
companionship. Once, as though a warning had
in vague ways flitted through his intelligence,
he turned his head and looked back at the
overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at
the two men who were calling to him.
But whatever idea was forming in his mind,
was dissipated by the she-wolf, who advanced
upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting
instant, and then resumed her coy retreat
before his renewed advances.
In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself
of the rifle. But it was jammed beneath the
overturned sled, and by the time Henry had
helped him to right the load, One Ear and
the she-wolf were too close together and the
distance too great to risk a shot.
Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before
they saw the cause, the two men saw him turn
and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching
at right angles to the trail and cutting off
his retreat they saw a dozen wolves, lean
and grey, bounding across the snow. On the
instant, the she-wolf’s coyness and playfulness
disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon
One Ear. He thrust her off with his shoulder,
and, his retreat cut off and still intent
on regaining the sled, he altered his course
in an attempt to circle around to it. More
wolves were appearing every moment and joining
in the chase. The she-wolf was one leap behind
One Ear and holding her own.
“Where are you goin’?” Henry suddenly
demanded, laying his hand on his partner’s
arm.
Bill shook it off. “I won’t stand it,”
he said. “They ain’t a-goin’ to get
any more of our dogs if I can help it.”
Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush
that lined the side of the trail. His intention
was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the
centre of the circle that One Ear was making,
Bill planned to tap that circle at a point
in advance of the pursuit. With his rifle,
in the broad daylight, it might be possible
for him to awe the wolves and save the dog.
“Say, Bill!” Henry called after him. “Be
careful! Don’t take no chances!”
Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There
was nothing else for him to do. Bill had already
gone from sight; but now and again, appearing
and disappearing amongst the underbrush and
the scattered clumps of spruce, could be seen
One Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless.
The dog was thoroughly alive to its danger,
but it was running on the outer circle while
the wolf-pack was running on the inner and
shorter circle. It was vain to think of One
Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be
able to cut across their circle in advance
of them and to regain the sled.
The different lines were rapidly approaching
a point. Somewhere out there in the snow,
screened from his sight by trees and thickets,
Henry knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and
Bill were coming together. All too quickly,
far more quickly than he had expected, it
happened. He heard a shot, then two shots,
in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill’s
ammunition was gone. Then he heard a great
outcry of snarls and yelps. He recognised
One Ear’s yell of pain and terror, and he
heard a wolf-cry that bespoke a stricken animal.
And that was all. The snarls ceased. The yelping
died away. Silence settled down again over
the lonely land.
He sat for a long while upon the sled. There
was no need for him to go and see what had
happened. He knew it as though it had taken
place before his eyes. Once, he roused with
a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath
the lashings. But for some time longer he
sat and brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching
and trembling at his feet.
At last he arose in a weary manner, as though
all the resilience had gone out of his body,
and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled.
He passed a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace,
and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far.
At the first hint of darkness he hastened
to make a camp, and he saw to it that he had
a generous supply of firewood. He fed the
dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made
his bed close to the fire.
But he was not destined to enjoy that bed.
Before his eyes closed the wolves had drawn
too near for safety. It no longer required
an effort of the vision to see them. They
were all about him and the fire, in a narrow
circle, and he could see them plainly in the
firelight lying down, sitting up, crawling
forward on their bellies, or slinking back
and forth. They even slept. Here and there
he could see one curled up in the snow like
a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied
himself.
He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he
knew that it alone intervened between the
flesh of his body and their hungry fangs.
His two dogs stayed close by him, one on either
side, leaning against him for protection,
crying and whimpering, and at times snarling
desperately when a wolf approached a little
closer than usual. At such moments, when his
dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated,
the wolves coming to their feet and pressing
tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and
eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle
would lie down again, and here and there a
wolf would resume its broken nap.
But this circle had a continuous tendency
to draw in upon him. Bit by bit, an inch at
a time, with here a wolf bellying forward,
and there a wolf bellying forward, the circle
would narrow until the brutes were almost
within springing distance. Then he would seize
brands from the fire and hurl them into the
pack. A hasty drawing back always resulted,
accompanied by angry yelps and frightened
snarls when a well-aimed brand struck and
scorched a too daring animal.
Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed
from want of sleep. He cooked breakfast in
the darkness, and at nine o’clock, when,
with the coming of daylight, the wolf-pack
drew back, he set about the task he had planned
through the long hours of the night. Chopping
down young saplings, he made them cross-bars
of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the
trunks of standing trees. Using the sled-lashing
for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the
dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of
the scaffold.
“They got Bill, an’ they may get me, but
they’ll sure never get you, young man,”
he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre.
Then he took the trail, the lightened sled
bounding along behind the willing dogs; for
they, too, knew that safety lay open in the
gaining of Fort McGurry. The wolves were now
more open in their pursuit, trotting sedately
behind and ranging along on either side, their
red tongues lolling out, their lean sides
showing the undulating ribs with every movement.
They were very lean, mere skin-bags stretched
over bony frames, with strings for muscles—so
lean that Henry found it in his mind to marvel
that they still kept their feet and did not
collapse forthright in the snow.
He did not dare travel until dark. At midday,
not only did the sun warm the southern horizon,
but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and
golden, above the sky-line. He received it
as a sign. The days were growing longer. The
sun was returning. But scarcely had the cheer
of its light departed, than he went into camp.
There were still several hours of grey daylight
and sombre twilight, and he utilised them
in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood.
With night came horror. Not only were the
starving wolves growing bolder, but lack of
sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite
himself, crouching by the fire, the blankets
about his shoulders, the axe between his knees,
and on either side a dog pressing close against
him. He awoke once and saw in front of him,
not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one
of the largest of the pack. And even as he
looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself
after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full
in his face and looking upon him with a possessive
eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed
meal that was soon to be eaten.
This certitude was shown by the whole pack.
Fully a score he could count, staring hungrily
at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They
reminded him of children gathered about a
spread table and awaiting permission to begin
to eat. And he was the food they were to eat!
He wondered how and when the meal would begin.
As he piled wood on the fire he discovered
an appreciation of his own body which he had
never felt before. He watched his moving muscles
and was interested in the cunning mechanism
of his fingers. By the light of the fire he
crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly
now one at a time, now all together, spreading
them wide or making quick gripping movements.
He studied the nail-formation, and prodded
the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly,
gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced.
It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond
of this subtle flesh of his that worked so
beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then
he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle
drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow
the realisation would strike him that this
wonderful body of his, this living flesh,
was no more than so much meat, a quest of
ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by
their hungry fangs, to be sustenance to them
as the moose and the rabbit had often been
sustenance to him.
He came out of a doze that was half nightmare,
to see the red-hued she-wolf before him. She
was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting
in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The
two dogs were whimpering and snarling at his
feet, but she took no notice of them. She
was looking at the man, and for some time
he returned her look. There was nothing threatening
about her. She looked at him merely with a
great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the
wistfulness of an equally great hunger. He
was the food, and the sight of him excited
in her the gustatory sensations. Her mouth
opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she
licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.
A spasm of fear went through him. He reached
hastily for a brand to throw at her. But even
as he reached, and before his fingers had
closed on the missile, she sprang back into
safety; and he knew that she was used to having
things thrown at her. She had snarled as she
sprang away, baring her white fangs to their
roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being
replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made
him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held
the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of
the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted
themselves to all the inequalities of the
surface, curling over and under and about
the rough wood, and one little finger, too
close to the burning portion of the brand,
sensitively and automatically writhing back
from the hurtful heat to a cooler gripping-place;
and in the same instant he seemed to see a
vision of those same sensitive and delicate
fingers being crushed and torn by the white
teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so
fond of this body of his as now when his tenure
of it was so precarious.
All night, with burning brands, he fought
off the hungry pack. When he dozed despite
himself, the whimpering and snarling of the
dogs aroused him. Morning came, but for the
first time the light of day failed to scatter
the wolves. The man waited in vain for them
to go. They remained in a circle about him
and his fire, displaying an arrogance of possession
that shook his courage born of the morning
light.
He made one desperate attempt to pull out
on the trail. But the moment he left the protection
of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him,
but leaped short. He saved himself by springing
back, the jaws snapping together a scant six
inches from his thigh. The rest of the pack
was now up and surging upon him, and a throwing
of firebrands right and left was necessary
to drive them back to a respectful distance.
Even in the daylight he did not dare leave
the fire to chop fresh wood. Twenty feet away
towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half
the day extending his campfire to the tree,
at any moment a half dozen burning faggots
ready at hand to fling at his enemies. Once
at the tree, he studied the surrounding forest
in order to fell the tree in the direction
of the most firewood.
The night was a repetition of the night before,
save that the need for sleep was becoming
overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was
losing its efficacy. Besides, they were snarling
all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy
senses no longer took note of changing pitch
and intensity. He awoke with a start. The
she-wolf was less than a yard from him. Mechanically,
at short range, without letting go of it,
he thrust a brand full into her open and snarling
mouth. She sprang away, yelling with pain,
and while he took delight in the smell of
burning flesh and hair, he watched her shaking
her head and growling wrathfully a score of
feet away.
But this time, before he dozed again, he tied
a burning pine-knot to his right hand. His
eyes were closed but few minutes when the
burn of the flame on his flesh awakened him.
For several hours he adhered to this programme.
Every time he was thus awakened he drove back
the wolves with flying brands, replenished
the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on
his hand. All worked well, but there came
a time when he fastened the pine-knot insecurely.
As his eyes closed it fell away from his hand.
He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in
Fort McGurry. It was warm and comfortable,
and he was playing cribbage with the Factor.
Also, it seemed to him that the fort was besieged
by wolves. They were howling at the very gates,
and sometimes he and the Factor paused from
the game to listen and laugh at the futile
efforts of the wolves to get in. And then,
so strange was the dream, there was a crash.
The door was burst open. He could see the
wolves flooding into the big living-room of
the fort. They were leaping straight for him
and the Factor. With the bursting open of
the door, the noise of their howling had increased
tremendously. This howling now bothered him.
His dream was merging into something else—he
knew not what; but through it all, following
him, persisted the howling.
And then he awoke to find the howling real.
There was a great snarling and yelping. The
wolves were rushing him. They were all about
him and upon him. The teeth of one had closed
upon his arm. Instinctively he leaped into
the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the sharp
slash of teeth that tore through the flesh
of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His stout
mittens temporarily protected his hands, and
he scooped live coals into the air in all
directions, until the campfire took on the
semblance of a volcano.
But it could not last long. His face was blistering
in the heat, his eyebrows and lashes were
singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable
to his feet. With a flaming brand in each
hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire. The
wolves had been driven back. On every side,
wherever the live coals had fallen, the snow
was sizzling, and every little while a retiring
wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl,
announced that one such live coal had been
stepped upon.
Flinging his brands at the nearest of his
enemies, the man thrust his smouldering mittens
into the snow and stamped about to cool his
feet. His two dogs were missing, and he well
knew that they had served as a course in the
protracted meal which had begun days before
with Fatty, the last course of which would
likely be himself in the days to follow.
“You ain’t got me yet!” he cried, savagely
shaking his fist at the hungry beasts; and
at the sound of his voice the whole circle
was agitated, there was a general snarl, and
the she-wolf slid up close to him across the
snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.
He set to work to carry out a new idea that
had come to him. He extended the fire into
a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched,
his sleeping outfit under him as a protection
against the melting snow. When he had thus
disappeared within his shelter of flame, the
whole pack came curiously to the rim of the
fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto
they had been denied access to the fire, and
they now settled down in a close-drawn circle,
like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and
stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed
warmth. Then the she-wolf sat down, pointed
her nose at a star, and began to howl. One
by one the wolves joined her, till the whole
pack, on haunches, with noses pointed skyward,
was howling its hunger cry.
Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning
low. The fuel had run out, and there was need
to get more. The man attempted to step out
of his circle of flame, but the wolves surged
to meet him. Burning brands made them spring
aside, but they no longer sprang back. In
vain he strove to drive them back. As he gave
up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf
leaped for him, missed, and landed with all
four feet in the coals. It cried out with
terror, at the same time snarling, and scrambled
back to cool its paws in the snow.
The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching
position. His body leaned forward from the
hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping,
and his head on his knees advertised that
he had given up the struggle. Now and again
he raised his head to note the dying down
of the fire. The circle of flame and coals
was breaking into segments with openings in
between. These openings grew in size, the
segments diminished.
“I guess you can come an’ get me any time,”
he mumbled. “Anyway, I’m goin’ to sleep.”
Once he awakened, and in an opening in the
circle, directly in front of him, he saw the
she-wolf gazing at him.
Again he awakened, a little later, though
it seemed hours to him. A mysterious change
had taken place—so mysterious a change that
he was shocked wider awake. Something had
happened. He could not understand at first.
Then he discovered it. The wolves were gone.
Remained only the trampled snow to show how
closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling
up and gripping him again, his head was sinking
down upon his knees, when he roused with a
sudden start.
There were cries of men, and churn of sleds,
the creaking of harnesses, and the eager whimpering
of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from
the river bed to the camp among the trees.
Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched
in the centre of the dying fire. They were
shaking and prodding him into consciousness.
He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered
in strange, sleepy speech.
“Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs
at feedin’ time. . . . First she ate the
dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An’
after that she ate Bill. . . . ”
“Where’s Lord Alfred?” one of the men
bellowed in his ear, shaking him roughly.
He shook his head slowly. “No, she didn’t
eat him. . . . He’s roostin’ in a tree
at the last camp.”
“Dead?” the man shouted.
“An’ in a box,” Henry answered. He jerked
his shoulder petulantly away from the grip
of his questioner. “Say, you lemme alone.
. . . I’m jes’ plump tuckered out. . . . Goo’
night, everybody.”
His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin
fell forward on his chest. And even as they
eased him down upon the blankets his snores
were rising on the frosty air.
But there was another sound. Far and faint
it was, in the remote distance, the cry of
the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail
of other meat than the man it had just missed.
PART II
CHAPTER I—THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS
It was the she-wolf who had first caught the
sound of men’s voices and the whining of
the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who
was first to spring away from the cornered
man in his circle of dying flame. The pack
had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted
down, and it lingered for several minutes,
making sure of the sounds, and then it, too,
sprang away on the trail made by the she-wolf.
Running at the forefront of the pack was a
large grey wolf—one of its several leaders.
It was he who directed the pack’s course
on the heels of the she-wolf. It was he who
snarled warningly at the younger members of
the pack or slashed at them with his fangs
when they ambitiously tried to pass him. And
it was he who increased the pace when he sighted
the she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the
snow.
She dropped in alongside by him, as though
it were her appointed position, and took the
pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her,
nor show his teeth, when any leap of hers
chanced to put her in advance of him. On the
contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward
her—too kindly to suit her, for he was prone
to run near to her, and when he ran too near
it was she who snarled and showed her teeth.
Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply
on occasion. At such times he betrayed no
anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran
stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in
carriage and conduct resembling an abashed
country swain.
This was his one trouble in the running of
the pack; but she had other troubles. On her
other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled
and marked with the scars of many battles.
He ran always on her right side. The fact
that he had but one eye, and that the left
eye, might account for this. He, also, was
addicted to crowding her, to veering toward
her till his scarred muzzle touched her body,
or shoulder, or neck. As with the running
mate on the left, she repelled these attentions
with her teeth; but when both bestowed their
attentions at the same time she was roughly
jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps
to either side, to drive both lovers away
and at the same time to maintain her forward
leap with the pack and see the way of her
feet before her. At such times her running
mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly
across at each other. They might have fought,
but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon
the more pressing hunger-need of the pack.
After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered
abruptly away from the sharp-toothed object
of his desire, he shouldered against a young
three-year-old that ran on his blind right
side. This young wolf had attained his full
size; and, considering the weak and famished
condition of the pack, he possessed more than
the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless,
he ran with his head even with the shoulder
of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to
run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom),
a snarl and a snap sent him back even with
the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he
dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged
in between the old leader and the she-wolf.
This was doubly resented, even triply resented.
When she snarled her displeasure, the old
leader would whirl on the three-year-old.
Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes
the young leader on the left whirled, too.
At such times, confronted by three sets of
savage teeth, the young wolf stopped precipitately,
throwing himself back on his haunches, with
fore-legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane
bristling. This confusion in the front of
the moving pack always caused confusion in
the rear. The wolves behind collided with
the young wolf and expressed their displeasure
by administering sharp nips on his hind-legs
and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself,
for lack of food and short tempers went together;
but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted
in repeating the manoeuvre every little while,
though it never succeeded in gaining anything
for him but discomfiture.
Had there been food, love-making and fighting
would have gone on apace, and the pack-formation
would have been broken up. But the situation
of the pack was desperate. It was lean with
long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary
speed. At the rear limped the weak members,
the very young and the very old. At the front
were the strongest. Yet all were more like
skeletons than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless,
with the exception of the ones that limped,
the movements of the animals were effortless
and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed
founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every
steel-like contraction of a muscle, lay another
steel-like contraction, and another, and another,
apparently without end.
They ran many miles that day. They ran through
the night. And the next day found them still
running. They were running over the surface
of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred.
They alone moved through the vast inertness.
They alone were alive, and they sought for
other things that were alive in order that
they might devour them and continue to live.
They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen
small streams in a lower-lying country before
their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon
moose. It was a big bull they first found.
Here was meat and life, and it was guarded
by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles
of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers
they knew, and they flung their customary
patience and caution to the wind. It was a
brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset
on every side. He ripped them open or split
their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of
his great hoofs. He crushed them and broke
them on his large horns. He stamped them into
the snow under him in the wallowing struggle.
But he was foredoomed, and he went down with
the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat,
and with other teeth fixed everywhere upon
him, devouring him alive, before ever his
last struggles ceased or his last damage had
been wrought.
There was food in plenty. The bull weighed
over eight hundred pounds—fully twenty pounds
of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves
of the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously,
they could feed prodigiously, and soon a few
scattered bones were all that remained of
the splendid live brute that had faced the
pack a few hours before.
There was now much resting and sleeping. With
full stomachs, bickering and quarrelling began
among the younger males, and this continued
through the few days that followed before
the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was
over. The wolves were now in the country of
game, and though they still hunted in pack,
they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy
cows or crippled old bulls from the small
moose-herds they ran across.
There came a day, in this land of plenty,
when the wolf-pack split in half and went
in different directions. The she-wolf, the
young leader on her left, and the one-eyed
elder on her right, led their half of the
pack down to the Mackenzie River and across
into the lake country to the east. Each day
this remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by
two, male and female, the wolves were deserting.
Occasionally a solitary male was driven out
by the sharp teeth of his rivals. In the end
there remained only four: the she-wolf, the
young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious
three-year-old.
The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious
temper. Her three suitors all bore the marks
of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind,
never defended themselves against her. They
turned their shoulders to her most savage
slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing
steps strove to placate her wrath. But if
they were all mildness toward her, they were
all fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old
grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught
the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped
his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled
old fellow could see only on one side, against
the youth and vigour of the other he brought
into play the wisdom of long years of experience.
His lost eye and his scarred muzzle bore evidence
to the nature of his experience. He had survived
too many battles to be in doubt for a moment
about what to do.
The battle began fairly, but it did not end
fairly. There was no telling what the outcome
would have been, for the third wolf joined
the elder, and together, old leader and young
leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old
and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset
on either side by the merciless fangs of his
erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days
they had hunted together, the game they had
pulled down, the famine they had suffered.
That business was a thing of the past. The
business of love was at hand—ever a sterner
and crueller business than that of food-getting.
And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause
of it all, sat down contentedly on her haunches
and watched. She was even pleased. This was
her day—and it came not often—when manes
bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and
tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession
of her.
And in the business of love the three-year-old,
who had made this his first adventure upon
it, yielded up his life. On either side of
his body stood his two rivals. They were gazing
at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow.
But the elder leader was wise, very wise,
in love even as in battle. The younger leader
turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder.
The curve of his neck was turned toward his
rival. With his one eye the elder saw the
opportunity. He darted in low and closed with
his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and
deep as well. His teeth, in passing, burst
the wall of the great vein of the throat.
Then he leaped clear.
The young leader snarled terribly, but his
snarl broke midmost into a tickling cough.
Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he
sprang at the elder and fought while life
faded from him, his legs going weak beneath
him, the light of day dulling on his eyes,
his blows and springs falling shorter and
shorter.
And all the while the she-wolf sat on her
haunches and smiled. She was made glad in
vague ways by the battle, for this was the
love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of
the natural world that was tragedy only to
those that died. To those that survived it
was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement.
When the young leader lay in the snow and
moved no more, One Eye stalked over to the
she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled
triumph and caution. He was plainly expectant
of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised
when her teeth did not flash out at him in
anger. For the first time she met him with
a kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him,
and even condescended to leap about and frisk
and play with him in quite puppyish fashion.
And he, for all his grey years and sage experience,
behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little
more foolishly.
Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals
and the love-tale red-written on the snow.
Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped
for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds.
Then it was that his lips half writhed into
a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders
involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched
for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching
into the snow-surface for firmer footing.
But it was all forgotten the next moment,
as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly
leading him a chase through the woods.
After that they ran side by side, like good
friends who have come to an understanding.
The days passed by, and they kept together,
hunting their meat and killing and eating
it in common. After a time the she-wolf began
to grow restless. She seemed to be searching
for something that she could not find. The
hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract
her, and she spent much time nosing about
among the larger snow-piled crevices in the
rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks.
Old One Eye was not interested at all, but
he followed her good-naturedly in her quest,
and when her investigations in particular
places were unusually protracted, he would
lie down and wait until she was ready to go
on.
They did not remain in one place, but travelled
across country until they regained the Mackenzie
River, down which they slowly went, leaving
it often to hunt game along the small streams
that entered it, but always returning to it
again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves,
usually in pairs; but there was no friendliness
of intercourse displayed on either side, no
gladness at meeting, no desire to return to
the pack-formation. Several times they encountered
solitary wolves. These were always males,
and they were pressingly insistent on joining
with One Eye and his mate. This he resented,
and when she stood shoulder to shoulder with
him, bristling and showing her teeth, the
aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail,
and continue on their lonely way.
One moonlight night, running through the quiet
forest, One Eye suddenly halted. His muzzle
went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils
dilated as he scented the air. One foot also
he held up, after the manner of a dog. He
was not satisfied, and he continued to smell
the air, striving to understand the message
borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had
satisfied his mate, and she trotted on to
reassure him. Though he followed her, he was
still dubious, and he could not forbear an
occasional halt in order more carefully to
study the warning.
She crept out cautiously on the edge of a
large open space in the midst of the trees.
For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye,
creeping and crawling, every sense on the
alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion,
joined her. They stood side by side, watching
and listening and smelling.
To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling
and scuffling, the guttural cries of men,
the sharper voices of scolding women, and
once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child.
With the exception of the huge bulks of the
skin-lodges, little could be seen save the
flames of the fire, broken by the movements
of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising
slowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils
came the myriad smells of an Indian camp,
carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible
to One Eye, but every detail of which the
she-wolf knew.
She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and
sniffed with an increasing delight. But old
One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension,
and started tentatively to go. She turned
and touched his neck with her muzzle in a
reassuring way, then regarded the camp again.
A new wistfulness was in her face, but it
was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was
thrilling to a desire that urged her to go
forward, to be in closer to that fire, to
be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding
and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her
unrest came back upon her, and she knew again
her pressing need to find the thing for which
she searched. She turned and trotted back
into the forest, to the great relief of One
Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until
they were well within the shelter of the trees.
As they slid along, noiseless as shadows,
in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way.
Both noses went down to the footprints in
the snow. These footprints were very fresh.
One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at
his heels. The broad pads of their feet were
spread wide and in contact with the snow were
like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim
movement of white in the midst of the white.
His sliding gait had been deceptively swift,
but it was as nothing to the speed at which
he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint
patch of white he had discovered.
They were running along a narrow alley flanked
on either side by a growth of young spruce.
Through the trees the mouth of the alley could
be seen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old
One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing
shape of white. Bound by bound he gained.
Now he was upon it. One leap more and his
teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap
was never made. High in the air, and straight
up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling
snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing
a fantastic dance there above him in the air
and never once returning to earth.
One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden
fright, then shrank down to the snow and crouched,
snarling threats at this thing of fear he
did not understand. But the she-wolf coolly
thrust past him. She poised for a moment,
then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too,
soared high, but not so high as the quarry,
and her teeth clipped emptily together with
a metallic snap. She made another leap, and
another.
Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch
and was watching her. He now evinced displeasure
at her repeated failures, and himself made
a mighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon
the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with
him. But at the same time there was a suspicious
crackling movement beside him, and his astonished
eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down
above him to strike him. His jaws let go their
grip, and he leaped backward to escape this
strange danger, his lips drawn back from his
fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling
with rage and fright. And in that moment the
sapling reared its slender length upright
and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.
The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs
into her mate’s shoulder in reproof; and
he, frightened, unaware of what constituted
this new onslaught, struck back ferociously
and in still greater fright, ripping down
the side of the she-wolf’s muzzle. For him
to resent such reproof was equally unexpected
to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling
indignation. Then he discovered his mistake
and tried to placate her. But she proceeded
to punish him roundly, until he gave over
all attempts at placation, and whirled in
a circle, his head away from her, his shoulders
receiving the punishment of her teeth.
In the meantime the rabbit danced above them
in the air. The she-wolf sat down in the snow,
and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate
than of the mysterious sapling, again sprang
for the rabbit. As he sank back with it between
his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling.
As before, it followed him back to earth.
He crouched down under the impending blow,
his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping
tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did
not fall. The sapling remained bent above
him. When he moved it moved, and he growled
at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained
still, it remained still, and he concluded
it was safer to continue remaining still.
Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good
in his mouth.
It was his mate who relieved him from the
quandary in which he found himself. She took
the rabbit from him, and while the sapling
swayed and teetered threateningly above her
she calmly gnawed off the rabbit’s head.
At once the sapling shot up, and after that
gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous
and perpendicular position in which nature
had intended it to grow. Then, between them,
the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game
which the mysterious sapling had caught for
them.
There were other run-ways and alleys where
rabbits were hanging in the air, and the wolf-pair
prospected them all, the she-wolf leading
the way, old One Eye following and observant,
learning the method of robbing snares—a
knowledge destined to stand him in good stead
in the days to come.
CHAPTER II—THE LAIR
For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung
about the Indian camp. He was worried and
apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate
and she was loath to depart. But when, one
morning, the air was rent with the report
of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed
against a tree trunk several inches from One
Eye’s head, they hesitated no more, but
went off on a long, swinging lope that put
quick miles between them and the danger.
They did not go far—a couple of days’
journey. The she-wolf’s need to find the
thing for which she searched had now become
imperative. She was getting very heavy, and
could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit
of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have
caught with ease, she gave over and lay down
and rested. One Eye came to her; but when
he touched her neck gently with his muzzle
she snapped at him with such quick fierceness
that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous
figure in his effort to escape her teeth.
Her temper was now shorter than ever; but
he had become more patient than ever and more
solicitous.
And then she found the thing for which she
sought. It was a few miles up a small stream
that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie,
but that then was frozen over and frozen down
to its rocky bottom—a dead stream of solid
white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was
trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance,
when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank.
She turned aside and trotted over to it. The
wear and tear of spring storms and melting
snows had underwashed the bank and in one
place had made a small cave out of a narrow
fissure.
She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked
the wall over carefully. Then, on one side
and the other, she ran along the base of the
wall to where its abrupt bulk merged from
the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the
cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a
short three feet she was compelled to crouch,
then the walls widened and rose higher in
a little round chamber nearly six feet in
diameter. The roof barely cleared her head.
It was dry and cosey. She inspected it with
painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned,
stood in the entrance and patiently watched
her. She dropped her head, with her nose to
the ground and directed toward a point near
to her closely bunched feet, and around this
point she circled several times; then, with
a tired sigh that was almost a grunt, she
curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and
dropped down, her head toward the entrance.
One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed
at her, and beyond, outlined against the white
light, she could see the brush of his tail
waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with
a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points
backward and down against the head for a moment,
while her mouth opened and her tongue lolled
peaceably out, and in this way she expressed
that she was pleased and satisfied.
One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in
the entrance and slept, his sleep was fitful.
He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the
bright world without, where the April sun
was blazing across the snow. When he dozed,
upon his ears would steal the faint whispers
of hidden trickles of running water, and he
would rouse and listen intently. The sun had
come back, and all the awakening Northland
world was calling to him. Life was stirring.
The feel of spring was in the air, the feel
of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending
in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles
of the frost.
He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she
showed no desire to get up. He looked outside,
and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across
his field of vision. He started to get up,
then looked back to his mate again, and settled
down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing
stole upon his hearing. Once, and twice, he
sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then
he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the
tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was
a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen
in a dry log all winter and that had now been
thawed out by the sun. He could resist the
call of the world no longer. Besides, he was
hungry.
He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade
her to get up. But she only snarled at him,
and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine
to find the snow-surface soft under foot and
the travelling difficult. He went up the frozen
bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded
by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline.
He was gone eight hours, and he came back
through the darkness hungrier than when he
had started. He had found game, but he had
not caught it. He had broken through the melting
snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe
rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as
ever.
He paused at the mouth of the cave with a
sudden shock of suspicion. Faint, strange
sounds came from within. They were sounds
not made by his mate, and yet they were remotely
familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and
was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf.
This he received without perturbation, though
he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but
he remained interested in the other sounds—faint,
muffled sobbings and slubberings.
His mate warned him irritably away, and he
curled up and slept in the entrance. When
morning came and a dim light pervaded the
lair, he again sought after the source of
the remotely familiar sounds. There was a
new note in his mate’s warning snarl. It
was a jealous note, and he was very careful
in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless,
he made out, sheltering between her legs against
the length of her body, five strange little
bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless,
making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that
did not open to the light. He was surprised.
It was not the first time in his long and
successful life that this thing had happened.
It had happened many times, yet each time
it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.
His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little
while she emitted a low growl, and at times,
when it seemed to her he approached too near,
the growl shot up in her throat to a sharp
snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory
of the thing happening; but in her instinct,
which was the experience of all the mothers
of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers
that had eaten their new-born and helpless
progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong
within her, that made her prevent One Eye
from more closely inspecting the cubs he had
fathered.
But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling
the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn,
an instinct that had come down to him from
all the fathers of wolves. He did not question
it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the
fibre of his being; and it was the most natural
thing in the world that he should obey it
by turning his back on his new-born family
and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail
whereby he lived.
Five or six miles from the lair, the stream
divided, its forks going off among the mountains
at a right angle. Here, leading up the left
fork, he came upon a fresh track. He smelled
it and found it so recent that he crouched
swiftly, and looked in the direction in which
it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately
and took the right fork. The footprint was
much larger than the one his own feet made,
and he knew that in the wake of such a trail
there was little meat for him.
Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears
caught the sound of gnawing teeth. He stalked
the quarry and found it to be a porcupine,
standing upright against a tree and trying
his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached
carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed,
though he had never met it so far north before;
and never in his long life had porcupine served
him for a meal. But he had long since learned
that there was such a thing as Chance, or
Opportunity, and he continued to draw near.
There was never any telling what might happen,
for with live things events were somehow always
happening differently.
The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating
long, sharp needles in all directions that
defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once
sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert
ball of quills, and had the tail flick out
suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried
away in his muzzle, where it had remained
for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally
worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable
crouching position, his nose fully a foot
away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus
he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There
was no telling. Something might happen. The
porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity
for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into
the tender, unguarded belly.
But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled
wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted
on. He had waited too often and futilely in
the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste
any more time. He continued up the right fork.
The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his
hunt.
The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood
was strong upon him. He must find meat. In
the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan.
He came out of a thicket and found himself
face to face with the slow-witted bird. It
was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the
end of his nose. Each saw the other. The bird
made a startled rise, but he struck it with
his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then
pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth
as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise
in the air again. As his teeth crunched through
the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began
naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and,
turning on the back-track, started for home,
carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth.
A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed
as was his custom, a gliding shadow that cautiously
prospected each new vista of the trail, he
came upon later imprints of the large tracks
he had discovered in the early morning. As
the track led his way, he followed, prepared
to meet the maker of it at every turn of the
stream.
He slid his head around a corner of rock,
where began an unusually large bend in the
stream, and his quick eyes made out something
that sent him crouching swiftly down. It was
the maker of the track, a large female lynx.
She was crouching as he had crouched once
that day, in front of her the tight-rolled
ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow
before, he now became the ghost of such a
shadow, as he crept and circled around, and
came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless
pair.
He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan
beside him, and with eyes peering through
the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched
the play of life before him—the waiting
lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent
on life; and, such was the curiousness of
the game, the way of life for one lay in the
eating of the other, and the way of life for
the other lay in being not eaten. While old
One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert,
played his part, too, in the game, waiting
for some strange freak of Chance, that might
help him on the meat-trail which was his way
of life.
Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing
happened. The ball of quills might have been
a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have
been frozen to marble; and old One Eye might
have been dead. Yet all three animals were
keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost
painful, and scarcely ever would it come to
them to be more alive than they were then
in their seeming petrifaction.
One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with
increased eagerness. Something was happening.
The porcupine had at last decided that its
enemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it
was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour.
It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation.
Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened
out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt
a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling
of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living
meat that was spreading itself like a repast
before him.
Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled
when it discovered its enemy. In that instant
the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash
of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving
like talons, shot under the tender belly and
came back with a swift ripping movement. Had
the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had
it not discovered its enemy a fraction of
a second before the blow was struck, the paw
would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick
of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it
was withdrawn.
Everything had happened at once—the blow,
the counter-blow, the squeal of agony from
the porcupine, the big cat’s squall of sudden
hurt and astonishment. One Eye half arose
in his excitement, his ears up, his tail straight
out and quivering behind him. The lynx’s
bad temper got the best of her. She sprang
savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But
the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with
disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up
into its ball-protection, flicked out its
tail again, and again the big cat squalled
with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell
to backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling
with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion.
She brushed her nose with her paws, trying
to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into
the snow, and rubbed it against twigs and
branches, and all the time leaping about,
ahead, sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy
of pain and fright.
She sneezed continually, and her stub of a
tail was doing its best toward lashing about
by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her
antics, and quieted down for a long minute.
One Eye watched. And even he could not repress
a start and an involuntary bristling of hair
along his back when she suddenly leaped, without
warning, straight up in the air, at the same
time emitting a long and most terrible squall.
Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling
with every leap she made.
It was not until her racket had faded away
in the distance and died out that One Eye
ventured forth. He walked as delicately as
though all the snow were carpeted with porcupine
quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft
pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach
with a furious squealing and a clashing of
its long teeth. It had managed to roll up
in a ball again, but it was not quite the
old compact ball; its muscles were too much
torn for that. It had been ripped almost in
half, and was still bleeding profusely.
One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked
snow, and chewed and tasted and swallowed.
This served as a relish, and his hunger increased
mightily; but he was too old in the world
to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down
and waited, while the porcupine grated its
teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional
sharp little squeals. In a little while, One
Eye noticed that the quills were drooping
and that a great quivering had set up. The
quivering came to an end suddenly. There was
a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then
all the quills drooped quite down, and the
body relaxed and moved no more.
With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched
out the porcupine to its full length and turned
it over on its back. Nothing had happened.
It was surely dead. He studied it intently
for a moment, then took a careful grip with
his teeth and started off down the stream,
partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine,
with head turned to the side so as to avoid
stepping on the prickly mass. He recollected
something, dropped the burden, and trotted
back to where he had left the ptarmigan. He
did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly
what was to be done, and this he did by promptly
eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and
took up his burden.
When he dragged the result of his day’s
hunt into the cave, the she-wolf inspected
it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly
licked him on the neck. But the next instant
she was warning him away from the cubs with
a snarl that was less harsh than usual and
that was more apologetic than menacing. Her
instinctive fear of the father of her progeny
was toning down. He was behaving as a wolf-father
should, and manifesting no unholy desire to
devour the young lives she had brought into
the world.
CHAPTER III—THE GREY CUB
He was different from his brothers and sisters.
Their hair already betrayed the reddish hue
inherited from their mother, the she-wolf;
while he alone, in this particular, took after
his father. He was the one little grey cub
of the litter. He had bred true to the straight
wolf-stock—in fact, he had bred true to
old One Eye himself, physically, with but
a single exception, and that was he had two
eyes to his father’s one.
The grey cub’s eyes had not been open long,
yet already he could see with steady clearness.
And while his eyes were still closed, he had
felt, tasted, and smelled. He knew his two
brothers and his two sisters very well. He
had begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward
way, and even to squabble, his little throat
vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the
forerunner of the growl), as he worked himself
into a passion. And long before his eyes had
opened he had learned by touch, taste, and
smell to know his mother—a fount of warmth
and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed
a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him
when it passed over his soft little body,
and that impelled him to snuggle close against
her and to doze off to sleep.
Most of the first month of his life had been
passed thus in sleeping; but now he could
see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer
periods of time, and he was coming to learn
his world quite well. His world was gloomy;
but he did not know that, for he knew no other
world. It was dim-lighted; but his eyes had
never had to adjust themselves to any other
light. His world was very small. Its limits
were the walls of the lair; but as he had
no knowledge of the wide world outside, he
was never oppressed by the narrow confines
of his existence.
But he had early discovered that one wall
of his world was different from the rest.
This was the mouth of the cave and the source
of light. He had discovered that it was different
from the other walls long before he had any
thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions.
It had been an irresistible attraction before
ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The
light from it had beat upon his sealed lids,
and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated
to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured
and strangely pleasing. The life of his body,
and of every fibre of his body, the life that
was the very substance of his body and that
was apart from his own personal life, had
yearned toward this light and urged his body
toward it in the same way that the cunning
chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun.
Always, in the beginning, before his conscious
life dawned, he had crawled toward the mouth
of the cave. And in this his brothers and
sisters were one with him. Never, in that
period, did any of them crawl toward the dark
corners of the back-wall. The light drew them
as if they were plants; the chemistry of the
life that composed them demanded the light
as a necessity of being; and their little
puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically,
like the tendrils of a vine. Later on, when
each developed individuality and became personally
conscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction
of the light increased. They were always crawling
and sprawling toward it, and being driven
back from it by their mother.
It was in this way that the grey cub learned
other attributes of his mother than the soft,
soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling
toward the light, he discovered in her a nose
that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke,
and later, a paw, that crushed him down and
rolled him over and over with swift, calculating
stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of
it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not
incurring the risk of it; and second, when
he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by
retreating. These were conscious actions,
and were the results of his first generalisations
upon the world. Before that he had recoiled
automatically from hurt, as he had crawled
automatically toward the light. After that
he recoiled from hurt because he knew that
it was hurt.
He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers
and sisters. It was to be expected. He was
a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of
meat-killers and meat-eaters. His father and
mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he
had sucked with his first flickering life,
was milk transformed directly from meat, and
now, at a month old, when his eyes had been
open for but a week, he was beginning himself
to eat meat—meat half-digested by the she-wolf
and disgorged for the five growing cubs that
already made too great demand upon her breast.
But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter.
He could make a louder rasping growl than
any of them. His tiny rages were much more
terrible than theirs. It was he that first
learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub
over with a cunning paw-stroke. And it was
he that first gripped another cub by the ear
and pulled and tugged and growled through
jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was
he that caused the mother the most trouble
in keeping her litter from the mouth of the
cave.
The fascination of the light for the grey
cub increased from day to day. He was perpetually
departing on yard-long adventures toward the
cave’s entrance, and as perpetually being
driven back. Only he did not know it for an
entrance. He did not know anything about entrances—passages
whereby one goes from one place to another
place. He did not know any other place, much
less of a way to get there. So to him the
entrance of the cave was a wall—a wall of
light. As the sun was to the outside dweller,
this wall was to him the sun of his world.
It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth.
He was always striving to attain it. The life
that was so swiftly expanding within him,
urged him continually toward the wall of light.
The life that was within him knew that it
was the one way out, the way he was predestined
to tread. But he himself did not know anything
about it. He did not know there was any outside
at all.
There was one strange thing about this wall
of light. His father (he had already come
to recognise his father as the one other dweller
in the world, a creature like his mother,
who slept near the light and was a bringer
of meat)—his father had a way of walking
right into the white far wall and disappearing.
The grey cub could not understand this. Though
never permitted by his mother to approach
that wall, he had approached the other walls,
and encountered hard obstruction on the end
of his tender nose. This hurt. And after several
such adventures, he left the walls alone.
Without thinking about it, he accepted this
disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity
of his father, as milk and half-digested meat
were peculiarities of his mother.
In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking—at
least, to the kind of thinking customary of
men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his
conclusions were as sharp and distinct as
those achieved by men. He had a method of
accepting things, without questioning the
why and wherefore. In reality, this was the
act of classification. He was never disturbed
over why a thing happened. How it happened
was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had
bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times,
he accepted that he would not disappear into
walls. In the same way he accepted that his
father could disappear into walls. But he
was not in the least disturbed by desire to
find out the reason for the difference between
his father and himself. Logic and physics
were no part of his mental make-up.
Like most creatures of the Wild, he early
experienced famine. There came a time when
not only did the meat-supply cease, but the
milk no longer came from his mother’s breast.
At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but
for the most part they slept. It was not long
before they were reduced to a coma of hunger.
There were no more spats and squabbles, no
more tiny rages nor attempts at growling;
while the adventures toward the far white
wall ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while
the life that was in them flickered and died
down.
One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide,
and slept but little in the lair that had
now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf,
too, left her litter and went out in search
of meat. In the first days after the birth
of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several
times back to the Indian camp and robbed the
rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the
snow and the opening of the streams, the Indian
camp had moved away, and that source of supply
was closed to him.
When the grey cub came back to life and again
took interest in the far white wall, he found
that the population of his world had been
reduced. Only one sister remained to him.
The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he
found himself compelled to play alone, for
the sister no longer lifted her head nor moved
about. His little body rounded out with the
meat he now ate; but the food had come too
late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny
skeleton flung round with skin in which the
flame flickered lower and lower and at last
went out.
Then there came a time when the grey cub no
longer saw his father appearing and disappearing
in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance.
This had happened at the end of a second and
less severe famine. The she-wolf knew why
One Eye never came back, but there was no
way by which she could tell what she had seen
to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat,
up the left fork of the stream where lived
the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail
of One Eye. And she had found him, or what
remained of him, at the end of the trail.
There were many signs of the battle that had
been fought, and of the lynx’s withdrawal
to her lair after having won the victory.
Before she went away, the she-wolf had found
this lair, but the signs told her that the
lynx was inside, and she had not dared to
venture in.
After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided
the left fork. For she knew that in the lynx’s
lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew
the lynx for a fierce, bad-tempered creature
and a terrible fighter. It was all very well
for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting
and bristling, up a tree; but it was quite
a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter
a lynx—especially when the lynx was known
to have a litter of hungry kittens at her
back.
But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is
motherhood, at all times fiercely protective
whether in the Wild or out of it; and the
time was to come when the she-wolf, for her
grey cub’s sake, would venture the left
fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx’s
wrath.
CHAPTER IV—THE WALL OF THE WORLD
By the time his mother began leaving the cave
on hunting expeditions, the cub had learned
well the law that forbade his approaching
the entrance. Not only had this law been forcibly
and many times impressed on him by his mother’s
nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear
was developing. Never, in his brief cave-life,
had he encountered anything of which to be
afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down
to him from a remote ancestry through a thousand
thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received
directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but
to them, in turn, it had been passed down
through all the generations of wolves that
had gone before. Fear!—that legacy of the
Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange
for pottage.
So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew
not the stuff of which fear was made. Possibly
he accepted it as one of the restrictions
of life. For he had already learned that there
were such restrictions. Hunger he had known;
and when he could not appease his hunger he
had felt restriction. The hard obstruction
of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother’s
nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the
hunger unappeased of several famines, had
borne in upon him that all was not freedom
in the world, that to life there was limitations
and restraints. These limitations and restraints
were laws. To be obedient to them was to escape
hurt and make for happiness.
He did not reason the question out in this
man fashion. He merely classified the things
that hurt and the things that did not hurt.
And after such classification he avoided the
things that hurt, the restrictions and restraints,
in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the
remunerations of life.
Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid
down by his mother, and in obedience to the
law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear,
he kept away from the mouth of the cave. It
remained to him a white wall of light. When
his mother was absent, he slept most of the
time, while during the intervals that he was
awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the
whimpering cries that tickled in his throat
and strove for noise.
Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound
in the white wall. He did not know that it
was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling
with its own daring, and cautiously scenting
out the contents of the cave. The cub knew
only that the sniff was strange, a something
unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible—for
the unknown was one of the chief elements
that went into the making of fear.
The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back,
but it bristled silently. How was he to know
that this thing that sniffed was a thing at
which to bristle? It was not born of any knowledge
of his, yet it was the visible expression
of the fear that was in him, and for which,
in his own life, there was no accounting.
But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that
of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of
terror, yet he lay without movement or sound,
frozen, petrified into immobility, to all
appearances dead. His mother, coming home,
growled as she smelt the wolverine’s track,
and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled
him with undue vehemence of affection. And
the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a
great hurt.
But there were other forces at work in the
cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct
and law demanded of him obedience. But growth
demanded disobedience. His mother and fear
impelled him to keep away from the white wall.
Growth is life, and life is for ever destined
to make for light. So there was no damming
up the tide of life that was rising within
him—rising with every mouthful of meat he
swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the
end, one day, fear and obedience were swept
away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled
and sprawled toward the entrance.
Unlike any other wall with which he had had
experience, this wall seemed to recede from
him as he approached. No hard surface collided
with the tender little nose he thrust out
tentatively before him. The substance of the
wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light.
And as condition, in his eyes, had the seeming
of form, so he entered into what had been
wall to him and bathed in the substance that
composed it.
It was bewildering. He was sprawling through
solidity. And ever the light grew brighter.
Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove
him on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth
of the cave. The wall, inside which he had
thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before
him to an immeasurable distance. The light
had become painfully bright. He was dazzled
by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this
abrupt and tremendous extension of space.
Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves
to the brightness, focusing themselves to
meet the increased distance of objects. At
first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision.
He now saw it again; but it had taken upon
itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its
appearance had changed. It was now a variegated
wall, composed of the trees that fringed the
stream, the opposing mountain that towered
above the trees, and the sky that out-towered
the mountain.
A great fear came upon him. This was more
of the terrible unknown. He crouched down
on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the
world. He was very much afraid. Because it
was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore
the hair stood up on end along his back and
his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at
a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of
his puniness and fright he challenged and
menaced the whole wide world.
Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and
in his interest he forgot to snarl. Also,
he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear
had been routed by growth, while growth had
assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to
notice near objects—an open portion of the
stream that flashed in the sun, the blasted
pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope,
and the slope itself, that ran right up to
him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of
the cave on which he crouched.
Now the grey cub had lived all his days on
a level floor. He had never experienced the
hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall
was. So he stepped boldly out upon the air.
His hind-legs still rested on the cave-lip,
so he fell forward head downward. The earth
struck him a harsh blow on the nose that made
him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope,
over and over. He was in a panic of terror.
The unknown had caught him at last. It had
gripped savagely hold of him and was about
to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth
was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi’d like
any frightened puppy.
The unknown bore him on he knew not to what
frightful hurt, and he yelped and ki-yi’d
unceasingly. This was a different proposition
from crouching in frozen fear while the unknown
lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had
caught tight hold of him. Silence would do
no good. Besides, it was not fear, but terror,
that convulsed him.
But the slope grew more gradual, and its base
was grass-covered. Here the cub lost momentum.
When at last he came to a stop, he gave one
last agonised yell and then a long, whimpering
wail. Also, and quite as a matter of course,
as though in his life he had already made
a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away
the dry clay that soiled him.
After that he sat up and gazed about him,
as might the first man of the earth who landed
upon Mars. The cub had broken through the
wall of the world, the unknown had let go
its hold of him, and here he was without hurt.
But the first man on Mars would have experienced
less unfamiliarity than did he. Without any
antecedent knowledge, without any warning
whatever that such existed, he found himself
an explorer in a totally new world.
Now that the terrible unknown had let go of
him, he forgot that the unknown had any terrors.
He was aware only of curiosity in all the
things about him. He inspected the grass beneath
him, the moss-berry plant just beyond, and
the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood
on the edge of an open space among the trees.
A squirrel, running around the base of the
trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a
great fright. He cowered down and snarled.
But the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran
up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered
back savagely.
This helped the cub’s courage, and though
the woodpecker he next encountered gave him
a start, he proceeded confidently on his way.
Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird
impudently hopped up to him, he reached out
at it with a playful paw. The result was a
sharp peck on the end of his nose that made
him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made
was too much for the moose-bird, who sought
safety in flight.
But the cub was learning. His misty little
mind had already made an unconscious classification.
There were live things and things not alive.
Also, he must watch out for the live things.
The things not alive remained always in one
place, but the live things moved about, and
there was no telling what they might do. The
thing to expect of them was the unexpected,
and for this he must be prepared.
He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks
and things. A twig that he thought a long
way off, would the next instant hit him on
the nose or rake along his ribs. There were
inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped
and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped
and stubbed his feet. Then there were the
pebbles and stones that turned under him when
he trod upon them; and from them he came to
know that the things not alive were not all
in the same state of stable equilibrium as
was his cave—also, that small things not
alive were more liable than large things to
fall down or turn over. But with every mishap
he was learning. The longer he walked, the
better he walked. He was adjusting himself.
He was learning to calculate his own muscular
movements, to know his physical limitations,
to measure distances between objects, and
between objects and himself.
His was the luck of the beginner. Born to
be a hunter of meat (though he did not know
it), he blundered upon meat just outside his
own cave-door on his first foray into the
world. It was by sheer blundering that he
chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan
nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk
along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten
bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing
yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent,
smashed through the leafage and stalks of
a small bush, and in the heart of the bush,
on the ground, fetched up in the midst of
seven ptarmigan chicks.
They made noises, and at first he was frightened
at them. Then he perceived that they were
very little, and he became bolder. They moved.
He placed his paw on one, and its movements
were accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment
to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in
his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue.
At the same time he was made aware of a sensation
of hunger. His jaws closed together. There
was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm
blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was
good. This was meat, the same as his mother
gave him, only it was alive between his teeth
and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan.
Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole
brood. Then he licked his chops in quite the
same way his mother did, and began to crawl
out of the bush.
He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was
confused and blinded by the rush of it and
the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between
his paws and yelped. The blows increased.
The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he
became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking
out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth
into one of the wings and pulled and tugged
sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against
him, showering blows upon him with her free
wing. It was his first battle. He was elated.
He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer
was afraid of anything. He was fighting, tearing
at a live thing that was striking at him.
Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to
kill was on him. He had just destroyed little
live things. He would now destroy a big live
thing. He was too busy and happy to know that
he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting
in ways new to him and greater to him than
any he had known before.
He held on to the wing and growled between
his tight-clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged
him out of the bush. When she turned and tried
to drag him back into the bush’s shelter,
he pulled her away from it and on into the
open. And all the time she was making outcry
and striking with her free wing, while feathers
were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to
which he was aroused was tremendous. All the
fighting blood of his breed was up in him
and surging through him. This was living,
though he did not know it. He was realising
his own meaning in the world; he was doing
that for which he was made—killing meat
and battling to kill it. He was justifying
his existence, than which life can do no greater;
for life achieves its summit when it does
to the uttermost that which it was equipped
to do.
After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling.
He still held her by the wing, and they lay
on the ground and looked at each other. He
tried to growl threateningly, ferociously.
She pecked on his nose, which by now, what
of previous adventures was sore. He winced
but held on. She pecked him again and again.
From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried
to back away from her, oblivious to the fact
that by his hold on her he dragged her after
him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used
nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him,
and, releasing his prey, he turned tail and
scampered on across the open in inglorious
retreat.
He lay down to rest on the other side of the
open, near the edge of the bushes, his tongue
lolling out, his chest heaving and panting,
his nose still hurting him and causing him
to continue his whimper. But as he lay there,
suddenly there came to him a feeling as of
something terrible impending. The unknown
with all its terrors rushed upon him, and
he shrank back instinctively into the shelter
of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air
fanned him, and a large, winged body swept
ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving
down out of the blue, had barely missed him.
While he lay in the bush, recovering from
his fright and peering fearfully out, the
mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the
open space fluttered out of the ravaged nest.
It was because of her loss that she paid no
attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But
the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson
to him—the swift downward swoop of the hawk,
the short skim of its body just above the
ground, the strike of its talons in the body
of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan’s squawk
of agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush
upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan
away with it.
It was a long time before the cub left its
shelter. He had learned much. Live things
were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live
things when they were large enough, could
give hurt. It was better to eat small live
things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone
large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless
he felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking
desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan
hen—only the hawk had carried her away.
May be there were other ptarmigan hens. He
would go and see.
He came down a shelving bank to the stream.
He had never seen water before. The footing
looked good. There were no inequalities of
surface. He stepped boldly out on it; and
went down, crying with fear, into the embrace
of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped,
breathing quickly. The water rushed into his
lungs instead of the air that had always accompanied
his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced
was like the pang of death. To him it signified
death. He had no conscious knowledge of death,
but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed
the instinct of death. To him it stood as
the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence
of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors
of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable
catastrophe that could happen to him, about
which he knew nothing and about which he feared
everything.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air
rushed into his open mouth. He did not go
down again. Quite as though it had been a
long-established custom of his he struck out
with all his legs and began to swim. The near
bank was a yard away; but he had come up with
his back to it, and the first thing his eyes
rested upon was the opposite bank, toward
which he immediately began to swim. The stream
was a small one, but in the pool it widened
out to a score of feet.
Midway in the passage, the current picked
up the cub and swept him downstream. He was
caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom
of the pool. Here was little chance for swimming.
The quiet water had become suddenly angry.
Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top.
At all times he was in violent motion, now
being turned over or around, and again, being
smashed against a rock. And with every rock
he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series
of yelps, from which might have been adduced
the number of rocks he encountered.
Below the rapid was a second pool, and here,
captured by the eddy, he was gently borne
to the bank, and as gently deposited on a
bed of gravel. He crawled frantically clear
of the water and lay down. He had learned
some more about the world. Water was not alive.
Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as
the earth, but was without any solidity at
all. His conclusion was that things were not
always what they appeared to be. The cub’s
fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust,
and it had now been strengthened by experience.
Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would
possess an abiding distrust of appearances.
He would have to learn the reality of a thing
before he could put his faith into it.
One other adventure was destined for him that
day. He had recollected that there was such
a thing in the world as his mother. And then
there came to him a feeling that he wanted
her more than all the rest of the things in
the world. Not only was his body tired with
the adventures it had undergone, but his little
brain was equally tired. In all the days he
had lived it had not worked so hard as on
this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy.
So he started out to look for the cave and
his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming
rush of loneliness and helplessness.
He was sprawling along between some bushes,
when he heard a sharp intimidating cry. There
was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He
saw a weasel leaping swiftly away from him.
It was a small live thing, and he had no fear.
Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely
small live thing, only several inches long,
a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently
gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat
before him. He turned it over with his paw.
It made a queer, grating noise. The next moment
the flash of yellow reappeared before his
eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry,
and at the same instant received a sharp blow
on the side of the neck and felt the sharp
teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh.
While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled
backward, he saw the mother-weasel leap upon
her young one and disappear with it into the
neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth
in his neck still hurt, but his feelings were
hurt more grievously, and he sat down and
weakly whimpered. This mother-weasel was so
small and so savage. He was yet to learn that
for size and weight the weasel was the most
ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all
the killers of the Wild. But a portion of
this knowledge was quickly to be his.
He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel
reappeared. She did not rush him, now that
her young one was safe. She approached more
cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity
to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her
head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself.
Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling
along his back, and he snarled warningly at
her. She came closer and closer. There was
a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight,
and the lean, yellow body disappeared for
a moment out of the field of his vision. The
next moment she was at his throat, her teeth
buried in his hair and flesh.
At first he snarled and tried to fight; but
he was very young, and this was only his first
day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper,
his fight a struggle to escape. The weasel
never relaxed her hold. She hung on, striving
to press down with her teeth to the great
vein where his life-blood bubbled. The weasel
was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her
preference to drink from the throat of life
itself.
The grey cub would have died, and there would
have been no story to write about him, had
not the she-wolf come bounding through the
bushes. The weasel let go the cub and flashed
at the she-wolf’s throat, missing, but getting
a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted
her head like the snap of a whip, breaking
the weasel’s hold and flinging it high in
the air. And, still in the air, the she-wolf’s
jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and
the weasel knew death between the crunching
teeth.
The cub experienced another access of affection
on the part of his mother. Her joy at finding
him seemed even greater than his joy at being
found. She nozzled him and caressed him and
licked the cuts made in him by the weasel’s
teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub,
they ate the blood-drinker, and after that
went back to the cave and slept.
CHAPTER V—THE LAW OF MEAT
The cub’s development was rapid. He rested
for two days, and then ventured forth from
the cave again. It was on this adventure that
he found the young weasel whose mother he
had helped eat, and he saw to it that the
young weasel went the way of its mother. But
on this trip he did not get lost. When he
grew tired, he found his way back to the cave
and slept. And every day thereafter found
him out and ranging a wider area.
He began to get accurate measurement of his
strength and his weakness, and to know when
to be bold and when to be cautious. He found
it expedient to be cautious all the time,
except for the rare moments, when, assured
of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself
to petty rages and lusts.
He was always a little demon of fury when
he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan. Never did
he fail to respond savagely to the chatter
of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted
pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost
invariably put him into the wildest of rages;
for he never forgot the peck on the nose he
had received from the first of that ilk he
encountered.
But there were times when even a moose-bird
failed to affect him, and those were times
when he felt himself to be in danger from
some other prowling meat hunter. He never
forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow always
sent him crouching into the nearest thicket.
He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already
he was developing the gait of his mother,
slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion,
yet sliding along with a swiftness that was
as deceptive as it was imperceptible.
In the matter of meat, his luck had been all
in the beginning. The seven ptarmigan chicks
and the baby weasel represented the sum of
his killings. His desire to kill strengthened
with the days, and he cherished hungry ambitions
for the squirrel that chattered so volubly
and always informed all wild creatures that
the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds
flew in the air, squirrels could climb trees,
and the cub could only try to crawl unobserved
upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.
The cub entertained a great respect for his
mother. She could get meat, and she never
failed to bring him his share. Further, she
was unafraid of things. It did not occur to
him that this fearlessness was founded upon
experience and knowledge. Its effect on him
was that of an impression of power. His mother
represented power; and as he grew older he
felt this power in the sharper admonishment
of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her
nose gave place to the slash of her fangs.
For this, likewise, he respected his mother.
She compelled obedience from him, and the
older he grew the shorter grew her temper.
Famine came again, and the cub with clearer
consciousness knew once more the bite of hunger.
The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest
for meat. She rarely slept any more in the
cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail,
and spending it vainly. This famine was not
a long one, but it was severe while it lasted.
The cub found no more milk in his mother’s
breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat
for himself.
Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer
joyousness of it; now he hunted in deadly
earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure
of it accelerated his development. He studied
the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness,
and strove with greater craft to steal upon
it and surprise it. He studied the wood-mice
and tried to dig them out of their burrows;
and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds
and woodpeckers. And there came a day when
the hawk’s shadow did not drive him crouching
into the bushes. He had grown stronger and
wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate.
So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously in
an open space, and challenged the hawk down
out of the sky. For he knew that there, floating
in the blue above him, was meat, the meat
his stomach yearned after so insistently.
But the hawk refused to come down and give
battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket
and whimpered his disappointment and hunger.
The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home
meat. It was strange meat, different from
any she had ever brought before. It was a
lynx kitten, partly grown, like the cub, but
not so large. And it was all for him. His
mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere;
though he did not know that it was the rest
of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy
her. Nor did he know the desperateness of
her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred
kitten was meat, and he ate and waxed happier
with every mouthful.
A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the
cub lay in the cave, sleeping against his
mother’s side. He was aroused by her snarling.
Never had he heard her snarl so terribly.
Possibly in her whole life it was the most
terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason
for it, and none knew it better than she.
A lynx’s lair is not despoiled with impunity.
In the full glare of the afternoon light,
crouching in the entrance of the cave, the
cub saw the lynx-mother. The hair rippled
up along his back at the sight. Here was fear,
and it did not require his instinct to tell
him of it. And if sight alone were not sufficient,
the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning
with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into
a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in
itself.
The cub felt the prod of the life that was
in him, and stood up and snarled valiantly
by his mother’s side. But she thrust him
ignominiously away and behind her. Because
of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could
not leap in, and when she made a crawling
rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and
pinned her down. The cub saw little of the
battle. There was a tremendous snarling and
spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed
about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her
claws and using her teeth as well, while the
she-wolf used her teeth alone.
Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth
into the hind leg of the lynx. He clung on,
growling savagely. Though he did not know
it, by the weight of his body he clogged the
action of the leg and thereby saved his mother
much damage. A change in the battle crushed
him under both their bodies and wrenched loose
his hold. The next moment the two mothers
separated, and, before they rushed together
again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with
a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open
to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise
against the wall. Then was added to the uproar
the cub’s shrill yelp of pain and fright.
But the fight lasted so long that he had time
to cry himself out and to experience a second
burst of courage; and the end of the battle
found him again clinging to a hind-leg and
furiously growling between his teeth.
The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very
weak and sick. At first she caressed the cub
and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood
she had lost had taken with it her strength,
and for all of a day and a night she lay by
her dead foe’s side, without movement, scarcely
breathing. For a week she never left the cave,
except for water, and then her movements were
slow and painful. At the end of that time
the lynx was devoured, while the she-wolf’s
wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her
to take the meat-trail again.
The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and
for some time he limped from the terrible
slash he had received. But the world now seemed
changed. He went about in it with greater
confidence, with a feeling of prowess that
had not been his in the days before the battle
with the lynx. He had looked upon life in
a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he
had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe;
and he had survived. And because of all this,
he carried himself more boldly, with a touch
of defiance that was new in him. He was no
longer afraid of minor things, and much of
his timidity had vanished, though the unknown
never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries
and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail,
and he saw much of the killing of meat and
began to play his part in it. And in his own
dim way he learned the law of meat. There
were two kinds of life—his own kind and
the other kind. His own kind included his
mother and himself. The other kind included
all live things that moved. But the other
kind was divided. One portion was what his
own kind killed and ate. This portion was
composed of the non-killers and the small
killers. The other portion killed and ate
his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his
own kind. And out of this classification arose
the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself
was meat. Life lived on life. There were the
eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR
BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in
clear, set terms and moralise about it. He
did not even think the law; he merely lived
the law without thinking about it at all.
He saw the law operating around him on every
side. He had eaten the ptarmigan chicks. The
hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk
would also have eaten him. Later, when he
had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat
the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The
lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not
herself been killed and eaten. And so it went.
The law was being lived about him by all live
things, and he himself was part and parcel
of the law. He was a killer. His only food
was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly
before him, or flew into the air, or climbed
trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him
and fought with him, or turned the tables
and ran after him.
Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might
have epitomised life as a voracious appetite
and the world as a place wherein ranged a
multitude of appetites, pursuing and being
pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating
and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion,
with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony
and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless,
planless, endless.
But the cub did not think in man-fashion.
He did not look at things with wide vision.
He was single-purposed, and entertained but
one thought or desire at a time. Besides the
law of meat, there were a myriad other and
lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The
world was filled with surprise. The stir of
the life that was in him, the play of his
muscles, was an unending happiness. To run
down meat was to experience thrills and elations.
His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror
itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led
to his living.
And there were easements and satisfactions.
To have a full stomach, to doze lazily in
the sunshine—such things were remuneration
in full for his ardours and toils, while his
ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative.
They were expressions of life, and life is
always happy when it is expressing itself.
So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile
environment. He was very much alive, very
happy, and very proud of himself.
PART III
CHAPTER I—THE MAKERS OF FIRE
The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his
own fault. He had been careless. He had left
the cave and run down to the stream to drink.
It might have been that he took no notice
because he was heavy with sleep. (He had been
out all night on the meat-trail, and had but
just then awakened.) And his carelessness
might have been due to the familiarity of
the trail to the pool. He had travelled it
often, and nothing had ever happened on it.
He went down past the blasted pine, crossed
the open space, and trotted in amongst the
trees. Then, at the same instant, he saw and
smelt. Before him, sitting silently on their
haunches, were five live things, the like
of which he had never seen before. It was
his first glimpse of mankind. But at the sight
of him the five men did not spring to their
feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl. They
did not move, but sat there, silent and ominous.
Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his
nature would have impelled him to dash wildly
away, had there not suddenly and for the first
time arisen in him another and counter instinct.
A great awe descended upon him. He was beaten
down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense
of his own weakness and littleness. Here was
mastery and power, something far and away
beyond him.
The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct
concerning man was his. In dim ways he recognised
in man the animal that had fought itself to
primacy over the other animals of the Wild.
Not alone out of his own eyes, but out of
the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub
now looking upon man—out of eyes that had
circled in the darkness around countless winter
camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances
and from the hearts of thickets at the strange,
two-legged animal that was lord over living
things. The spell of the cub’s heritage
was upon him, the fear and the respect born
of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated
experience of the generations. The heritage
was too compelling for a wolf that was only
a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have
run away. As it was, he cowered down in a
paralysis of fear, already half proffering
the submission that his kind had proffered
from the first time a wolf came in to sit
by man’s fire and be made warm.
One of the Indians arose and walked over to
him and stooped above him. The cub cowered
closer to the ground. It was the unknown,
objectified at last, in concrete flesh and
blood, bending over him and reaching down
to seize hold of him. His hair bristled involuntarily;
his lips writhed back and his little fangs
were bared. The hand, poised like doom above
him, hesitated, and the man spoke laughing,
“Wabam wabisca ip pit tah.” (“Look!
The white fangs!”)
The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged
the man on to pick up the cub. As the hand
descended closer and closer, there raged within
the cub a battle of the instincts. He experienced
two great impulsions—to yield and to fight.
The resulting action was a compromise. He
did both. He yielded till the hand almost
touched him. Then he fought, his teeth flashing
in a snap that sank them into the hand. The
next moment he received a clout alongside
the head that knocked him over on his side.
Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood
and the instinct of submission took charge
of him. He sat up on his haunches and ki-yi’d.
But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry.
The cub received a clout on the other side
of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi’d
louder than ever.
The four Indians laughed more loudly, while
even the man who had been bitten began to
laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed
at him, while he wailed out his terror and
his hurt. In the midst of it, he heard something.
The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew
what it was, and with a last, long wail that
had in it more of triumph than grief, he ceased
his noise and waited for the coming of his
mother, of his ferocious and indomitable mother
who fought and killed all things and was never
afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had
heard the cry of her cub and was dashing to
save him.
She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and
militant motherhood making her anything but
a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle
of her protective rage was pleasing. He uttered
a glad little cry and bounded to meet her,
while the man-animals went back hastily several
steps. The she-wolf stood over against her
cub, facing the men, with bristling hair,
a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face
was distorted and malignant with menace, even
the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip
to eyes so prodigious was her snarl.
Then it was that a cry went up from one of
the men. “Kiche!” was what he uttered.
It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub
felt his mother wilting at the sound.
“Kiche!” the man cried again, this time
with sharpness and authority.
And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf,
the fearless one, crouching down till her
belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging
her tail, making peace signs. The cub could
not understand. He was appalled. The awe of
man rushed over him again. His instinct had
been true. His mother verified it. She, too,
rendered submission to the man-animals.
The man who had spoken came over to her. He
put his hand upon her head, and she only crouched
closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to
snap. The other men came up, and surrounded
her, and felt her, and pawed her, which actions
she made no attempt to resent. They were greatly
excited, and made many noises with their mouths.
These noises were not indication of danger,
the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother
still bristling from time to time but doing
his best to submit.
“It is not strange,” an Indian was saying.
“Her father was a wolf. It is true, her
mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie
her out in the woods all of three nights in
the mating season? Therefore was the father
of Kiche a wolf.”
“It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran
away,” spoke a second Indian.
“It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,” Grey
Beaver answered. “It was the time of the
famine, and there was no meat for the dogs.”
“She has lived with the wolves,” said
a third Indian.
“So it would seem, Three Eagles,” Grey
Beaver answered, laying his hand on the cub;
“and this be the sign of it.”
The cub snarled a little at the touch of the
hand, and the hand flew back to administer
a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs,
and sank down submissively, while the hand,
returning, rubbed behind his ears, and up
and down his back.
“This be the sign of it,” Grey Beaver
went on. “It is plain that his mother is
Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore
is there in him little dog and much wolf.
His fangs be white, and White Fang shall be
his name. I have spoken. He is my dog. For
was not Kiche my brother’s dog? And is not
my brother dead?”
The cub, who had thus received a name in the
world, lay and watched. For a time the man-animals
continued to make their mouth-noises. Then
Grey Beaver took a knife from a sheath that
hung around his neck, and went into the thicket
and cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He
notched the stick at each end and in the notches
fastened strings of raw-hide. One string he
tied around the throat of Kiche. Then he led
her to a small pine, around which he tied
the other string.
White Fang followed and lay down beside her.
Salmon Tongue’s hand reached out to him
and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked
on anxiously. White Fang felt fear mounting
in him again. He could not quite suppress
a snarl, but he made no offer to snap. The
hand, with fingers crooked and spread apart,
rubbed his stomach in a playful way and rolled
him from side to side. It was ridiculous and
ungainly, lying there on his back with legs
sprawling in the air. Besides, it was a position
of such utter helplessness that White Fang’s
whole nature revolted against it. He could
do nothing to defend himself. If this man-animal
intended harm, White Fang knew that he could
not escape it. How could he spring away with
his four legs in the air above him? Yet submission
made him master his fear, and he only growled
softly. This growl he could not suppress;
nor did the man-animal resent it by giving
him a blow on the head. And furthermore, such
was the strangeness of it, White Fang experienced
an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as
the hand rubbed back and forth. When he was
rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when
the fingers pressed and prodded at the base
of his ears the pleasurable sensation increased;
and when, with a final rub and scratch, the
man left him alone and went away, all fear
had died out of White Fang. He was to know
fear many times in his dealing with man; yet
it was a token of the fearless companionship
with man that was ultimately to be his.
After a time, White Fang heard strange noises
approaching. He was quick in his classification,
for he knew them at once for man-animal noises.
A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe,
strung out as it was on the march, trailed
in. There were more men and many women and
children, forty souls of them, and all heavily
burdened with camp equipage and outfit. Also
there were many dogs; and these, with the
exception of the part-grown puppies, were
likewise burdened with camp outfit. On their
backs, in bags that fastened tightly around
underneath, the dogs carried from twenty to
thirty pounds of weight.
White Fang had never seen dogs before, but
at sight of them he felt that they were his
own kind, only somehow different. But they
displayed little difference from the wolf
when they discovered the cub and his mother.
There was a rush. White Fang bristled and
snarled and snapped in the face of the open-mouthed
oncoming wave of dogs, and went down and under
them, feeling the sharp slash of teeth in
his body, himself biting and tearing at the
legs and bellies above him. There was a great
uproar. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as
she fought for him; and he could hear the
cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs
striking upon bodies, and the yelps of pain
from the dogs so struck.
Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on
his feet again. He could now see the man-animals
driving back the dogs with clubs and stones,
defending him, saving him from the savage
teeth of his kind that somehow was not his
kind. And though there was no reason in his
brain for a clear conception of so abstract
a thing as justice, nevertheless, in his own
way, he felt the justice of the man-animals,
and he knew them for what they were—makers
of law and executors of law. Also, he appreciated
the power with which they administered the
law. Unlike any animals he had ever encountered,
they did not bite nor claw. They enforced
their live strength with the power of dead
things. Dead things did their bidding. Thus,
sticks and stones, directed by these strange
creatures, leaped through the air like living
things, inflicting grievous hurts upon the
dogs.
To his mind this was power unusual, power
inconceivable and beyond the natural, power
that was godlike. White Fang, in the very
nature of him, could never know anything about
gods; at the best he could know only things
that were beyond knowing—but the wonder
and awe that he had of these man-animals in
ways resembled what would be the wonder and
awe of man at sight of some celestial creature,
on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from
either hand at an astonished world.
The last dog had been driven back. The hubbub
died down. And White Fang licked his hurts
and meditated upon this, his first taste of
pack-cruelty and his introduction to the pack.
He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted
of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself.
They had constituted a kind apart, and here,
abruptly, he had discovered many more creatures
apparently of his own kind. And there was
a subconscious resentment that these, his
kind, at first sight had pitched upon him
and tried to destroy him. In the same way
he resented his mother being tied with a stick,
even though it was done by the superior man-animals.
It savoured of the trap, of bondage. Yet of
the trap and of bondage he knew nothing. Freedom
to roam and run and lie down at will, had
been his heritage; and here it was being infringed
upon. His mother’s movements were restricted
to the length of a stick, and by the length
of that same stick was he restricted, for
he had not yet got beyond the need of his
mother’s side.
He did not like it. Nor did he like it when
the man-animals arose and went on with their
march; for a tiny man-animal took the other
end of the stick and led Kiche captive behind
him, and behind Kiche followed White Fang,
greatly perturbed and worried by this new
adventure he had entered upon.
They went down the valley of the stream, far
beyond White Fang’s widest ranging, until
they came to the end of the valley, where
the stream ran into the Mackenzie River. Here,
where canoes were cached on poles high in
the air and where stood fish-racks for the
drying of fish, camp was made; and White Fang
looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority
of these man-animals increased with every
moment. There was their mastery over all these
sharp-fanged dogs. It breathed of power. But
greater than that, to the wolf-cub, was their
mastery over things not alive; their capacity
to communicate motion to unmoving things;
their capacity to change the very face of
the world.
It was this last that especially affected
him. The elevation of frames of poles caught
his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable,
being done by the same creatures that flung
sticks and stones to great distances. But
when the frames of poles were made into tepees
by being covered with cloth and skins, White
Fang was astounded. It was the colossal bulk
of them that impressed him. They arose around
him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-growing
form of life. They occupied nearly the whole
circumference of his field of vision. He was
afraid of them. They loomed ominously above
him; and when the breeze stirred them into
huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping
his eyes warily upon them, and prepared to
spring away if they attempted to precipitate
themselves upon him.
But in a short while his fear of the tepees
passed away. He saw the women and children
passing in and out of them without harm, and
he saw the dogs trying often to get into them,
and being driven away with sharp words and
flying stones. After a time, he left Kiche’s
side and crawled cautiously toward the wall
of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity
of growth that urged him on—the necessity
of learning and living and doing that brings
experience. The last few inches to the wall
of the tepee were crawled with painful slowness
and precaution. The day’s events had prepared
him for the unknown to manifest itself in
most stupendous and unthinkable ways. At last
his nose touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing
happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric,
saturated with the man-smell. He closed on
the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle
tug. Nothing happened, though the adjacent
portions of the tepee moved. He tugged harder.
There was a greater movement. It was delightful.
He tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until
the whole tepee was in motion. Then the sharp
cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering
back to Kiche. But after that he was afraid
no more of the looming bulks of the tepees.
A moment later he was straying away again
from his mother. Her stick was tied to a peg
in the ground and she could not follow him.
A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older
than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatious
and belligerent importance. The puppy’s
name, as White Fang was afterward to hear
him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience
in puppy fights and was already something
of a bully.
Lip-lip was White Fang’s own kind, and,
being only a puppy, did not seem dangerous;
so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly
spirit. But when the strangers walk became
stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of
his teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and answered
with lifted lips. They half circled about
each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling.
This lasted several minutes, and White Fang
was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game.
But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip
leaped in, delivering a slashing snap, and
leaped away again. The snap had taken effect
on the shoulder that had been hurt by the
lynx and that was still sore deep down near
the bone. The surprise and hurt of it brought
a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment,
in a rush of anger, he was upon Lip-lip and
snapping viciously.
But Lip-lip had lived his life in camp and
had fought many puppy fights. Three times,
four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp
little teeth scored on the newcomer, until
White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to the
protection of his mother. It was the first
of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip,
for they were enemies from the start, born
so, with natures destined perpetually to clash.
Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her
tongue, and tried to prevail upon him to remain
with her. But his curiosity was rampant, and
several minutes later he was venturing forth
on a new quest. He came upon one of the man-animals,
Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams
and doing something with sticks and dry moss
spread before him on the ground. White Fang
came near to him and watched. Grey Beaver
made mouth-noises which White Fang interpreted
as not hostile, so he came still nearer.
Women and children were carrying more sticks
and branches to Grey Beaver. It was evidently
an affair of moment. White Fang came in until
he touched Grey Beaver’s knee, so curious
was he, and already forgetful that this was
a terrible man-animal. Suddenly he saw a strange
thing like mist beginning to arise from the
sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver’s hands.
Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared
a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour
like the colour of the sun in the sky. White
Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him
as the light, in the mouth of the cave had
drawn him in his early puppyhood. He crawled
the several steps toward the flame. He heard
Grey Beaver chuckle above him, and he knew
the sound was not hostile. Then his nose touched
the flame, and at the same instant his little
tongue went out to it.
For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown,
lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss,
was savagely clutching him by the nose. He
scrambled backward, bursting out in an astonished
explosion of ki-yi’s. At the sound, Kiche
leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and
there raged terribly because she could not
come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly,
and slapped his thighs, and told the happening
to all the rest of the camp, till everybody
was laughing uproariously. But White Fang
sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d and ki-yi’d,
a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the
midst of the man-animals.
It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both
nose and tongue had been scorched by the live
thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under
Grey Beaver’s hands. He cried and cried
interminably, and every fresh wail was greeted
by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals.
He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue,
but the tongue was burnt too, and the two
hurts coming together produced greater hurt;
whereupon he cried more hopelessly and helplessly
than ever.
And then shame came to him. He knew laughter
and the meaning of it. It is not given us
to know how some animals know laughter, and
know when they are being laughed at; but it
was this same way that White Fang knew it.
And he felt shame that the man-animals should
be laughing at him. He turned and fled away,
not from the hurt of the fire, but from the
laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in
the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, raging
at the end of her stick like an animal gone
mad—to Kiche, the one creature in the world
who was not laughing at him.
Twilight drew down and night came on, and
White Fang lay by his mother’s side. His
nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed
by a greater trouble. He was homesick. He
felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush
and quietude of the stream and the cave in
the cliff. Life had become too populous. There
were so many of the man-animals, men, women,
and children, all making noises and irritations.
And there were the dogs, ever squabbling and
bickering, bursting into uproars and creating
confusions. The restful loneliness of the
only life he had known was gone. Here the
very air was palpitant with life. It hummed
and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing
its intensity and abruptly variant in pitch,
it impinged on his nerves and senses, made
him nervous and restless and worried him with
a perpetual imminence of happening.
He watched the man-animals coming and going
and moving about the camp. In fashion distantly
resembling the way men look upon the gods
they create, so looked White Fang upon the
man-animals before him. They were superior
creatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension
they were as much wonder-workers as gods are
to men. They were creatures of mastery, possessing
all manner of unknown and impossible potencies,
overlords of the alive and the not alive—making
obey that which moved, imparting movement
to that which did not move, and making life,
sun-coloured and biting life, to grow out
of dead moss and wood. They were fire-makers!
They were gods.
CHAPTER II—THE BONDAGE
The days were thronged with experience for
White Fang. During the time that Kiche was
tied by the stick, he ran about over all the
camp, inquiring, investigating, learning.
He quickly came to know much of the ways of
the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed
contempt. The more he came to know them, the
more they vindicated their superiority, the
more they displayed their mysterious powers,
the greater loomed their god-likeness.
To man has been given the grief, often, of
seeing his gods overthrown and his altars
crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog
that have come in to crouch at man’s feet,
this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose
gods are of the unseen and the overguessed,
vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture
of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness
and power, intangible out-croppings of self
into the realm of spirit—unlike man, the
wolf and the wild dog that have come in to
the fire find their gods in the living flesh,
solid to the touch, occupying earth-space
and requiring time for the accomplishment
of their ends and their existence. No effort
of faith is necessary to believe in such a
god; no effort of will can possibly induce
disbelief in such a god. There is no getting
away from it. There it stands, on its two
hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential,
passionate and wrathful and loving, god and
mystery and power all wrapped up and around
by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that
is good to eat like any flesh.
And so it was with White Fang. The man-animals
were gods unmistakable and unescapable. As
his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance
to them at the first cry of her name, so he
was beginning to render his allegiance. He
gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably
theirs. When they walked, he got out of their
way. When they called, he came. When they
threatened, he cowered down. When they commanded
him to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind
any wish of theirs was power to enforce that
wish, power that hurt, power that expressed
itself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones
and stinging lashes of whips.
He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to
them. His actions were theirs to command.
His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon,
to tolerate. Such was the lesson that was
quickly borne in upon him. It came hard, going
as it did, counter to much that was strong
and dominant in his own nature; and, while
he disliked it in the learning of it, unknown
to himself he was learning to like it. It
was a placing of his destiny in another’s
hands, a shifting of the responsibilities
of existence. This in itself was compensation,
for it is always easier to lean upon another
than to stand alone.
But it did not all happen in a day, this giving
over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals.
He could not immediately forego his wild heritage
and his memories of the Wild. There were days
when he crept to the edge of the forest and
stood and listened to something calling him
far and away. And always he returned, restless
and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully
at Kiche’s side and to lick her face with
eager, questioning tongue.
White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the
camp. He knew the injustice and greediness
of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown
out to be eaten. He came to know that men
were more just, children more cruel, and women
more kindly and more likely to toss him a
bit of meat or bone. And after two or three
painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown
puppies, he came into the knowledge that it
was always good policy to let such mothers
alone, to keep away from them as far as possible,
and to avoid them when he saw them coming.
But the bane of his life was Lip-lip. Larger,
older, and stronger, Lip-lip had selected
White Fang for his special object of persecution.
White Fang fought willingly enough, but he
was outclassed. His enemy was too big. Lip-lip
became a nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured
away from his mother, the bully was sure to
appear, trailing at his heels, snarling at
him, picking upon him, and watchful of an
opportunity, when no man-animal was near,
to spring upon him and force a fight. As Lip-lip
invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became
his chief delight in life, as it became White
Fang’s chief torment.
But the effect upon White Fang was not to
cow him. Though he suffered most of the damage
and was always defeated, his spirit remained
unsubdued. Yet a bad effect was produced.
He became malignant and morose. His temper
had been savage by birth, but it became more
savage under this unending persecution. The
genial, playful, puppyish side of him found
little expression. He never played and gambolled
about with the other puppies of the camp.
Lip-lip would not permit it. The moment White
Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon
him, bullying and hectoring him, or fighting
with him until he had driven him away.
The effect of all this was to rob White Fang
of much of his puppyhood and to make him in
his comportment older than his age. Denied
the outlet, through play, of his energies,
he recoiled upon himself and developed his
mental processes. He became cunning; he had
idle time in which to devote himself to thoughts
of trickery. Prevented from obtaining his
share of meat and fish when a general feed
was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever
thief. He had to forage for himself, and he
foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague
to the squaws in consequence. He learned to
sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what
was going on everywhere, to see and to hear
everything and to reason accordingly, and
successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding
his implacable persecutor.
It was early in the days of his persecution
that he played his first really big crafty
game and got there from his first taste of
revenge. As Kiche, when with the wolves, had
lured out to destruction dogs from the camps
of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat
similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche’s avenging
jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang
made an indirect flight that led in and out
and around the various tepees of the camp.
He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy
of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip. But
he did not run his best in this chase. He
barely held his own, one leap ahead of his
pursuer.
Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent
nearness of his victim, forgot caution and
locality. When he remembered locality, it
was too late. Dashing at top speed around
a tepee, he ran full tilt into Kiche lying
at the end of her stick. He gave one yelp
of consternation, and then her punishing jaws
closed upon him. She was tied, but he could
not get away from her easily. She rolled him
off his legs so that he could not run, while
she repeatedly ripped and slashed him with
her fangs.
When at last he succeeded in rolling clear
of her, he crawled to his feet, badly dishevelled,
hurt both in body and in spirit. His hair
was standing out all over him in tufts where
her teeth had mauled. He stood where he had
arisen, opened his mouth, and broke out the
long, heart-broken puppy wail. But even this
he was not allowed to complete. In the middle
of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth
into Lip-lip’s hind leg. There was no fight
left in Lip-lip, and he ran away shamelessly,
his victim hot on his heels and worrying him
all the way back to his own tepee. Here the
squaws came to his aid, and White Fang, transformed
into a raging demon, was finally driven off
only by a fusillade of stones.
Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that
the liability of her running away was past,
released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with
his mother’s freedom. He accompanied her
joyfully about the camp; and, so long as he
remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a
respectful distance. White-Fang even bristled
up to him and walked stiff-legged, but Lip-lip
ignored the challenge. He was no fool himself,
and whatever vengeance he desired to wreak,
he could wait until he caught White Fang alone.
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed
into the edge of the woods next to the camp.
He had led his mother there, step by step,
and now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle
her farther. The stream, the lair, and the
quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted
her to come. He ran on a few steps, stopped,
and looked back. She had not moved. He whined
pleadingly, and scurried playfully in and
out of the underbrush. He ran back to her,
licked her face, and ran on again. And still
she did not move. He stopped and regarded
her, all of an intentness and eagerness, physically
expressed, that slowly faded out of him as
she turned her head and gazed back at the
camp.
There was something calling to him out there
in the open. His mother heard it too. But
she heard also that other and louder call,
the call of the fire and of man—the call
which has been given alone of all animals
to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the
wild-dog, who are brothers.
Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward
camp. Stronger than the physical restraint
of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon
her. Unseen and occultly, the gods still gripped
with their power and would not let her go.
White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch
and whimpered softly. There was a strong smell
of pine, and subtle wood fragrances filled
the air, reminding him of his old life of
freedom before the days of his bondage. But
he was still only a part-grown puppy, and
stronger than the call either of man or of
the Wild was the call of his mother. All the
hours of his short life he had depended upon
her. The time was yet to come for independence.
So he arose and trotted forlornly back to
camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down
and whimper and to listen to the call that
still sounded in the depths of the forest.
In the Wild the time of a mother with her
young is short; but under the dominion of
man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it
was with White Fang. Grey Beaver was in the
debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going
away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great
Slave Lake. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin,
twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay
the debt. White Fang saw his mother taken
aboard Three Eagles’ canoe, and tried to
follow her. A blow from Three Eagles knocked
him backward to the land. The canoe shoved
off. He sprang into the water and swam after
it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver
to return. Even a man-animal, a god, White
Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in
of losing his mother.
But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and
Grey Beaver wrathfully launched a canoe in
pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached
down and by the nape of the neck lifted him
clear of the water. He did not deposit him
at once in the bottom of the canoe. Holding
him suspended with one hand, with the other
hand he proceeded to give him a beating. And
it was a beating. His hand was heavy. Every
blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered
a multitude of blows.
Impelled by the blows that rained upon him,
now from this side, now from that, White Fang
swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky
pendulum. Varying were the emotions that surged
through him. At first, he had known surprise.
Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped
several times to the impact of the hand. But
this was quickly followed by anger. His free
nature asserted itself, and he showed his
teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of
the wrathful god. This but served to make
the god more wrathful. The blows came faster,
heavier, more shrewd to hurt.
Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang
continued to snarl. But this could not last
for ever. One or the other must give over,
and that one was White Fang. Fear surged through
him again. For the first time he was being
really man-handled. The occasional blows of
sticks and stones he had previously experienced
were as caresses compared with this. He broke
down and began to cry and yelp. For a time
each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear
passed into terror, until finally his yelps
were voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected
with the rhythm of the punishment.
At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White
Fang, hanging limply, continued to cry. This
seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him
down roughly in the bottom of the canoe. In
the meantime the canoe had drifted down the
stream. Grey Beaver picked up the paddle.
White Fang was in his way. He spurned him
savagely with his foot. In that moment White
Fang’s free nature flashed forth again,
and he sank his teeth into the moccasined
foot.
The beating that had gone before was as nothing
compared with the beating he now received.
Grey Beaver’s wrath was terrible; likewise
was White Fang’s fright. Not only the hand,
but the hard wooden paddle was used upon him;
and he was bruised and sore in all his small
body when he was again flung down in the canoe.
Again, and this time with purpose, did Grey
Beaver kick him. White Fang did not repeat
his attack on the foot. He had learned another
lesson of his bondage. Never, no matter what
the circumstance, must he dare to bite the
god who was lord and master over him; the
body of the lord and master was sacred, not
to be defiled by the teeth of such as he.
That was evidently the crime of crimes, the
one offence there was no condoning nor overlooking.
When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang
lay whimpering and motionless, waiting the
will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey Beaver’s
will that he should go ashore, for ashore
he was flung, striking heavily on his side
and hurting his bruises afresh. He crawled
tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering.
Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding
from the bank, now rushed upon him, knocking
him over and sinking his teeth into him. White
Fang was too helpless to defend himself, and
it would have gone hard with him had not Grey
Beaver’s foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip
into the air with its violence so that he
smashed down to earth a dozen feet away. This
was the man-animal’s justice; and even then,
in his own pitiable plight, White Fang experienced
a little grateful thrill. At Grey Beaver’s
heels he limped obediently through the village
to the tepee. And so it came that White Fang
learned that the right to punish was something
the gods reserved for themselves and denied
to the lesser creatures under them.
That night, when all was still, White Fang
remembered his mother and sorrowed for her.
He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver,
who beat him. After that he mourned gently
when the gods were around. But sometimes,
straying off to the edge of the woods by himself,
he gave vent to his grief, and cried it out
with loud whimperings and wailings.
It was during this period that he might have
harkened to the memories of the lair and the
stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory
of his mother held him. As the hunting man-animals
went out and came back, so she would come
back to the village some time. So he remained
in his bondage waiting for her.
But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage.
There was much to interest him. Something
was always happening. There was no end to
the strange things these gods did, and he
was always curious to see. Besides, he was
learning how to get along with Grey Beaver.
Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was
what was exacted of him; and in return he
escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated.
Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed
him a piece of meat, and defended him against
the other dogs in the eating of it. And such
a piece of meat was of value. It was worth
more, in some strange way, then a dozen pieces
of meat from the hand of a squaw. Grey Beaver
never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was
the weight of his hand, perhaps his justice,
perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps
it was all these things that influenced White
Fang; for a certain tie of attachment was
forming between him and his surly lord.
Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as
by the power of stick and stone and clout
of hand, were the shackles of White Fang’s
bondage being riveted upon him. The qualities
in his kind that in the beginning made it
possible for them to come in to the fires
of men, were qualities capable of development.
They were developing in him, and the camp-life,
replete with misery as it was, was secretly
endearing itself to him all the time. But
White Fang was unaware of it. He knew only
grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for her
return, and a hungry yearning for the free
life that had been his.
CHAPTER III—THE OUTCAST
Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that
White Fang became wickeder and more ferocious
than it was his natural right to be. Savageness
was a part of his make-up, but the savageness
thus developed exceeded his make-up. He acquired
a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals
themselves. Wherever there was trouble and
uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or
the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen
meat, they were sure to find White Fang mixed
up in it and usually at the bottom of it.
They did not bother to look after the causes
of his conduct. They saw only the effects,
and the effects were bad. He was a sneak and
a thief, a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble;
and irate squaws told him to his face, the
while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge
any quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf
and worthless and bound to come to an evil
end.
He found himself an outcast in the midst of
the populous camp. All the young dogs followed
Lip-lip’s lead. There was a difference between
White Fang and them. Perhaps they sensed his
wild-wood breed, and instinctively felt for
him the enmity that the domestic dog feels
for the wolf. But be that as it may, they
joined with Lip-lip in the persecution. And,
once declared against him, they found good
reason to continue declared against him. One
and all, from time to time, they felt his
teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than
he received. Many of them he could whip in
single fight; but single fight was denied
him. The beginning of such a fight was a signal
for all the young dogs in camp to come running
and pitch upon him.
Out of this pack-persecution he learned two
important things: how to take care of himself
in a mass-fight against him—and how, on
a single dog, to inflict the greatest amount
of damage in the briefest space of time. To
keep one’s feet in the midst of the hostile
mass meant life, and this he learnt well.
He became cat-like in his ability to stay
on his feet. Even grown dogs might hurtle
him backward or sideways with the impact of
their heavy bodies; and backward or sideways
he would go, in the air or sliding on the
ground, but always with his legs under him
and his feet downward to the mother earth.
When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries
to the actual combat—snarlings and bristlings
and stiff-legged struttings. But White Fang
learned to omit these preliminaries. Delay
meant the coming against him of all the young
dogs. He must do his work quickly and get
away. So he learnt to give no warning of his
intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed
on the instant, without notice, before his
foe could prepare to meet him. Thus he learned
how to inflict quick and severe damage. Also
he learned the value of surprise. A dog, taken
off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or
its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what
was happening, was a dog half whipped.
Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow
a dog taken by surprise; while a dog, thus
overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment
the soft underside of its neck—the vulnerable
point at which to strike for its life. White
Fang knew this point. It was a knowledge bequeathed
to him directly from the hunting generation
of wolves. So it was that White Fang’s method
when he took the offensive, was: first to
find a young dog alone; second, to surprise
it and knock it off its feet; and third, to
drive in with his teeth at the soft throat.
Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet
become large enough nor strong enough to make
his throat-attack deadly; but many a young
dog went around camp with a lacerated throat
in token of White Fang’s intention. And
one day, catching one of his enemies alone
on the edge of the woods, he managed, by repeatedly
overthrowing him and attacking the throat,
to cut the great vein and let out the life.
There was a great row that night. He had been
observed, the news had been carried to the
dead dog’s master, the squaws remembered
all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey
Beaver was beset by many angry voices. But
he resolutely held the door of his tepee,
inside which he had placed the culprit, and
refused to permit the vengeance for which
his tribespeople clamoured.
White Fang became hated by man and dog. During
this period of his development he never knew
a moment’s security. The tooth of every
dog was against him, the hand of every man.
He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with
curses and stones by his gods. He lived tensely.
He was always keyed up, alert for attack,
wary of being attacked, with an eye for sudden
and unexpected missiles, prepared to act precipitately
and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth,
or to leap away with a menacing snarl.
As for snarling he could snarl more terribly
than any dog, young or old, in camp. The intent
of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment
is required to know when it should be used.
White Fang knew how to make it and when to
make it. Into his snarl he incorporated all
that was vicious, malignant, and horrible.
With nose serrulated by continuous spasms,
hair bristling in recurrent waves, tongue
whipping out like a red snake and whipping
back again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming
hatred, lips wrinkled back, and fangs exposed
and dripping, he could compel a pause on the
part of almost any assailant. A temporary
pause, when taken off his guard, gave him
the vital moment in which to think and determine
his action. But often a pause so gained lengthened
out until it evolved into a complete cessation
from the attack. And before more than one
of the grown dogs White Fang’s snarl enabled
him to beat an honourable retreat.
An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown
dogs, his sanguinary methods and remarkable
efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution
of him. Not permitted himself to run with
the pack, the curious state of affairs obtained
that no member of the pack could run outside
the pack. White Fang would not permit it.
What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics,
the young dogs were afraid to run by themselves.
With the exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled
to hunch together for mutual protection against
the terrible enemy they had made. A puppy
alone by the river bank meant a puppy dead
or a puppy that aroused the camp with its
shrill pain and terror as it fled back from
the wolf-cub that had waylaid it.
But White Fang’s reprisals did not cease,
even when the young dogs had learned thoroughly
that they must stay together. He attacked
them when he caught them alone, and they attacked
him when they were bunched. The sight of him
was sufficient to start them rushing after
him, at which times his swiftness usually
carried him into safety. But woe the dog that
outran his fellows in such pursuit! White
Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon the
pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly
to rip him up before the pack could arrive.
This occurred with great frequency, for, once
in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget
themselves in the excitement of the chase,
while White Fang never forgot himself. Stealing
backward glances as he ran, he was always
ready to whirl around and down the overzealous
pursuer that outran his fellows.
Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the
exigencies of the situation they realised
their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it
was that the hunt of White Fang became their
chief game—a deadly game, withal, and at
all times a serious game. He, on the other
hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid
to venture anywhere. During the period that
he waited vainly for his mother to come back,
he led the pack many a wild chase through
the adjacent woods. But the pack invariably
lost him. Its noise and outcry warned him
of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet-footed,
silently, a moving shadow among the trees
after the manner of his father and mother
before him. Further he was more directly connected
with the Wild than they; and he knew more
of its secrets and stratagems. A favourite
trick of his was to lose his trail in running
water and then lie quietly in a near-by thicket
while their baffled cries arose around him.
Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable,
perpetually warred upon and himself waging
perpetual war, his development was rapid and
one-sided. This was no soil for kindliness
and affection to blossom in. Of such things
he had not the faintest glimmering. The code
he learned was to obey the strong and to oppress
the weak. Grey Beaver was a god, and strong.
Therefore White Fang obeyed him. But the dog
younger or smaller than himself was weak,
a thing to be destroyed. His development was
in the direction of power. In order to face
the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction,
his predatory and protective faculties were
unduly developed. He became quicker of movement
than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier,
deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike
muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel,
more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had
to become all these things, else he would
not have held his own nor survive the hostile
environment in which he found himself.
CHAPTER IV—THE TRAIL OF THE GODS
In the fall of the year, when the days were
shortening and the bite of the frost was coming
into the air, White Fang got his chance for
liberty. For several days there had been a
great hubbub in the village. The summer camp
was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and
baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall
hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager
eyes, and when the tepees began to come down
and the canoes were loading at the bank, he
understood. Already the canoes were departing,
and some had disappeared down the river.
Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind.
He waited his opportunity to slink out of
camp to the woods. Here, in the running stream
where ice was beginning to form, he hid his
trail. Then he crawled into the heart of a
dense thicket and waited. The time passed
by, and he slept intermittently for hours.
Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver’s voice
calling him by name. There were other voices.
White Fang could hear Grey Beaver’s squaw
taking part in the search, and Mit-sah, who
was Grey Beaver’s son.
White Fang trembled with fear, and though
the impulse came to crawl out of his hiding-place,
he resisted it. After a time the voices died
away, and some time after that he crept out
to enjoy the success of his undertaking. Darkness
was coming on, and for a while he played about
among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom.
Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware
of loneliness. He sat down to consider, listening
to the silence of the forest and perturbed
by it. That nothing moved nor sounded, seemed
ominous. He felt the lurking of danger, unseen
and unguessed. He was suspicious of the looming
bulks of the trees and of the dark shadows
that might conceal all manner of perilous
things.
Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of
a tepee against which to snuggle. The frost
was in his feet, and he kept lifting first
one fore-foot and then the other. He curved
his bushy tail around to cover them, and at
the same time he saw a vision. There was nothing
strange about it. Upon his inward sight was
impressed a succession of memory-pictures.
He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the
blaze of the fires. He heard the shrill voices
of the women, the gruff basses of the men,
and the snarling of the dogs. He was hungry,
and he remembered pieces of meat and fish
that had been thrown him. Here was no meat,
nothing but a threatening and inedible silence.
His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility
had weakened him. He had forgotten how to
shift for himself. The night yawned about
him. His senses, accustomed to the hum and
bustle of the camp, used to the continuous
impact of sights and sounds, were now left
idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to
see nor hear. They strained to catch some
interruption of the silence and immobility
of nature. They were appalled by inaction
and by the feel of something terrible impending.
He gave a great start of fright. A colossal
and formless something was rushing across
the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow
flung by the moon, from whose face the clouds
had been brushed away. Reassured, he whimpered
softly; then he suppressed the whimper for
fear that it might attract the attention of
the lurking dangers.
A tree, contracting in the cool of the night,
made a loud noise. It was directly above him.
He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him,
and he ran madly toward the village. He knew
an overpowering desire for the protection
and companionship of man. In his nostrils
was the smell of the camp-smoke. In his ears
the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud.
He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit
open where were no shadows nor darknesses.
But no village greeted his eyes. He had forgotten.
The village had gone away.
His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was
no place to which to flee. He slunk forlornly
through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps
and the discarded rags and tags of the gods.
He would have been glad for the rattle of
stones about him, flung by an angry squaw,
glad for the hand of Grey Beaver descending
upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed
with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling,
cowardly pack.
He came to where Grey Beaver’s tepee had
stood. In the centre of the space it had occupied,
he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon.
His throat was afflicted by rigid spasms,
his mouth opened, and in a heart-broken cry
bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief
for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries
as well as his apprehension of sufferings
and dangers to come. It was the long wolf-howl,
full-throated and mournful, the first howl
he had ever uttered.
The coming of daylight dispelled his fears
but increased his loneliness. The naked earth,
which so shortly before had been so populous;
thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him.
It did not take him long to make up his mind.
He plunged into the forest and followed the
river bank down the stream. All day he ran.
He did not rest. He seemed made to run on
for ever. His iron-like body ignored fatigue.
And even after fatigue came, his heritage
of endurance braced him to endless endeavour
and enabled him to drive his complaining body
onward.
Where the river swung in against precipitous
bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind.
Rivers and streams that entered the main river
he forded or swam. Often he took to the rim-ice
that was beginning to form, and more than
once he crashed through and struggled for
life in the icy current. Always he was on
the lookout for the trail of the gods where
it might leave the river and proceed inland.
White Fang was intelligent beyond the average
of his kind; yet his mental vision was not
wide enough to embrace the other bank of the
Mackenzie. What if the trail of the gods led
out on that side? It never entered his head.
Later on, when he had travelled more and grown
older and wiser and come to know more of trails
and rivers, it might be that he could grasp
and apprehend such a possibility. But that
mental power was yet in the future. Just now
he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie
alone entering into his calculations.
All night he ran, blundering in the darkness
into mishaps and obstacles that delayed but
did not daunt. By the middle of the second
day he had been running continuously for thirty
hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving
out. It was the endurance of his mind that
kept him going. He had not eaten in forty
hours, and he was weak with hunger. The repeated
drenchings in the icy water had likewise had
their effect on him. His handsome coat was
draggled. The broad pads of his feet were
bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp,
and this limp increased with the hours. To
make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured
and snow began to fall—a raw, moist, melting,
clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid
from him the landscape he traversed, and that
covered over the inequalities of the ground
so that the way of his feet was more difficult
and painful.
Grey Beaver had intended camping that night
on the far bank of the Mackenzie, for it was
in that direction that the hunting lay. But
on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose
coming down to drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch,
who was Grey Beaver’s squaw. Now, had not
the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah
been steering out of the course because of
the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose,
and had not Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky
shot from his rifle, all subsequent things
would have happened differently. Grey Beaver
would not have camped on the near side of
the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed
by and gone on, either to die or to find his
way to his wild brothers and become one of
them—a wolf to the end of his days.
Night had fallen. The snow was flying more
thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly
to himself as he stumbled and limped along,
came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh
was it that he knew it immediately for what
it was. Whining with eagerness, he followed
back from the river bank and in among the
trees. The camp-sounds came to his ears. He
saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking,
and Grey Beaver squatting on his hams and
mumbling a chunk of raw tallow. There was
fresh meat in camp!
White Fang expected a beating. He crouched
and bristled a little at the thought of it.
Then he went forward again. He feared and
disliked the beating he knew to be waiting
for him. But he knew, further, that the comfort
of the fire would be his, the protection of
the gods, the companionship of the dogs—the
last, a companionship of enmity, but none
the less a companionship and satisfying to
his gregarious needs.
He came cringing and crawling into the firelight.
Grey Beaver saw him, and stopped munching
the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing
and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement
and submission. He crawled straight toward
Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming
slower and more painful. At last he lay at
the master’s feet, into whose possession
he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body
and soul. Of his own choice, he came in to
sit by man’s fire and to be ruled by him.
White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment
to fall upon him. There was a movement of
the hand above him. He cringed involuntarily
under the expected blow. It did not fall.
He stole a glance upward. Grey Beaver was
breaking the lump of tallow in half! Grey
Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow!
Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he
first smelled the tallow and then proceeded
to eat it. Grey Beaver ordered meat to be
brought to him, and guarded him from the other
dogs while he ate. After that, grateful and
content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver’s
feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him,
blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge
that the morrow would find him, not wandering
forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but
in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods
to whom he had given himself and upon whom
he was now dependent.
CHAPTER V—THE COVENANT
When December was well along, Grey Beaver
went on a journey up the Mackenzie. Mit-sah
and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he
drove himself, drawn by dogs he had traded
for or borrowed. A second and smaller sled
was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed
a team of puppies. It was more of a toy affair
than anything else, yet it was the delight
of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning
to do a man’s work in the world. Also, he
was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs;
while the puppies themselves were being broken
in to the harness. Furthermore, the sled was
of some service, for it carried nearly two
hundred pounds of outfit and food.
White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling
in the harness, so that he did not resent
overmuch the first placing of the harness
upon himself. About his neck was put a moss-stuffed
collar, which was connected by two pulling-traces
to a strap that passed around his chest and
over his back. It was to this that was fastened
the long rope by which he pulled at the sled.
There were seven puppies in the team. The
others had been born earlier in the year and
were nine and ten months old, while White
Fang was only eight months old. Each dog was
fastened to the sled by a single rope. No
two ropes were of the same length, while the
difference in length between any two ropes
was at least that of a dog’s body. Every
rope was brought to a ring at the front end
of the sled. The sled itself was without runners,
being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned
forward end to keep it from ploughing under
the snow. This construction enabled the weight
of the sled and load to be distributed over
the largest snow-surface; for the snow was
crystal-powder and very soft. Observing the
same principle of widest distribution of weight,
the dogs at the ends of their ropes radiated
fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so
that no dog trod in another’s footsteps.
There was, furthermore, another virtue in
the fan-formation. The ropes of varying length
prevented the dogs attacking from the rear
those that ran in front of them. For a dog
to attack another, it would have to turn upon
one at a shorter rope. In which case it would
find itself face to face with the dog attacked,
and also it would find itself facing the whip
of the driver. But the most peculiar virtue
of all lay in the fact that the dog that strove
to attack one in front of him must pull the
sled faster, and that the faster the sled
travelled, the faster could the dog attacked
run away. Thus, the dog behind could never
catch up with the one in front. The faster
he ran, the faster ran the one he was after,
and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally,
the sled went faster, and thus, by cunning
indirection, did man increase his mastery
over the beasts.
Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose
grey wisdom he possessed. In the past he had
observed Lip-lip’s persecution of White
Fang; but at that time Lip-lip was another
man’s dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more
than to shy an occasional stone at him. But
now Lip-lip was his dog, and he proceeded
to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him
at the end of the longest rope. This made
Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an
honour! but in reality it took away from him
all honour, and instead of being bully and
master of the pack, he now found himself hated
and persecuted by the pack.
Because he ran at the end of the longest rope,
the dogs had always the view of him running
away before them. All that they saw of him
was his bushy tail and fleeing hind legs—a
view far less ferocious and intimidating than
his bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also,
dogs being so constituted in their mental
ways, the sight of him running away gave desire
to run after him and a feeling that he ran
away from them.
The moment the sled started, the team took
after Lip-lip in a chase that extended throughout
the day. At first he had been prone to turn
upon his pursuers, jealous of his dignity
and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah would
throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot
cariboo-gut whip into his face and compel
him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might
face the pack, but he could not face that
whip, and all that was left him to do was
to keep his long rope taut and his flanks
ahead of the teeth of his mates.
But a still greater cunning lurked in the
recesses of the Indian mind. To give point
to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah
favoured him over the other dogs. These favours
aroused in them jealousy and hatred. In their
presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would
give it to him only. This was maddening to
them. They would rage around just outside
the throwing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip
devoured the meat and Mit-sah protected him.
And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah
would keep the team at a distance and make
believe to give meat to Lip-lip.
White Fang took kindly to the work. He had
travelled a greater distance than the other
dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule
of the gods, and he had learned more thoroughly
the futility of opposing their will. In addition,
the persecution he had suffered from the pack
had made the pack less to him in the scheme
of things, and man more. He had not learned
to be dependent on his kind for companionship.
Besides, Kiche was well-nigh forgotten; and
the chief outlet of expression that remained
to him was in the allegiance he tendered the
gods he had accepted as masters. So he worked
hard, learned discipline, and was obedient.
Faithfulness and willingness characterised
his toil. These are essential traits of the
wolf and the wild-dog when they have become
domesticated, and these traits White Fang
possessed in unusual measure.
A companionship did exist between White Fang
and the other dogs, but it was one of warfare
and enmity. He had never learned to play with
them. He knew only how to fight, and fight
with them he did, returning to them a hundred-fold
the snaps and slashes they had given him in
the days when Lip-lip was leader of the pack.
But Lip-lip was no longer leader—except
when he fled away before his mates at the
end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind.
In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver
or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture away
from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs
were against him, and he tasted to the dregs
the persecution that had been White Fang’s.
With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang
could have become leader of the pack. But
he was too morose and solitary for that. He
merely thrashed his team-mates. Otherwise
he ignored them. They got out of his way when
he came along; nor did the boldest of them
ever dare to rob him of his meat. On the contrary,
they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for
fear that he would take it away from them.
White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the
weak and obey the strong. He ate his share
of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe
the dog that had not yet finished! A snarl
and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail
his indignation to the uncomforting stars
while White Fang finished his portion for
him.
Every little while, however, one dog or another
would flame up in revolt and be promptly subdued.
Thus White Fang was kept in training. He was
jealous of the isolation in which he kept
himself in the midst of the pack, and he fought
often to maintain it. But such fights were
of brief duration. He was too quick for the
others. They were slashed open and bleeding
before they knew what had happened, were whipped
almost before they had begun to fight.
As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods,
was the discipline maintained by White Fang
amongst his fellows. He never allowed them
any latitude. He compelled them to an unremitting
respect for him. They might do as they pleased
amongst themselves. That was no concern of
his. But it was his concern that they leave
him alone in his isolation, get out of his
way when he elected to walk among them, and
at all times acknowledge his mastery over
them. A hint of stiff-leggedness on their
part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and
he would be upon them, merciless and cruel,
swiftly convincing them of the error of their
way.
He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was
rigid as steel. He oppressed the weak with
a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed
to the pitiless struggles for life in the
day of his cubhood, when his mother and he,
alone and unaided, held their own and survived
in the ferocious environment of the Wild.
And not for nothing had he learned to walk
softly when superior strength went by. He
oppressed the weak, but he respected the strong.
And in the course of the long journey with
Grey Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst
the full-grown dogs in the camps of the strange
man-animals they encountered.
The months passed by. Still continued the
journey of Grey Beaver. White Fang’s strength
was developed by the long hours on trail and
the steady toil at the sled; and it would
have seemed that his mental development was
well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite
thoroughly the world in which he lived. His
outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world
as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world,
a world without warmth, a world in which caresses
and affection and the bright sweetnesses of
the spirit did not exist.
He had no affection for Grey Beaver. True,
he was a god, but a most savage god. White
Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship,
but it was a lordship based upon superior
intelligence and brute strength. There was
something in the fibre of White Fang’s being
that made his lordship a thing to be desired,
else he would not have come back from the
Wild when he did to tender his allegiance.
There were deeps in his nature which had never
been sounded. A kind word, a caressing touch
of the hand, on the part of Grey Beaver, might
have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver
did not caress, nor speak kind words. It was
not his way. His primacy was savage, and savagely
he ruled, administering justice with a club,
punishing transgression with the pain of a
blow, and rewarding merit, not by kindness,
but by withholding a blow.
So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a
man’s hand might contain for him. Besides,
he did not like the hands of the man-animals.
He was suspicious of them. It was true that
they sometimes gave meat, but more often they
gave hurt. Hands were things to keep away
from. They hurled stones, wielded sticks and
clubs and whips, administered slaps and clouts,
and, when they touched him, were cunning to
hurt with pinch and twist and wrench. In strange
villages he had encountered the hands of the
children and learned that they were cruel
to hurt. Also, he had once nearly had an eye
poked out by a toddling papoose. From these
experiences he became suspicious of all children.
He could not tolerate them. When they came
near with their ominous hands, he got up.
It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake,
that, in the course of resenting the evil
of the hands of the man-animals, he came to
modify the law that he had learned from Grey
Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable crime
was to bite one of the gods. In this village,
after the custom of all dogs in all villages,
White Fang went foraging, for food. A boy
was chopping frozen moose-meat with an axe,
and the chips were flying in the snow. White
Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped
and began to eat the chips. He observed the
boy lay down the axe and take up a stout club.
White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape
the descending blow. The boy pursued him,
and he, a stranger in the village, fled between
two tepees to find himself cornered against
a high earth bank.
There was no escape for White Fang. The only
way out was between the two tepees, and this
the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared
to strike, he drew in on his cornered quarry.
White Fang was furious. He faced the boy,
bristling and snarling, his sense of justice
outraged. He knew the law of forage. All the
wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips,
belonged to the dog that found it. He had
done no wrong, broken no law, yet here was
this boy preparing to give him a beating.
White Fang scarcely knew what happened. He
did it in a surge of rage. And he did it so
quickly that the boy did not know either.
All the boy knew was that he had in some unaccountable
way been overturned into the snow, and that
his club-hand had been ripped wide open by
White Fang’s teeth.
But White Fang knew that he had broken the
law of the gods. He had driven his teeth into
the sacred flesh of one of them, and could
expect nothing but a most terrible punishment.
He fled away to Grey Beaver, behind whose
protecting legs he crouched when the bitten
boy and the boy’s family came, demanding
vengeance. But they went away with vengeance
unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defended White Fang.
So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch. White Fang,
listening to the wordy war and watching the
angry gestures, knew that his act was justified.
And so it came that he learned there were
gods and gods. There were his gods, and there
were other gods, and between them there was
a difference. Justice or injustice, it was
all the same, he must take all things from
the hands of his own gods. But he was not
compelled to take injustice from the other
gods. It was his privilege to resent it with
his teeth. And this also was a law of the
gods.
Before the day was out, White Fang was to
learn more about this law. Mit-sah, alone,
gathering firewood in the forest, encountered
the boy that had been bitten. With him were
other boys. Hot words passed. Then all the
boys attacked Mit-sah. It was going hard with
him. Blows were raining upon him from all
sides. White Fang looked on at first. This
was an affair of the gods, and no concern
of his. Then he realised that this was Mit-sah,
one of his own particular gods, who was being
maltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that
made White Fang do what he then did. A mad
rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst
the combatants. Five minutes later the landscape
was covered with fleeing boys, many of whom
dripped blood upon the snow in token that
White Fang’s teeth had not been idle. When
Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver
ordered meat to be given to White Fang. He
ordered much meat to be given, and White Fang,
gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the
law had received its verification.
It was in line with these experiences that
White Fang came to learn the law of property
and the duty of the defence of property. From
the protection of his god’s body to the
protection of his god’s possessions was
a step, and this step he made. What was his
god’s was to be defended against all the
world—even to the extent of biting other
gods. Not only was such an act sacrilegious
in its nature, but it was fraught with peril.
The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was
no match against them; yet White Fang learned
to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid.
Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned
to leave Grey Beaver’s property alone.
One thing, in this connection, White Fang
quickly learnt, and that was that a thieving
god was usually a cowardly god and prone to
run away at the sounding of the alarm. Also,
he learned that but brief time elapsed between
his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver
coming to his aid. He came to know that it
was not fear of him that drove the thief away,
but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang did not
give the alarm by barking. He never barked.
His method was to drive straight at the intruder,
and to sink his teeth in if he could. Because
he was morose and solitary, having nothing
to do with the other dogs, he was unusually
fitted to guard his master’s property; and
in this he was encouraged and trained by Grey
Beaver. One result of this was to make White
Fang more ferocious and indomitable, and more
solitary.
The months went by, binding stronger and stronger
the covenant between dog and man. This was
the ancient covenant that the first wolf that
came in from the Wild entered into with man.
And, like all succeeding wolves and wild dogs
that had done likewise, White Fang worked
the covenant out for himself. The terms were
simple. For the possession of a flesh-and-blood
god, he exchanged his own liberty. Food and
fire, protection and companionship, were some
of the things he received from the god. In
return, he guarded the god’s property, defended
his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.
The possession of a god implies service. White
Fang’s was a service of duty and awe, but
not of love. He did not know what love was.
He had no experience of love. Kiche was a
remote memory. Besides, not only had he abandoned
the Wild and his kind when he gave himself
up to man, but the terms of the covenant were
such that if ever he met Kiche again he would
not desert his god to go with her. His allegiance
to man seemed somehow a law of his being greater
than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.
CHAPTER VI—THE FAMINE
The spring of the year was at hand when Grey
Beaver finished his long journey. It was April,
and White Fang was a year old when he pulled
into the home villages and was loosed from
the harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way
from his full growth, White Fang, next to
Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village.
Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche,
he had inherited stature and strength, and
already he was measuring up alongside the
full-grown dogs. But he had not yet grown
compact. His body was slender and rangy, and
his strength more stringy than massive, His
coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances
he was true wolf himself. The quarter-strain
of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left
no mark on him physically, though it had played
its part in his mental make-up.
He wandered through the village, recognising
with staid satisfaction the various gods he
had known before the long journey. Then there
were the dogs, puppies growing up like himself,
and grown dogs that did not look so large
and formidable as the memory pictures he retained
of them. Also, he stood less in fear of them
than formerly, stalking among them with a
certain careless ease that was as new to him
as it was enjoyable.
There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that
in his younger days had but to uncover his
fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching
to the right about. From him White Fang had
learned much of his own insignificance; and
from him he was now to learn much of the change
and development that had taken place in himself.
While Baseek had been growing weaker with
age, White Fang had been growing stronger
with youth.
It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed,
that White Fang learned of the changed relations
in which he stood to the dog-world. He had
got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone,
to which quite a bit of meat was attached.
Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the
other dogs—in fact out of sight behind a
thicket—he was devouring his prize, when
Baseek rushed in upon him. Before he knew
what he was doing, he had slashed the intruder
twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised
by the other’s temerity and swiftness of
attack. He stood, gazing stupidly across at
White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between
them.
Baseek was old, and already he had come to
know the increasing valour of the dogs it
had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences
these, which, perforce, he swallowed, calling
upon all his wisdom to cope with them. In
the old days he would have sprung upon White
Fang in a fury of righteous wrath. But now
his waning powers would not permit such a
course. He bristled fiercely and looked ominously
across the shin-bone at White Fang. And White
Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old
awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon
himself and grow small, as he cast about in
his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too
inglorious.
And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented
himself with looking fierce and ominous, all
would have been well. White Fang, on the verge
of retreat, would have retreated, leaving
the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait.
He considered the victory already his and
stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his
head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled
slightly. Even then it was not too late for
Baseek to retrieve the situation. Had he merely
stood over the meat, head up and glowering,
White Fang would ultimately have slunk away.
But the fresh meat was strong in Baseek’s
nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite
of it.
This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon
his months of mastery over his own team-mates,
it was beyond his self-control to stand idly
by while another devoured the meat that belonged
to him. He struck, after his custom, without
warning. With the first slash, Baseek’s
right ear was ripped into ribbons. He was
astounded at the suddenness of it. But more
things, and most grievous ones, were happening
with equal suddenness. He was knocked off
his feet. His throat was bitten. While he
was struggling to his feet the young dog sank
teeth twice into his shoulder. The swiftness
of it was bewildering. He made a futile rush
at White Fang, clipping the empty air with
an outraged snap. The next moment his nose
was laid open, and he was staggering backward
away from the meat.
The situation was now reversed. White Fang
stood over the shin-bone, bristling and menacing,
while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing
to retreat. He dared not risk a fight with
this young lightning-flash, and again he knew,
and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming
age. His attempt to maintain his dignity was
heroic. Calmly turning his back upon young
dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath
his notice and unworthy of his consideration,
he stalked grandly away. Nor, until well out
of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding
wounds.
The effect on White Fang was to give him a
greater faith in himself, and a greater pride.
He walked less softly among the grown dogs;
his attitude toward them was less compromising.
Not that he went out of his way looking for
trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he
demanded consideration. He stood upon his
right to go his way unmolested and to give
trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account,
that was all. He was no longer to be disregarded
and ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and
as continued to be the lot of the puppies
that were his team-mates. They got out of
the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and
gave up meat to them under compulsion. But
White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary, morose,
scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable,
forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was
accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders.
They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither
venturing hostile acts nor making overtures
of friendliness. If they left him alone, he
left them alone—a state of affairs that
they found, after a few encounters, to be
pre-eminently desirable.
In midsummer White Fang had an experience.
Trotting along in his silent way to investigate
a new tepee which had been erected on the
edge of the village while he was away with
the hunters after moose, he came full upon
Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered
her vaguely, but he remembered her, and that
was more than could be said for her. She lifted
her lip at him in the old snarl of menace,
and his memory became clear. His forgotten
cubhood, all that was associated with that
familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before
he had known the gods, she had been to him
the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar
feelings of that time came back upon him,
surged up within him. He bounded towards her
joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs
that laid his cheek open to the bone. He did
not understand. He backed away, bewildered
and puzzled.
But it was not Kiche’s fault. A wolf-mother
was not made to remember her cubs of a year
or so before. So she did not remember White
Fang. He was a strange animal, an intruder;
and her present litter of puppies gave her
the right to resent such intrusion.
One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang.
They were half-brothers, only they did not
know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously,
whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his
face a second time. He backed farther away.
All the old memories and associations died
down again and passed into the grave from
which they had been resurrected. He looked
at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now
and then to snarl at him. She was without
value to him. He had learned to get along
without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There
was no place for her in his scheme of things,
as there was no place for him in hers.
He was still standing, stupid and bewildered,
the memories forgotten, wondering what it
was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third
time, intent on driving him away altogether
from the vicinity. And White Fang allowed
himself to be driven away. This was a female
of his kind, and it was a law of his kind
that the males must not fight the females.
He did not know anything about this law, for
it was no generalisation of the mind, not
a something acquired by experience of the
world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as
an urge of instinct—of the same instinct
that made him howl at the moon and stars of
nights, and that made him fear death and the
unknown.
The months went by. White Fang grew stronger,
heavier, and more compact, while his character
was developing along the lines laid down by
his heredity and his environment. His heredity
was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay.
It possessed many possibilities, was capable
of being moulded into many different forms.
Environment served to model the clay, to give
it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang
never come in to the fires of man, the Wild
would have moulded him into a true wolf. But
the gods had given him a different environment,
and he was moulded into a dog that was rather
wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf.
And so, according to the clay of his nature
and the pressure of his surroundings, his
character was being moulded into a certain
particular shape. There was no escaping it.
He was becoming more morose, more uncompanionable,
more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs
were learning more and more that it was better
to be at peace with him than at war, and Grey
Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly
with the passage of each day.
White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in
all his qualities, nevertheless suffered from
one besetting weakness. He could not stand
being laughed at. The laughter of men was
a hateful thing. They might laugh among themselves
about anything they pleased except himself,
and he did not mind. But the moment laughter
was turned upon him he would fly into a most
terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a
laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness.
It so outraged him and upset him that for
hours he would behave like a demon. And woe
to the dog that at such times ran foul of
him. He knew the law too well to take it out
of Grey Beaver; behind Grey Beaver were a
club and godhead. But behind the dogs there
was nothing but space, and into this space
they flew when White Fang came on the scene,
made mad by laughter.
In the third year of his life there came a
great famine to the Mackenzie Indians. In
the summer the fish failed. In the winter
the cariboo forsook their accustomed track.
Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared,
hunting and preying animals perished. Denied
their usual food-supply, weakened by hunger,
they fell upon and devoured one another. Only
the strong survived. White Fang’s gods were
always hunting animals. The old and the weak
of them died of hunger. There was wailing
in the village, where the women and children
went without in order that what little they
had might go into the bellies of the lean
and hollow-eyed hunters who trod the forest
in the vain pursuit of meat.
To such extremity were the gods driven that
they ate the soft-tanned leather of their
mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate
the harnesses off their backs and the very
whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another,
and also the gods ate the dogs. The weakest
and the more worthless were eaten first. The
dogs that still lived, looked on and understood.
A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the
fires of the gods, which had now become a
shambles, and fled into the forest, where,
in the end, they starved to death or were
eaten by wolves.
In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole
away into the woods. He was better fitted
for the life than the other dogs, for he had
the training of his cubhood to guide him.
Especially adept did he become in stalking
small living things. He would lie concealed
for hours, following every movement of a cautious
tree-squirrel, waiting, with a patience as
huge as the hunger he suffered from, until
the squirrel ventured out upon the ground.
Even then, White Fang was not premature. He
waited until he was sure of striking before
the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then,
and not until then, would he flash from his
hiding-place, a grey projectile, incredibly
swift, never failing its mark—the fleeing
squirrel that fled not fast enough.
Successful as he was with squirrels, there
was one difficulty that prevented him from
living and growing fat on them. There were
not enough squirrels. So he was driven to
hunt still smaller things. So acute did his
hunger become at times that he was not above
rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in
the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle
with a weasel as hungry as himself and many
times more ferocious.
In the worst pinches of the famine he stole
back to the fires of the gods. But he did
not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares
at the rare intervals when game was caught.
He even robbed Grey Beaver’s snare of a
rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver staggered
and tottered through the forest, sitting down
often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness
of breath.
One day While Fang encountered a young wolf,
gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointed with famine.
Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang
might have gone with him and eventually found
his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren.
As it was, he ran the young wolf down and
killed and ate him.
Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when
hardest pressed for food, he found something
to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his
luck that none of the larger preying animals
chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong from
the two days’ eating a lynx had afforded
him when the hungry wolf-pack ran full tilt
upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but
he was better nourished than they, and in
the end outran them. And not only did he outrun
them, but, circling widely back on his track,
he gathered in one of his exhausted pursuers.
After that he left that part of the country
and journeyed over to the valley wherein he
had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered
Kiche. Up to her old tricks, she, too, had
fled the inhospitable fires of the gods and
gone back to her old refuge to give birth
to her young. Of this litter but one remained
alive when White Fang came upon the scene,
and this one was not destined to live long.
Young life had little chance in such a famine.
Kiche’s greeting of her grown son was anything
but affectionate. But White Fang did not mind.
He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail
philosophically and trotted on up the stream.
At the forks he took the turning to the left,
where he found the lair of the lynx with whom
his mother and he had fought long before.
Here, in the abandoned lair, he settled down
and rested for a day.
During the early summer, in the last days
of the famine, he met Lip-lip, who had likewise
taken to the woods, where he had eked out
a miserable existence.
White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting
in opposite directions along the base of a
high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock
and found themselves face to face. They paused
with instant alarm, and looked at each other
suspiciously.
White Fang was in splendid condition. His
hunting had been good, and for a week he had
eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his
latest kill. But in the moment he looked at
Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his
back. It was an involuntary bristling on his
part, the physical state that in the past
had always accompanied the mental state produced
in him by Lip-lip’s bullying and persecution.
As in the past he had bristled and snarled
at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically,
he bristled and snarled. He did not waste
any time. The thing was done thoroughly and
with despatch. Lip-lip essayed to back away,
but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder to
shoulder. Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled
upon his back. White Fang’s teeth drove
into the scrawny throat. There was a death-struggle,
during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged
and observant. Then he resumed his course
and trotted on along the base of the bluff.
One day, not long after, he came to the edge
of the forest, where a narrow stretch of open
land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had
been over this ground before, when it was
bare, but now a village occupied it. Still
hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study
the situation. Sights and sounds and scents
were familiar to him. It was the old village
changed to a new place. But sights and sounds
and smells were different from those he had
last had when he fled away from it. There
was no whimpering nor wailing. Contented sounds
saluted his ear, and when he heard the angry
voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger
that proceeds from a full stomach. And there
was a smell in the air of fish. There was
food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly
from the forest and trotted into camp straight
to Grey Beaver’s tepee. Grey Beaver was
not there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with
glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught
fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver’s
coming.
PART IV
CHAPTER I—THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND
Had there been in White Fang’s nature any
possibility, no matter how remote, of his
ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such
possibility was irretrievably destroyed when
he was made leader of the sled-team. For now
the dogs hated him—hated him for the extra
meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah; hated him
for all the real and fancied favours he received;
hated him for that he fled always at the head
of the team, his waving brush of a tail and
his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for
ever maddening their eyes.
And White Fang just as bitterly hated them
back. Being sled-leader was anything but gratifying
to him. To be compelled to run away before
the yelling pack, every dog of which, for
three years, he had thrashed and mastered,
was almost more than he could endure. But
endure it he must, or perish, and the life
that was in him had no desire to perish out.
The moment Mit-sah gave his order for the
start, that moment the whole team, with eager,
savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang.
There was no defence for him. If he turned
upon them, Mit-sah would throw the stinging
lash of the whip into his face. Only remained
to him to run away. He could not encounter
that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters.
These were scarcely fit weapons with which
to meet the many merciless fangs. So run away
he did, violating his own nature and pride
with every leap he made, and leaping all day
long.
One cannot violate the promptings of one’s
nature without having that nature recoil upon
itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair,
made to grow out from the body, turning unnaturally
upon the direction of its growth and growing
into the body—a rankling, festering thing
of hurt. And so with White Fang. Every urge
of his being impelled him to spring upon the
pack that cried at his heels, but it was the
will of the gods that this should not be;
and behind the will, to enforce it, was the
whip of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot
lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart
in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice
commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability
of his nature.
If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind,
White Fang was that creature. He asked no
quarter, gave none. He was continually marred
and scarred by the teeth of the pack, and
as continually he left his own marks upon
the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp
was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled
near to the gods for protection, White Fang
disdained such protection. He walked boldly
about the camp, inflicting punishment in the
night for what he had suffered in the day.
In the time before he was made leader of the
team, the pack had learned to get out of his
way. But now it was different. Excited by
the day-long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously
by the insistent iteration on their brains
of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered
by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day,
the dogs could not bring themselves to give
way to him. When he appeared amongst them,
there was always a squabble. His progress
was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The
very atmosphere he breathed was surcharged
with hatred and malice, and this but served
to increase the hatred and malice within him.
When Mit-sah cried out his command for the
team to stop, White Fang obeyed. At first
this caused trouble for the other dogs. All
of them would spring upon the hated leader
only to find the tables turned. Behind him
would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in
his hand. So the dogs came to understand that
when the team stopped by order, White Fang
was to be let alone. But when White Fang stopped
without orders, then it was allowed them to
spring upon him and destroy him if they could.
After several experiences, White Fang never
stopped without orders. He learned quickly.
It was in the nature of things, that he must
learn quickly if he were to survive the unusually
severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed
him.
But the dogs could never learn the lesson
to leave him alone in camp. Each day, pursuing
him and crying defiance at him, the lesson
of the previous night was erased, and that
night would have to be learned over again,
to be as immediately forgotten. Besides, there
was a greater consistence in their dislike
of him. They sensed between themselves and
him a difference of kind—cause sufficient
in itself for hostility. Like him, they were
domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated
for generations. Much of the Wild had been
lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown,
the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring.
But to him, in appearance and action and impulse,
still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was
its personification: so that when they showed
their teeth to him they were defending themselves
against the powers of destruction that lurked
in the shadows of the forest and in the dark
beyond the camp-fire.
But there was one lesson the dogs did learn,
and that was to keep together. White Fang
was too terrible for any of them to face single-handed.
They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise
he would have killed them, one by one, in
a night. As it was, he never had a chance
to kill them. He might roll a dog off its
feet, but the pack would be upon him before
he could follow up and deliver the deadly
throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict,
the whole team drew together and faced him.
The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but
these were forgotten when trouble was brewing
with White Fang.
On the other hand, try as they would, they
could not kill White Fang. He was too quick
for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided
tight places and always backed out of it when
they bade fair to surround him. While, as
for getting him off his feet, there was no
dog among them capable of doing the trick.
His feet clung to the earth with the same
tenacity that he clung to life. For that matter,
life and footing were synonymous in this unending
warfare with the pack, and none knew it better
than White Fang.
So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated
wolves that they were, softened by the fires
of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow
of man’s strength. White Fang was bitter
and implacable. The clay of him was so moulded.
He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And
so terribly did he live this vendetta that
Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could
not but marvel at White Fang’s ferocity.
Never, he swore, had there been the like of
this animal; and the Indians in strange villages
swore likewise when they considered the tale
of his killings amongst their dogs.
When White Fang was nearly five years old,
Grey Beaver took him on another great journey,
and long remembered was the havoc he worked
amongst the dogs of the many villages along
the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down
the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in
the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They
were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were
not prepared for his swiftness and directness,
for his attack without warning. They did not
know him for what he was, a lightning-flash
of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged
and challenging, while he, wasting no time
on elaborate preliminaries, snapping into
action like a steel spring, was at their throats
and destroying them before they knew what
was happening and while they were yet in the
throes of surprise.
He became an adept at fighting. He economised.
He never wasted his strength, never tussled.
He was in too quickly for that, and, if he
missed, was out again too quickly. The dislike
of the wolf for close quarters was his to
an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged
contact with another body. It smacked of danger.
It made him frantic. He must be away, free,
on his own legs, touching no living thing.
It was the Wild still clinging to him, asserting
itself through him. This feeling had been
accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had
led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts.
It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of
it lurking deep in the life of him, woven
into the fibre of him.
In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered
had no chance against him. He eluded their
fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched
in either event. In the natural course of
things there were exceptions to this. There
were times when several dogs, pitching on
to him, punished him before he could get away;
and there were times when a single dog scored
deeply on him. But these were accidents. In
the main, so efficient a fighter had he become,
he went his way unscathed.
Another advantage he possessed was that of
correctly judging time and distance. Not that
he did this consciously, however. He did not
calculate such things. It was all automatic.
His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried
the vision correctly to his brain. The parts
of him were better adjusted than those of
the average dog. They worked together more
smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far
better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination.
When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving
image of an action, his brain without conscious
effort, knew the space that limited that action
and the time required for its completion.
Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog,
or the drive of its fangs, and at the same
moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction
of time in which to deliver his own attack.
Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism.
Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature
had been more generous to him than to the
average animal, that was all.
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived
at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver had crossed the
great watershed between Mackenzie and the
Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring
in hunting among the western outlying spurs
of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of
the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe
and paddled down that stream to where it effected
its junction with the Yukon just under the
Artic circle. Here stood the old Hudson’s
Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians,
much food, and unprecedented excitement. It
was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters
were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the
Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their
goal, nevertheless many of them had been on
the way for a year, and the least any of them
had travelled to get that far was five thousand
miles, while some had come from the other
side of the world.
Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the
gold-rush had reached his ears, and he had
come with several bales of furs, and another
of gut-sewn mittens and moccasins. He would
not have ventured so long a trip had he not
expected generous profits. But what he had
expected was nothing to what he realised.
His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred
per cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent.
And like a true Indian, he settled down to
trade carefully and slowly, even if it took
all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose
of his goods.
It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his
first white men. As compared with the Indians
he had known, they were to him another race
of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed
him as possessing superior power, and it is
on power that godhead rests. White Fang did
not reason it out, did not in his mind make
the sharp generalisation that the white gods
were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing
more, and yet none the less potent. As, in
his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees,
man-reared, had affected him as manifestations
of power, so was he affected now by the houses
and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here
was power. Those white gods were strong. They
possessed greater mastery over matter than
the gods he had known, most powerful among
which was Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver
was as a child-god among these white-skinned
ones.
To be sure, White Fang only felt these things.
He was not conscious of them. Yet it is upon
feeling, more often than thinking, that animals
act; and every act White Fang now performed
was based upon the feeling that the white
men were the superior gods. In the first place
he was very suspicious of them. There was
no telling what unknown terrors were theirs,
what unknown hurts they could administer.
He was curious to observe them, fearful of
being noticed by them. For the first few hours
he was content with slinking around and watching
them from a safe distance. Then he saw that
no harm befell the dogs that were near to
them, and he came in closer.
In turn he was an object of great curiosity
to them. His wolfish appearance caught their
eyes at once, and they pointed him out to
one another. This act of pointing put White
Fang on his guard, and when they tried to
approach him he showed his teeth and backed
away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on
him, and it was well that they did not.
White Fang soon learned that very few of these
gods—not more than a dozen—lived at this
place. Every two or three days a steamer (another
and colossal manifestation of power) came
into the bank and stopped for several hours.
The white men came from off these steamers
and went away on them again. There seemed
untold numbers of these white men. In the
first day or so, he saw more of them than
he had seen Indians in all his life; and as
the days went by they continued to come up
the river, stop, and then go on up the river
out of sight.
But if the white gods were all-powerful, their
dogs did not amount to much. This White Fang
quickly discovered by mixing with those that
came ashore with their masters. They were
irregular shapes and sizes. Some were short-legged—too
short; others were long-legged—too long.
They had hair instead of fur, and a few had
very little hair at that. And none of them
knew how to fight.
As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s
province to fight with them. This he did,
and he quickly achieved for them a mighty
contempt. They were soft and helpless, made
much noise, and floundered around clumsily
trying to accomplish by main strength what
he accomplished by dexterity and cunning.
They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to
the side. They did not know what had become
of him; and in that moment he struck them
on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet
and delivering his stroke at the throat.
Sometimes this stroke was successful, and
a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to be pounced
upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian
dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He
had long since learned that the gods were
made angry when their dogs were killed. The
white men were no exception to this. So he
was content, when he had overthrown and slashed
wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop
back and let the pack go in and do the cruel
finishing work. It was then that the white
men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily
on the pack, while White Fang went free. He
would stand off at a little distance and look
on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts
of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang
was very wise.
But his fellows grew wise in their own way;
and in this White Fang grew wise with them.
They learned that it was when a steamer first
tied to the bank that they had their fun.
After the first two or three strange dogs
had been downed and destroyed, the white men
hustled their own animals back on board and
wrecked savage vengeance on the offenders.
One white man, having seen his dog, a setter,
torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver.
He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the
pack lay dead or dying—another manifestation
of power that sank deep into White Fang’s
consciousness.
White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love
his kind, and he was shrewd enough to escape
hurt himself. At first, the killing of the
white men’s dogs had been a diversion. After
a time it became his occupation. There was
no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy
trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang
hung around the landing with the disreputable
gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers.
With the arrival of a steamer the fun began.
After a few minutes, by the time the white
men had got over their surprise, the gang
scattered. The fun was over until the next
steamer should arrive.
But it can scarcely be said that White Fang
was a member of the gang. He did not mingle
with it, but remained aloof, always himself,
and was even feared by it. It is true, he
worked with it. He picked the quarrel with
the strange dog while the gang waited. And
when he had overthrown the strange dog the
gang went in to finish it. But it is equally
true that he then withdrew, leaving the gang
to receive the punishment of the outraged
gods.
It did not require much exertion to pick these
quarrels. All he had to do, when the strange
dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When
they saw him they rushed for him. It was their
instinct. He was the Wild—the unknown, the
terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that
prowled in the darkness around the fires of
the primeval world when they, cowering close
to the fires, were reshaping their instincts,
learning to fear the Wild out of which they
had come, and which they had deserted and
betrayed. Generation by generation, down all
the generations, had this fear of the Wild
been stamped into their natures. For centuries
the Wild had stood for terror and destruction.
And during all this time free licence had
been theirs, from their masters, to kill the
things of the Wild. In doing this they had
protected both themselves and the gods whose
companionship they shared.
And so, fresh from the soft southern world,
these dogs, trotting down the gang-plank and
out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White
Fang to experience the irresistible impulse
to rush upon him and destroy him. They might
be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear
of the Wild was theirs just the same. Not
alone with their own eyes did they see the
wolfish creature in the clear light of day,
standing before them. They saw him with the
eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited
memory they knew White Fang for the wolf,
and they remembered the ancient feud.
All of which served to make White Fang’s
days enjoyable. If the sight of him drove
these strange dogs upon him, so much the better
for him, so much the worse for them. They
looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as
legitimate prey he looked upon them.
Not for nothing had he first seen the light
of day in a lonely lair and fought his first
fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and
the lynx. And not for nothing had his puppyhood
been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip
and the whole puppy pack. It might have been
otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise.
Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed
his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown
up more doglike and with more liking for dogs.
Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection
and love, he might have sounded the deeps
of White Fang’s nature and brought up to
the surface all manner of kindly qualities.
But these things had not been so. The clay
of White Fang had been moulded until he became
what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and
ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.
CHAPTER II—THE MAD GOD
A small number of white men lived in Fort
Yukon. These men had been long in the country.
They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took
great pride in so classifying themselves.
For other men, new in the land, they felt
nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore
from the steamers were newcomers. They were
known as chechaquos, and they always wilted
at the application of the name. They made
their bread with baking-powder. This was the
invidious distinction between them and the
Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread
from sour-dough because they had no baking-powder.
All of which is neither here nor there. The
men in the fort disdained the newcomers and
enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially
did they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the
newcomers’ dogs by White Fang and his disreputable
gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the
fort made it a point always to come down to
the bank and see the fun. They looked forward
to it with as much anticipation as did the
Indian dogs, while they were not slow to appreciate
the savage and crafty part played by White
Fang.
But there was one man amongst them who particularly
enjoyed the sport. He would come running at
the first sound of a steamboat’s whistle;
and when the last fight was over and White
Fang and the pack had scattered, he would
return slowly to the fort, his face heavy
with regret. Sometimes, when a soft southland
dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under
the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable
to contain himself, and would leap into the
air and cry out with delight. And always he
had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang.
This man was called “Beauty” by the other
men of the fort. No one knew his first name,
and in general he was known in the country
as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save
a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming.
He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had
been niggardly with him. He was a small man
to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was
deposited an even more strikingly meagre head.
Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact,
in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty
by his fellows, he had been called “Pinhead.”
Backward, from the apex, his head slanted
down to his neck and forward it slanted uncompromisingly
to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead.
Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony,
Nature had spread his features with a lavish
hand. His eyes were large, and between them
was the distance of two eyes. His face, in
relation to the rest of him, was prodigious.
In order to discover the necessary area, Nature
had given him an enormous prognathous jaw.
It was wide and heavy, and protruded outward
and down until it seemed to rest on his chest.
Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness
of the slender neck, unable properly to support
so great a burden.
This jaw gave the impression of ferocious
determination. But something lacked. Perhaps
it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too
large. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith
was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed
and snivelling cowards. To complete his description,
his teeth were large and yellow, while the
two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows,
showed under his lean lips like fangs. His
eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature
had run short on pigments and squeezed together
the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same
with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth,
muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his
head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected
tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped
and wind-blown grain.
In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity,
and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was
not responsible. The clay of him had been
so moulded in the making. He did the cooking
for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing
and the drudgery. They did not despise him.
Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human
way, as one tolerates any creature evilly
treated in the making. Also, they feared him.
His cowardly rages made them dread a shot
in the back or poison in their coffee. But
somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever
else his shortcomings, Beauty Smith could
cook.
This was the man that looked at White Fang,
delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired
to possess him. He made overtures to White
Fang from the first. White Fang began by ignoring
him. Later on, when the overtures became more
insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his
teeth and backed away. He did not like the
man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the
evil in him, and feared the extended hand
and the attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because
of all this, he hated the man.
With the simpler creatures, good and bad are
things simply understood. The good stands
for all things that bring easement and satisfaction
and surcease from pain. Therefore, the good
is liked. The bad stands for all things that
are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt,
and is hated accordingly. White Fang’s feel
of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man’s
distorted body and twisted mind, in occult
ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes,
came emanations of the unhealth within. Not
by reasoning, not by the five senses alone,
but by other and remoter and uncharted senses,
came the feeling to White Fang that the man
was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness,
and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be
hated.
White Fang was in Grey Beaver’s camp when
Beauty Smith first visited it. At the faint
sound of his distant feet, before he came
in sight, White Fang knew who was coming and
began to bristle. He had been lying down in
an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly,
and, as the man arrived, slid away in true
wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did
not know what they said, but he could see
the man and Grey Beaver talking together.
Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang
snarled back as though the hand were just
descending upon him instead of being, as it
was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this;
and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering
woods, his head turned to observe as he glided
softly over the ground.
Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had
grown rich with his trading and stood in need
of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable
animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever
owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, there
was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the
Yukon. He could fight. He killed other dogs
as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty
Smith’s eyes lighted up at this, and he
licked his thin lips with an eager tongue).
No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.
But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians.
He visited Grey Beaver’s camp often, and
hidden under his coat was always a black bottle
or so. One of the potencies of whisky is the
breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst.
His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began
to clamour for more and more of the scorching
fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by
the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go
any length to obtain it. The money he had
received for his furs and mittens and moccasins
began to go. It went faster and faster, and
the shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter
grew his temper.
In the end his money and goods and temper
were all gone. Nothing remained to him but
his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself
that grew more prodigious with every sober
breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith
had talk with him again about the sale of
White Fang; but this time the price offered
was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver’s
ears were more eager to hear.
“You ketch um dog you take um all right,”
was his last word.
The bottles were delivered, but after two
days. “You ketch um dog,” were Beauty
Smith’s words to Grey Beaver.
White Fang slunk into camp one evening and
dropped down with a sigh of content. The dreaded
white god was not there. For days his manifestations
of desire to lay hands on him had been growing
more insistent, and during that time White
Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp.
He did not know what evil was threatened by
those insistent hands. He knew only that they
did threaten evil of some sort, and that it
was best for him to keep out of their reach.
But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver
staggered over to him and tied a leather thong
around his neck. He sat down beside White
Fang, holding the end of the thong in his
hand. In the other hand he held a bottle,
which, from time to time, was inverted above
his head to the accompaniment of gurgling
noises.
An hour of this passed, when the vibrations
of feet in contact with the ground foreran
the one who approached. White Fang heard it
first, and he was bristling with recognition
while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White
Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of
his master’s hand; but the relaxed fingers
closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.
Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over
White Fang. He snarled softly up at the thing
of fear, watching keenly the deportment of
the hands. One hand extended outward and began
to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew
tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly
to descend, while he crouched beneath it,
eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter
and shorter as, with quickening breath, it
approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped,
striking with his fangs like a snake. The
hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together
emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was
frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted
White Fang alongside the head, so that he
cowered down close to the earth in respectful
obedience.
White Fang’s suspicious eyes followed every
movement. He saw Beauty Smith go away and
return with a stout club. Then the end of
the thong was given over to him by Grey Beaver.
Beauty Smith started to walk away. The thong
grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver
clouted him right and left to make him get
up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush,
hurling himself upon the stranger who was
dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump
away. He had been waiting for this. He swung
the club smartly, stopping the rush midway
and smashing White Fang down upon the ground.
Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty
Smith tightened the thong again, and White
Fang crawled limply and dizzily to his feet.
He did not rush a second time. One smash from
the club was sufficient to convince him that
the white god knew how to handle it, and he
was too wise to fight the inevitable. So he
followed morosely at Beauty Smith’s heels,
his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly
under his breath. But Beauty Smith kept a
wary eye on him, and the club was held always
ready to strike.
At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely
tied and went in to bed. White Fang waited
an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the
thong, and in the space of ten seconds was
free. He had wasted no time with his teeth.
There had been no useless gnawing. The thong
was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean
as though done by a knife. White Fang looked
up at the fort, at the same time bristling
and growling. Then he turned and trotted back
to Grey Beaver’s camp. He owed no allegiance
to this strange and terrible god. He had given
himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver
he considered he still belonged.
But what had occurred before was repeated—with
a difference. Grey Beaver again made him fast
with a thong, and in the morning turned him
over to Beauty Smith. And here was where the
difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him
a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could
only rage futilely and endure the punishment.
Club and whip were both used upon him, and
he experienced the worst beating he had ever
received in his life. Even the big beating
given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver
was mild compared with this.
Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted
in it. He gloated over his victim, and his
eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or
club and listened to White Fang’s cries
of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls.
For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that
cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling
himself before the blows or angry speech of
a man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon
creatures weaker than he. All life likes power,
and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied
the expression of power amongst his own kind,
he fell back upon the lesser creatures and
there vindicated the life that was in him.
But Beauty Smith had not created himself,
and no blame was to be attached to him. He
had come into the world with a twisted body
and a brute intelligence. This had constituted
the clay of him, and it had not been kindly
moulded by the world.
White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When
Grey Beaver tied the thong around his neck,
and passed the end of the thong into Beauty
Smith’s keeping, White Fang knew that it
was his god’s will for him to go with Beauty
Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied
outside the fort, he knew that it was Beauty
Smith’s will that he should remain there.
Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both
the gods, and earned the consequent punishment.
He had seen dogs change owners in the past,
and he had seen the runaways beaten as he
was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in
the nature of him there were forces greater
than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He
did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the
face of his will and his anger, he was faithful
to him. He could not help it. This faithfulness
was a quality of the clay that composed him.
It was the quality that was peculiarly the
possession of his kind; the quality that set
apart his species from all other species;
the quality that has enabled the wolf and
the wild dog to come in from the open and
be the companions of man.
After the beating, White Fang was dragged
back to the fort. But this time Beauty Smith
left him tied with a stick. One does not give
up a god easily, and so with White Fang. Grey
Beaver was his own particular god, and, in
spite of Grey Beaver’s will, White Fang
still clung to him and would not give him
up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken
him, but that had no effect upon him. Not
for nothing had he surrendered himself body
and soul to Grey Beaver. There had been no
reservation on White Fang’s part, and the
bond was not to be broken easily.
So, in the night, when the men in the fort
were asleep, White Fang applied his teeth
to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned
and dry, and it was tied so closely to his
neck that he could scarcely get his teeth
to it. It was only by the severest muscular
exertion and neck-arching that he succeeded
in getting the wood between his teeth, and
barely between his teeth at that; and it was
only by the exercise of an immense patience,
extending through many hours, that he succeeded
in gnawing through the stick. This was something
that dogs were not supposed to do. It was
unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting
away from the fort in the early morning, with
the end of the stick hanging to his neck.
He was wise. But had he been merely wise he
would not have gone back to Grey Beaver who
had already twice betrayed him. But there
was his faithfulness, and he went back to
be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded
to the tying of a thong around his neck by
Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to
claim him. And this time he was beaten even
more severely than before.
Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white
man wielded the whip. He gave no protection.
It was no longer his dog. When the beating
was over White Fang was sick. A soft southland
dog would have died under it, but not he.
His school of life had been sterner, and he
was himself of sterner stuff. He had too great
vitality. His clutch on life was too strong.
But he was very sick. At first he was unable
to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had
to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind
and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith’s
heels back to the fort.
But now he was tied with a chain that defied
his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging,
to draw the staple from the timber into which
it was driven. After a few days, sober and
bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine
on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White
Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of
a man more than half mad and all brute. But
what is a dog to know in its consciousness
of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was
a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad
god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of
madness; he knew only that he must submit
to the will of this new master, obey his every
whim and fancy.
CHAPTER III—THE REIGN OF HATE
Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang
became a fiend. He was kept chained in a pen
at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith
teased and irritated and drove him wild with
petty torments. The man early discovered White
Fang’s susceptibility to laughter, and made
it a point after painfully tricking him, to
laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious
and scornful, and at the same time the god
pointed his finger derisively at White Fang.
At such times reason fled from White Fang,
and in his transports of rage he was even
more mad than Beauty Smith.
Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy
of his kind, withal a ferocious enemy. He
now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever. To such an extent was
he tormented, that he hated blindly and without
the faintest spark of reason. He hated the
chain that bound him, the men who peered in
at him through the slats of the pen, the dogs
that accompanied the men and that snarled
malignantly at him in his helplessness. He
hated the very wood of the pen that confined
him. And, first, last, and most of all, he
hated Beauty Smith.
But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that
he did to White Fang. One day a number of
men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered,
club in hand, and took the chain off from
White Fang’s neck. When his master had gone
out, White Fang turned loose and tore around
the pen, trying to get at the men outside.
He was magnificently terrible. Fully five
feet in length, and standing two and one-half
feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a
wolf of corresponding size. From his mother
he had inherited the heavier proportions of
the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat
and without an ounce of superfluous flesh,
over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone,
and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.
The door of the pen was being opened again.
White Fang paused. Something unusual was happening.
He waited. The door was opened wider. Then
a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door
was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had
never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff);
but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder
did not deter him. Here was some thing, not
wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate.
He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped
down the side of the mastiff’s neck. The
mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely,
and plunged at White Fang. But White Fang
was here, there, and everywhere, always evading
and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing
with his fangs and leaping out again in time
to escape punishment.
The men outside shouted and applauded, while
Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy of delight, gloated
over the ripping and mangling performed by
White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff
from the first. He was too ponderous and slow.
In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White
Fang back with a club, the mastiff was dragged
out by its owner. Then there was a payment
of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith’s
hand.
White Fang came to look forward eagerly to
the gathering of the men around his pen. It
meant a fight; and this was the only way that
was now vouchsafed him of expressing the life
that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate,
he was kept a prisoner so that there was no
way of satisfying that hate except at the
times his master saw fit to put another dog
against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his
powers well, for he was invariably the victor.
One day, three dogs were turned in upon him
in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf,
fresh-caught from the Wild, was shoved in
through the door of the pen. And on still
another day two dogs were set against him
at the same time. This was his severest fight,
and though in the end he killed them both
he was himself half killed in doing it.
In the fall of the year, when the first snows
were falling and mush-ice was running in the
river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself
and White Fang on a steamboat bound up the
Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved
a reputation in the land. As “the Fighting
Wolf” he was known far and wide, and the
cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat’s
deck was usually surrounded by curious men.
He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly
and studied them with cold hatred. Why should
he not hate them? He never asked himself the
question. He knew only hate and lost himself
in the passion of it. Life had become a hell
to him. He had not been made for the close
confinement wild beasts endure at the hands
of men. And yet it was in precisely this way
that he was treated. Men stared at him, poked
sticks between the bars to make him snarl,
and then laughed at him.
They were his environment, these men, and
they were moulding the clay of him into a
more ferocious thing than had been intended
by Nature. Nevertheless, Nature had given
him plasticity. Where many another animal
would have died or had its spirit broken,
he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense
of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend
and tormentor, was capable of breaking White
Fang’s spirit, but as yet there were no
signs of his succeeding.
If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White
Fang had another; and the two of them raged
against each other unceasingly. In the days
before, White Fang had had the wisdom to cower
down and submit to a man with a club in his
hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere
sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send
him into transports of fury. And when they
came to close quarters, and he had been beaten
back by the club, he went on growling and
snarling, and showing his fangs. The last
growl could never be extracted from him. No
matter how terribly he was beaten, he had
always another growl; and when Beauty Smith
gave up and withdrew, the defiant growl followed
after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars
of the cage bellowing his hatred.
When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White
Fang went ashore. But he still lived a public
life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men.
He was exhibited as “the Fighting Wolf,”
and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see
him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down
to sleep, he was stirred up by a sharp stick—so
that the audience might get its money’s
worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting,
he was kept in a rage most of the time. But
worse than all this, was the atmosphere in
which he lived. He was regarded as the most
fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne
in to him through the bars of the cage. Every
word, every cautious action, on the part of
the men, impressed upon him his own terrible
ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the
flame of his fierceness. There could be but
one result, and that was that his ferocity
fed upon itself and increased. It was another
instance of the plasticity of his clay, of
his capacity for being moulded by the pressure
of environment.
In addition to being exhibited he was a professional
fighting animal. At irregular intervals, whenever
a fight could be arranged, he was taken out
of his cage and led off into the woods a few
miles from town. Usually this occurred at
night, so as to avoid interference from the
mounted police of the Territory. After a few
hours of waiting, when daylight had come,
the audience and the dog with which he was
to fight arrived. In this manner it came about
that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs.
It was a savage land, the men were savage,
and the fights were usually to the death.
Since White Fang continued to fight, it is
obvious that it was the other dogs that died.
He never knew defeat. His early training,
when he fought with Lip-lip and the whole
puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There
was the tenacity with which he clung to the
earth. No dog could make him lose his footing.
This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds—to
rush in upon him, either directly or with
an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking
his shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie
hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies
and Malemutes—all tried it on him, and all
failed. He was never known to lose his footing.
Men told this to one another, and looked each
time to see it happen; but White Fang always
disappointed them.
Then there was his lightning quickness. It
gave him a tremendous advantage over his antagonists.
No matter what their fighting experience,
they had never encountered a dog that moved
so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with,
was the immediateness of his attack. The average
dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of
snarling and bristling and growling, and the
average dog was knocked off his feet and finished
before he had begun to fight or recovered
from his surprise. So often did this happen,
that it became the custom to hold White Fang
until the other dog went through its preliminaries,
was good and ready, and even made the first
attack.
But greatest of all the advantages in White
Fang’s favour, was his experience. He knew
more about fighting than did any of the dogs
that faced him. He had fought more fights,
knew how to meet more tricks and methods,
and had more tricks himself, while his own
method was scarcely to be improved upon.
As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer
fights. Men despaired of matching him with
an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to
pit wolves against him. These were trapped
by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight
between White Fang and a wolf was always sure
to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female
lynx was secured, and this time White Fang
fought for his life. Her quickness matched
his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought
with his fangs alone, and she fought with
her sharp-clawed feet as well.
But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for
White Fang. There were no more animals with
which to fight—at least, there was none
considered worthy of fighting with him. So
he remained on exhibition until spring, when
one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in
the land. With him came the first bull-dog
that had ever entered the Klondike. That this
dog and White Fang should come together was
inevitable, and for a week the anticipated
fight was the mainspring of conversation in
certain quarters of the town.
CHAPTER IV—THE CLINGING DEATH
Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck
and stepped back.
For once White Fang did not make an immediate
attack. He stood still, ears pricked forward,
alert and curious, surveying the strange animal
that faced him. He had never seen such a dog
before. Tim Keenan shoved the bull-dog forward
with a muttered “Go to it.” The animal
waddled toward the centre of the circle, short
and squat and ungainly. He came to a stop
and blinked across at White Fang.
There were cries from the crowd of, “Go
to him, Cherokee! Sick ’m, Cherokee! Eat
’m up!”
But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight.
He turned his head and blinked at the men
who shouted, at the same time wagging his
stump of a tail good-naturedly. He was not
afraid, but merely lazy. Besides, it did not
seem to him that it was intended he should
fight with the dog he saw before him. He was
not used to fighting with that kind of dog,
and he was waiting for them to bring on the
real dog.
Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee,
fondling him on both sides of the shoulders
with hands that rubbed against the grain of
the hair and that made slight, pushing-forward
movements. These were so many suggestions.
Also, their effect was irritating, for Cherokee
began to growl, very softly, deep down in
his throat. There was a correspondence in
rhythm between the growls and the movements
of the man’s hands. The growl rose in the
throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing
movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh
with the beginning of the next movement. The
end of each movement was the accent of the
rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the
growling rising with a jerk.
This was not without its effect on White Fang.
The hair began to rise on his neck and across
the shoulders. Tim Keenan gave a final shove
forward and stepped back again. As the impetus
that carried Cherokee forward died down, he
continued to go forward of his own volition,
in a swift, bow-legged run. Then White Fang
struck. A cry of startled admiration went
up. He had covered the distance and gone in
more like a cat than a dog; and with the same
cat-like swiftness he had slashed with his
fangs and leaped clear.
The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear
from a rip in his thick neck. He gave no sign,
did not even snarl, but turned and followed
after White Fang. The display on both sides,
the quickness of the one and the steadiness
of the other, had excited the partisan spirit
of the crowd, and the men were making new
bets and increasing original bets. Again,
and yet again, White Fang sprang in, slashed,
and got away untouched, and still his strange
foe followed after him, without too great
haste, not slowly, but deliberately and determinedly,
in a businesslike sort of way. There was purpose
in his method—something for him to do that
he was intent upon doing and from which nothing
could distract him.
His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped
with this purpose. It puzzled White Fang.
Never had he seen such a dog. It had no hair
protection. It was soft, and bled easily.
There was no thick mat of fur to baffle White
Fang’s teeth as they were often baffled
by dogs of his own breed. Each time that his
teeth struck they sank easily into the yielding
flesh, while the animal did not seem able
to defend itself. Another disconcerting thing
was that it made no outcry, such as he had
been accustomed to with the other dogs he
had fought. Beyond a growl or a grunt, the
dog took its punishment silently. And never
did it flag in its pursuit of him.
Not that Cherokee was slow. He could turn
and whirl swiftly enough, but White Fang was
never there. Cherokee was puzzled, too. He
had never fought before with a dog with which
he could not close. The desire to close had
always been mutual. But here was a dog that
kept at a distance, dancing and dodging here
and there and all about. And when it did get
its teeth into him, it did not hold on but
let go instantly and darted away again.
But White Fang could not get at the soft underside
of the throat. The bull-dog stood too short,
while its massive jaws were an added protection.
White Fang darted in and out unscathed, while
Cherokee’s wounds increased. Both sides
of his neck and head were ripped and slashed.
He bled freely, but showed no signs of being
disconcerted. He continued his plodding pursuit,
though once, for the moment baffled, he came
to a full stop and blinked at the men who
looked on, at the same time wagging his stump
of a tail as an expression of his willingness
to fight.
In that moment White Fang was in upon him
and out, in passing ripping his trimmed remnant
of an ear. With a slight manifestation of
anger, Cherokee took up the pursuit again,
running on the inside of the circle White
Fang was making, and striving to fasten his
deadly grip on White Fang’s throat. The
bull-dog missed by a hair’s-breadth, and
cries of praise went up as White Fang doubled
suddenly out of danger in the opposite direction.
The time went by. White Fang still danced
on, dodging and doubling, leaping in and out,
and ever inflicting damage. And still the
bull-dog, with grim certitude, toiled after
him. Sooner or later he would accomplish his
purpose, get the grip that would win the battle.
In the meantime, he accepted all the punishment
the other could deal him. His tufts of ears
had become tassels, his neck and shoulders
were slashed in a score of places, and his
very lips were cut and bleeding—all from
these lightning snaps that were beyond his
foreseeing and guarding.
Time and again White Fang had attempted to
knock Cherokee off his feet; but the difference
in their height was too great. Cherokee was
too squat, too close to the ground. White
Fang tried the trick once too often. The chance
came in one of his quick doublings and counter-circlings.
He caught Cherokee with head turned away as
he whirled more slowly. His shoulder was exposed.
White Fang drove in upon it: but his own shoulder
was high above, while he struck with such
force that his momentum carried him on across
over the other’s body. For the first time
in his fighting history, men saw White Fang
lose his footing. His body turned a half-somersault
in the air, and he would have landed on his
back had he not twisted, catlike, still in
the air, in the effort to bring his feet to
the earth. As it was, he struck heavily on
his side. The next instant he was on his feet,
but in that instant Cherokee’s teeth closed
on his throat.
It was not a good grip, being too low down
toward the chest; but Cherokee held on. White
Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around,
trying to shake off the bull-dog’s body.
It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging
weight. It bound his movements, restricted
his freedom. It was like the trap, and all
his instinct resented it and revolted against
it. It was a mad revolt. For several minutes
he was to all intents insane. The basic life
that was in him took charge of him. The will
to exist of his body surged over him. He was
dominated by this mere flesh-love of life.
All intelligence was gone. It was as though
he had no brain. His reason was unseated by
the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and
move, at all hazards to move, to continue
to move, for movement was the expression of
its existence.
Round and round he went, whirling and turning
and reversing, trying to shake off the fifty-pound
weight that dragged at his throat. The bull-dog
did little but keep his grip. Sometimes, and
rarely, he managed to get his feet to the
earth and for a moment to brace himself against
White Fang. But the next moment his footing
would be lost and he would be dragging around
in the whirl of one of White Fang’s mad
gyrations. Cherokee identified himself with
his instinct. He knew that he was doing the
right thing by holding on, and there came
to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction.
At such moments he even closed his eyes and
allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither,
willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might
thereby come to it. That did not count. The
grip was the thing, and the grip he kept.
White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself
out. He could do nothing, and he could not
understand. Never, in all his fighting, had
this thing happened. The dogs he had fought
with did not fight that way. With them it
was snap and slash and get away, snap and
slash and get away. He lay partly on his side,
panting for breath. Cherokee still holding
his grip, urged against him, trying to get
him over entirely on his side. White Fang
resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting
their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together
again in a chewing movement. Each shift brought
the grip closer to his throat. The bull-dog’s
method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity
favoured to work in for more. Opportunity
favoured when White Fang remained quiet. When
White Fang struggled, Cherokee was content
merely to hold on.
The bulging back of Cherokee’s neck was
the only portion of his body that White Fang’s
teeth could reach. He got hold toward the
base where the neck comes out from the shoulders;
but he did not know the chewing method of
fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it.
He spasmodically ripped and tore with his
fangs for a space. Then a change in their
position diverted him. The bull-dog had managed
to roll him over on his back, and still hanging
on to his throat, was on top of him. Like
a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters
in, and, with the feet digging into his enemy’s
abdomen above him, he began to claw with long
tearing-strokes. Cherokee might well have
been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted
on his grip and got his body off of White
Fang’s and at right angles to it.
There was no escaping that grip. It was like
Fate itself, and as inexorable. Slowly it
shifted up along the jugular. All that saved
White Fang from death was the loose skin of
his neck and the thick fur that covered it.
This served to form a large roll in Cherokee’s
mouth, the fur of which well-nigh defied his
teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance
offered, he was getting more of the loose
skin and fur in his mouth. The result was
that he was slowly throttling White Fang.
The latter’s breath was drawn with greater
and greater difficulty as the moments went
by.
It began to look as though the battle were
over. The backers of Cherokee waxed jubilant
and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang’s
backers were correspondingly depressed, and
refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one,
though one man was rash enough to close a
wager of fifty to one. This man was Beauty
Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed
his finger at White Fang. Then he began to
laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced
the desired effect. White Fang went wild with
rage. He called up his reserves of strength,
and gained his feet. As he struggled around
the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever
dragging on his throat, his anger passed on
into panic. The basic life of him dominated
him again, and his intelligence fled before
the will of his flesh to live. Round and round
and back again, stumbling and falling and
rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs
and lifting his foe clear of the earth, he
struggled vainly to shake off the clinging
death.
At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted;
and the bull-dog promptly shifted his grip,
getting in closer, mangling more and more
of the fur-folded flesh, throttling White
Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause
went up for the victor, and there were many
cries of “Cherokee!” “Cherokee!” To
this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging
of the stump of his tail. But the clamour
of approval did not distract him. There was
no sympathetic relation between his tail and
his massive jaws. The one might wag, but the
others held their terrible grip on White Fang’s
throat.
It was at this time that a diversion came
to the spectators. There was a jingle of bells.
Dog-mushers’ cries were heard. Everybody,
save Beauty Smith, looked apprehensively,
the fear of the police strong upon them. But
they saw, up the trail, and not down, two
men running with sled and dogs. They were
evidently coming down the creek from some
prospecting trip. At sight of the crowd they
stopped their dogs and came over and joined
it, curious to see the cause of the excitement.
The dog-musher wore a moustache, but the other,
a taller and younger man, was smooth-shaven,
his skin rosy from the pounding of his blood
and the running in the frosty air.
White Fang had practically ceased struggling.
Now and again he resisted spasmodically and
to no purpose. He could get little air, and
that little grew less and less under the merciless
grip that ever tightened. In spite of his
armour of fur, the great vein of his throat
would have long since been torn open, had
not the first grip of the bull-dog been so
low down as to be practically on the chest.
It had taken Cherokee a long time to shift
that grip upward, and this had also tended
further to clog his jaws with fur and skin-fold.
In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty
Smith had been rising into his brain and mastering
the small bit of sanity that he possessed
at best. When he saw White Fang’s eyes beginning
to glaze, he knew beyond doubt that the fight
was lost. Then he broke loose. He sprang upon
White Fang and began savagely to kick him.
There were hisses from the crowd and cries
of protest, but that was all. While this went
on, and Beauty Smith continued to kick White
Fang, there was a commotion in the crowd.
The tall young newcomer was forcing his way
through, shouldering men right and left without
ceremony or gentleness. When he broke through
into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the
act of delivering another kick. All his weight
was on one foot, and he was in a state of
unstable equilibrium. At that moment the newcomer’s
fist landed a smashing blow full in his face.
Beauty Smith’s remaining leg left the ground,
and his whole body seemed to lift into the
air as he turned over backward and struck
the snow. The newcomer turned upon the crowd.
“You cowards!” he cried. “You beasts!”
He was in a rage himself—a sane rage. His
grey eyes seemed metallic and steel-like as
they flashed upon the crowd. Beauty Smith
regained his feet and came toward him, sniffling
and cowardly. The new-comer did not understand.
He did not know how abject a coward the other
was, and thought he was coming back intent
on fighting. So, with a “You beast!” he
smashed Beauty Smith over backward with a
second blow in the face. Beauty Smith decided
that the snow was the safest place for him,
and lay where he had fallen, making no effort
to get up.
“Come on, Matt, lend a hand,” the newcomer
called the dog-musher, who had followed him
into the ring.
Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold
of White Fang, ready to pull when Cherokee’s
jaws should be loosened. This the younger
man endeavoured to accomplish by clutching
the bulldog’s jaws in his hands and trying
to spread them. It was a vain undertaking.
As he pulled and tugged and wrenched, he kept
exclaiming with every expulsion of breath,
“Beasts!”
The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of
the men were protesting against the spoiling
of the sport; but they were silenced when
the newcomer lifted his head from his work
for a moment and glared at them.
“You damn beasts!” he finally exploded,
and went back to his task.
“It’s no use, Mr. Scott, you can’t break
’m apart that way,” Matt said at last.
The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs.
“Ain’t bleedin’ much,” Matt announced.
“Ain’t got all the way in yet.”
“But he’s liable to any moment,” Scott
answered. “There, did you see that! He shifted
his grip in a bit.”
The younger man’s excitement and apprehension
for White Fang was growing. He struck Cherokee
about the head savagely again and again. But
that did not loosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged
the stump of his tail in advertisement that
he understood the meaning of the blows, but
that he knew he was himself in the right and
only doing his duty by keeping his grip.
“Won’t some of you help?” Scott cried
desperately at the crowd.
But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd
began sarcastically to cheer him on and showered
him with facetious advice.
“You’ll have to get a pry,” Matt counselled.
The other reached into the holster at his
hip, drew his revolver, and tried to thrust
its muzzle between the bull-dog’s jaws.
He shoved, and shoved hard, till the grating
of the steel against the locked teeth could
be distinctly heard. Both men were on their
knees, bending over the dogs. Tim Keenan strode
into the ring. He paused beside Scott and
touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously:
“Don’t break them teeth, stranger.”
“Then I’ll break his neck,” Scott retorted,
continuing his shoving and wedging with the
revolver muzzle.
“I said don’t break them teeth,” the
faro-dealer repeated more ominously than before.
But if it was a bluff he intended, it did
not work. Scott never desisted from his efforts,
though he looked up coolly and asked:
“Your dog?”
The faro-dealer grunted.
“Then get in here and break this grip.”
“Well, stranger,” the other drawled irritatingly,
“I don’t mind telling you that’s something
I ain’t worked out for myself. I don’t
know how to turn the trick.”
“Then get out of the way,” was the reply,
“and don’t bother me. I’m busy.”
Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but
Scott took no further notice of his presence.
He had managed to get the muzzle in between
the jaws on one side, and was trying to get
it out between the jaws on the other side.
This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully,
loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while
Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White Fang’s
mangled neck.
“Stand by to receive your dog,” was Scott’s
peremptory order to Cherokee’s owner.
The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and
got a firm hold on Cherokee.
“Now!” Scott warned, giving the final
pry.
The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling
vigorously.
“Take him away,” Scott commanded, and
Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee back into the
crowd.
White Fang made several ineffectual efforts
to get up. Once he gained his feet, but his
legs were too weak to sustain him, and he
slowly wilted and sank back into the snow.
His eyes were half closed, and the surface
of them was glassy. His jaws were apart, and
through them the tongue protruded, draggled
and limp. To all appearances he looked like
a dog that had been strangled to death. Matt
examined him.
“Just about all in,” he announced; “but
he’s breathin’ all right.”
Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come
over to look at White Fang.
“Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?”
Scott asked.
The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped
over White Fang, calculated for a moment.
“Three hundred dollars,” he answered.
“And how much for one that’s all chewed
up like this one?” Scott asked, nudging
White Fang with his foot.
“Half of that,” was the dog-musher’s
judgment. Scott turned upon Beauty Smith.
“Did you hear, Mr. Beast? I’m going to
take your dog from you, and I’m going to
give you a hundred and fifty for him.”
He opened his pocket-book and counted out
the bills.
Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back,
refusing to touch the proffered money.
“I ain’t a-sellin’,” he said.
“Oh, yes you are,” the other assured him.
“Because I’m buying. Here’s your money.
The dog’s mine.”
Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him,
began to back away.
Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist
back to strike. Beauty Smith cowered down
in anticipation of the blow.
“I’ve got my rights,” he whimpered.
“You’ve forfeited your rights to own that
dog,” was the rejoinder. “Are you going
to take the money? or do I have to hit you
again?”
“All right,” Beauty Smith spoke up with
the alacrity of fear. “But I take the money
under protest,” he added. “The dog’s
a mint. I ain’t a-goin’ to be robbed.
A man’s got his rights.”
“Correct,” Scott answered, passing the
money over to him. “A man’s got his rights.
But you’re not a man. You’re a beast.”
“Wait till I get back to Dawson,” Beauty
Smith threatened. “I’ll have the law on
you.”
“If you open your mouth when you get back
to Dawson, I’ll have you run out of town.
Understand?”
Beauty Smith replied with a grunt.
“Understand?” the other thundered with
abrupt fierceness.
“Yes,” Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking
away.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir,” Beauty Smith snarled.
“Look out! He’ll bite!” some one shouted,
and a guffaw of laughter went up.
Scott turned his back on him, and returned
to help the dog-musher, who was working over
White Fang.
Some of the men were already departing; others
stood in groups, looking on and talking. Tim
Keenan joined one of the groups.
“Who’s that mug?” he asked.
“Weedon Scott,” some one answered.
“And who in hell is Weedon Scott?” the
faro-dealer demanded.
“Oh, one of them crackerjack minin’ experts.
He’s in with all the big bugs. If you want
to keep out of trouble, you’ll steer clear
of him, that’s my talk. He’s all hunky
with the officials. The Gold Commissioner’s
a special pal of his.”
“I thought he must be somebody,” was the
faro-dealer’s comment. “That’s why I
kept my hands offen him at the start.”
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 realise 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.”
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 fibre 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 crystallised 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 remoulding 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-fibred
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 clamoured 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 mould 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
ofttimes 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 moulded, 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.
Aint 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
upon 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, succeeded 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.
PART V
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.
CHAPTER II—THE SOUTHLAND
White Fang landed from the steamer in San
Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in him, below
any reasoning process or act of consciousness,
he had associated power with godhead. And
never had the white men seemed such marvellous
gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement
of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known
were replaced by towering buildings. The streets
were crowded with perils—waggons, carts,
automobiles; great, straining horses pulling
huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric
cars hooting and clanging through the midst,
screeching their insistent menace after the
manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern
woods.
All this was the manifestation of power. Through
it all, behind it all, was man, governing
and controlling, expressing himself, as of
old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal,
stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon
him. As in his cubhood he had been made to
feel his smallness and puniness on the day
he first came in from the Wild to the village
of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown
stature and pride of strength, he was made
to feel small and puny. And there were so
many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming
of them. The thunder of the streets smote
upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous
and endless rush and movement of things. As
never before, he felt his dependence on the
love-master, close at whose heels he followed,
no matter what happened never losing sight
of him.
But White Fang was to have no more than a
nightmare vision of the city—an experience
that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible,
that haunted him for long after in his dreams.
He was put into a baggage-car by the master,
chained in a corner in the midst of heaped
trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny
god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks
and boxes about, dragging them in through
the door and tossing them into the piles,
or flinging them out of the door, smashing
and crashing, to other gods who awaited them.
And here, in this inferno of luggage, was
White Fang deserted by the master. Or at least
White Fang thought he was deserted, until
he smelled out the master’s canvas clothes-bags
alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard
over them.
“’Bout time you come,” growled the god
of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott
appeared at the door. “That dog of yourn
won’t let me lay a finger on your stuff.”
White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished.
The nightmare city was gone. The car had been
to him no more than a room in a house, and
when he had entered it the city had been all
around him. In the interval the city had disappeared.
The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears.
Before him was smiling country, streaming
with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he
had little time to marvel at the transformation.
He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable
doings and manifestations of the gods. It
was their way.
There was a carriage waiting. A man and a
woman approached the master. The woman’s
arms went out and clutched the master around
the neck—a hostile act! The next moment
Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace
and closed with White Fang, who had become
a snarling, raging demon.
“It’s all right, mother,” Scott was
saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang
and placated him. “He thought you were going
to injure me, and he wouldn’t stand for
it. It’s all right. It’s all right. He’ll
learn soon enough.”
“And in the meantime I may be permitted
to love my son when his dog is not around,”
she laughed, though she was pale and weak
from the fright.
She looked at White Fang, who snarled and
bristled and glared malevolently.
“He’ll have to learn, and he shall, without
postponement,” Scott said.
He spoke softly to White Fang until he had
quieted him, then his voice became firm.
“Down, sir! Down with you!”
This had been one of the things taught him
by the master, and White Fang obeyed, though
he lay down reluctantly and sullenly.
“Now, mother.”
Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his
eyes on White Fang.
“Down!” he warned. “Down!”
White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching
as he rose, sank back and watched the hostile
act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor
of the embrace from the strange man-god that
followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken
into the carriage, the strange gods and the
love-master followed, and White Fang pursued,
now running vigilantly behind, now bristling
up to the running horses and warning them
that he was there to see that no harm befell
the god they dragged so swiftly across the
earth.
At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage
swung in through a stone gateway and on between
a double row of arched and interlacing walnut
trees. On either side stretched lawns, their
broad sweep broken here and there by great
sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance,
in contrast with the young-green of the tended
grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and
gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and
upland pastures. From the head of the lawn,
on the first soft swell from the valley-level,
looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed
house.
Little opportunity was given White Fang to
see all this. Hardly had the carriage entered
the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog,
bright-eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant
and angry. It was between him and the master,
cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning,
but his hair bristled as he made his silent
and deadly rush. This rush was never completed.
He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff
fore-legs bracing himself against his momentum,
almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous
was he of avoiding contact with the dog he
was in the act of attacking. It was a female,
and the law of his kind thrust a barrier between.
For him to attack her would require nothing
less than a violation of his instinct.
But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being
a female, she possessed no such instinct.
On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her
instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially
of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang
was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder
who had preyed upon her flocks from the time
sheep were first herded and guarded by some
dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned
his rush at her and braced himself to avoid
the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled
involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his
shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to
hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with
self-consciousness, and tried to go around
her. He dodged this way and that, and curved
and turned, but to no purpose. She remained
always between him and the way he wanted to
go.
“Here, Collie!” called the strange man
in the carriage.
Weedon Scott laughed.
“Never mind, father. It is good discipline.
White Fang will have to learn many things,
and it’s just as well that he begins now.
He’ll adjust himself all right.”
The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked
White Fang’s way. He tried to outrun her
by leaving the drive and circling across the
lawn but she ran on the inner and smaller
circle, and was always there, facing him with
her two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled,
across the drive to the other lawn, and again
she headed him off.
The carriage was bearing the master away.
White Fang caught glimpses of it disappearing
amongst the trees. The situation was desperate.
He essayed another circle. She followed, running
swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon
her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder
to shoulder, he struck her squarely. Not only
was she overthrown. So fast had she been running
that she rolled along, now on her back, now
on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing
gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her
hurt pride and indignation.
White Fang did not wait. The way was clear,
and that was all he had wanted. She took after
him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the
straightaway now, and when it came to real
running, White Fang could teach her things.
She ran frantically, hysterically, straining
to the utmost, advertising the effort she
was making with every leap: and all the time
White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently,
without effort, gliding like a ghost over
the ground.
As he rounded the house to the porte-cochère,
he came upon the carriage. It had stopped,
and the master was alighting. At this moment,
still running at top speed, White Fang became
suddenly aware of an attack from the side.
It was a deer-hound rushing upon him. White
Fang tried to face it. But he was going too
fast, and the hound was too close. It struck
him on the side; and such was his forward
momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White
Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled clear
over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle
of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing,
nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together
as the fangs barely missed the hound’s soft
throat.
The master was running up, but was too far
away; and it was Collie that saved the hound’s
life. Before White Fang could spring in and
deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was
in the act of springing in, Collie arrived.
She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to
say nothing of her having been unceremoniously
tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was
like that of a tornado—made up of offended
dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive
hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She
struck White Fang at right angles in the midst
of his spring, and again he was knocked off
his feet and rolled over.
The next moment the master arrived, and with
one hand held White Fang, while the father
called off the dogs.
“I say, this is a pretty warm reception
for a poor lone wolf from the Arctic,” the
master said, while White Fang calmed down
under his caressing hand. “In all his life
he’s only been known once to go off his
feet, and here he’s been rolled twice in
thirty seconds.”
The carriage had driven away, and other strange
gods had appeared from out the house. Some
of these stood respectfully at a distance;
but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile
act of clutching the master around the neck.
White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate
this act. No harm seemed to come of it, while
the noises the gods made were certainly not
threatening. These gods also made overtures
to White Fang, but he warned them off with
a snarl, and the master did likewise with
word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned
in close against the master’s legs and received
reassuring pats on the head.
The hound, under the command, “Dick! Lie
down, sir!” had gone up the steps and lain
down to one side of the porch, still growling
and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder.
Collie had been taken in charge by one of
the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck
and petted and caressed her; but Collie was
very much perplexed and worried, whining and
restless, outraged by the permitted presence
of this wolf and confident that the gods were
making a mistake.
All the gods started up the steps to enter
the house. White Fang followed closely at
the master’s heels. Dick, on the porch,
growled, and White Fang, on the steps, bristled
and growled back.
“Take Collie inside and leave the two of
them to fight it out,” suggested Scott’s
father. “After that they’ll be friends.”
“Then White Fang, to show his friendship,
will have to be chief mourner at the funeral,”
laughed the master.
The elder Scott looked incredulously, first
at White Fang, then at Dick, and finally at
his son.
“You mean . . .?”
Weedon nodded his head. “I mean just that.
You’d have a dead Dick inside one minute—two
minutes at the farthest.”
He turned to White Fang. “Come on, you wolf.
It’s you that’ll have to come inside.”
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 face
of the gods who permitted him, but that did
not prevent her from making life miserable
for him in petty ways. A feud, ages old, was
between them, and she, for one, would see
to it that he was reminded.
So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick
upon White Fang and maltreat him. His instinct
would not permit him to attack her, while
her persistence would not permit him to ignore
her. When she rushed at him he turned his
fur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth
and walked away stiff-legged and stately.
When she forced him too hard, he was compelled
to go about in a circle, his shoulder presented
to her, his head turned from her, and on his
face and in his eyes a patient and bored expression.
Sometimes, however, a nip on his hind-quarters
hastened his retreat and made it anything
but stately. But as a rule he managed to maintain
a dignity that was almost solemnity. He ignored
her existence whenever it was possible, and
made it a point to keep out of her way. When
he saw or heard her coming, he got up and
walked off.
There was much in other matters for White
Fang to learn. Life in the Northland was simplicity
itself when compared with the complicated
affairs of Sierra Vista. First of all, he
had to learn the family of the master. In
a way he was prepared to do this. As Mit-sah
and Kloo-kooch had belonged to Grey Beaver,
sharing his food, his fire, and his blankets,
so now, at Sierra Vista, belonged to the love-master
all the denizens of the house.
But in this matter there was a difference,
and many differences. Sierra Vista was a far
vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver.
There were many persons to be considered.
There was Judge Scott, and there was his wife.
There were the master’s two sisters, Beth
and Mary. There was his wife, Alice, and then
there were his children, Weedon and Maud,
toddlers of four and six. There was no way
for anybody to tell him about all these people,
and of blood-ties and relationship he knew
nothing whatever and never would be capable
of knowing. Yet he quickly worked it out that
all of them belonged to the master. Then,
by observation, whenever opportunity offered,
by study of action, speech, and the very intonations
of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy
and the degree of favour they enjoyed with
the master. And by this ascertained standard,
White Fang treated them accordingly. What
was of value to the master he valued; what
was dear to the master was to be cherished
by White Fang and guarded carefully.
Thus it was with the two children. All his
life he had disliked children. He hated and
feared their hands. The lessons were not tender
that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty
in the days of the Indian villages. When Weedon
and Maud had first approached him, he growled
warningly and looked malignant. A cuff from
the master and a sharp word had then compelled
him to permit their caresses, though he growled
and growled under their tiny hands, and in
the growl there was no crooning note. Later,
he observed that the boy and girl were of
great value in the master’s eyes. Then it
was that no cuff nor sharp word was necessary
before they could pat him.
Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate.
He yielded to the master’s children with
an ill but honest grace, and endured their
fooling as one would endure a painful operation.
When he could no longer endure, he would get
up and stalk determinedly away from them.
But after a time, he grew even to like the
children. Still he was not demonstrative.
He would not go up to them. On the other hand,
instead of walking away at sight of them,
he waited for them to come to him. And still
later, it was noticed that a pleased light
came into his eyes when he saw them approaching,
and that he looked after them with an appearance
of curious regret when they left him for other
amusements.
All this was a matter of development, and
took time. Next in his regard, after the children,
was Judge Scott. There were two reasons, possibly,
for this. First, he was evidently a valuable
possession of the master’s, and next, he
was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie
at his feet on the wide porch when he read
the newspaper, from time to time favouring
White Fang with a look or a word—untroublesome
tokens that he recognised White Fang’s presence
and existence. But this was only when the
master was not around. When the master appeared,
all other beings ceased to exist so far as
White Fang was concerned.
White Fang allowed all the members of the
family to pet him and make much of him; but
he never gave to them what he gave to the
master. No caress of theirs could put the
love-croon into his throat, and, try as they
would, they could never persuade him into
snuggling against them. This expression of
abandon and surrender, of absolute trust,
he reserved for the master alone. In fact,
he never regarded the members of the family
in any other light than possessions of the
love-master.
Also White Fang had early come to differentiate
between the family and the servants of the
household. The latter were afraid of him,
while he merely refrained from attacking them.
This because he considered that they were
likewise possessions of the master. Between
White Fang and them existed a neutrality and
no more. They cooked for the master and washed
the dishes and did other things just as Matt
had done up in the Klondike. They were, in
short, appurtenances of the household.
Outside the household there was even more
for White Fang to learn. The master’s domain
was wide and complex, yet it had its metes
and bounds. The land itself ceased at the
county road. Outside was the common domain
of all gods—the roads and streets. Then
inside other fences were the particular domains
of other gods. A myriad laws governed all
these things and determined conduct; yet he
did not know the speech of the gods, nor was
there any way for him to learn save by experience.
He obeyed his natural impulses until they
ran him counter to some law. When this had
been done a few times, he learned the law
and after that observed it.
But most potent in his education was the cuff
of the master’s hand, the censure of the
master’s voice. Because of White Fang’s
very great love, a cuff from the master hurt
him far more than any beating Grey Beaver
or Beauty Smith had ever given him. They had
hurt only the flesh of him; beneath the flesh
the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible.
But with the master the cuff was always too
light to hurt the flesh. Yet it went deeper.
It was an expression of the master’s disapproval,
and White Fang’s spirit wilted under it.
In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered.
The master’s voice was sufficient. By it
White Fang knew whether he did right or not.
By it he trimmed his conduct and adjusted
his actions. It was the compass by which he
steered and learned to chart the manners of
a new land and life.
In the Northland, the only domesticated animal
was the dog. All other animals lived in the
Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful
spoil for any dog. All his days White Fang
had foraged among the live things for food.
It did not enter his head that in the Southland
it was otherwise. But this he was to learn
early in his residence in Santa Clara Valley.
Sauntering around the 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 the dog.
With this triple killing his main troubles
with dogs ceased. The word went up and down
the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs
did not molest the Fighting Wolf.
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 fast 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.
CHAPTER V—THE SLEEPING WOLF
It was about this time that the newspapers
were full of the daring escape of a convict
from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious
man. He had been ill-made in the making. He
had not been born right, and he had not been
helped any by the moulding he had received
at the hands of society. The hands of society
are harsh, and this man was a striking sample
of its handiwork. He was a beast—a human
beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible
a beast that he can best be characterised
as carnivorous.
In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible.
Punishment failed to break his spirit. He
could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last,
but he could not live and be beaten. The more
fiercely he fought, the more harshly society
handled him, and the only effect of harshness
was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation,
and beatings and clubbings were the wrong
treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment
he received. It was the treatment he had received
from the time he was a little pulpy boy in
a San Francisco slum—soft clay in the hands
of society and ready to be formed into something.
It was during Jim Hall’s third term in prison
that he encountered a guard that was almost
as great a beast as he. The guard treated
him unfairly, lied about him to the warden,
lost his credits, persecuted him. The difference
between them was that the guard carried a
bunch of keys and a revolver. Jim Hall had
only his naked hands and his teeth. But he
sprang upon the guard one day and used his
teeth on the other’s throat just like any
jungle animal.
After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible
cell. He lived there three years. The cell
was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof.
He never left this cell. He never saw the
sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight and
night was a black silence. He was in an iron
tomb, buried alive. He saw no human face,
spoke to no human thing. When his food was
shoved in to him, he growled like a wild animal.
He hated all things. For days and nights he
bellowed his rage at the universe. For weeks
and months he never made a sound, in the black
silence eating his very soul. He was a man
and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear
as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened
brain.
And then, one night, he escaped. The warders
said it was impossible, but nevertheless the
cell was empty, and half in half out of it
lay the body of a dead guard. Two other dead
guards marked his trail through the prison
to the outer walls, and he had killed with
his hands to avoid noise.
He was armed with the weapons of the slain
guards—a live arsenal that fled through
the hills pursued by the organised might of
society. A heavy price of gold was upon his
head. Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns.
His blood might pay off a mortgage or send
a son to college. Public-spirited citizens
took down their rifles and went out after
him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way
of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds
of the law, the paid fighting animals of society,
with telephone, and telegraph, and special
train, clung to his trail night and day.
Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced
him like heroes, or stampeded through barbed-wire
fences to the delight of the commonwealth
reading the account at the breakfast table.
It was after such encounters that the dead
and wounded were carted back to the towns,
and their places filled by men eager for the
man-hunt.
And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds
vainly quested on the lost trail. Inoffensive
ranchers in remote valleys were held up by
armed men and compelled to identify themselves.
While the remains of Jim Hall were discovered
on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants
for blood-money.
In the meantime the newspapers were read at
Sierra Vista, not so much with interest as
with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge
Scott pooh-poohed and laughed, but not with
reason, for it was in his last days on the
bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and
received sentence. And in open court-room,
before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that
the day would come when he would wreak vengeance
on the Judge that sentenced him.
For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent
of the crime for which he was sentenced. It
was a case, in the parlance of thieves and
police, of “rail-roading.” Jim Hall was
being “rail-roaded” to prison for a crime
he had not committed. Because of the two prior
convictions against him, Judge Scott imposed
upon him a sentence of fifty years.
Judge Scott did not know all things, and he
did not know that he was party to a police
conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched
and perjured, that Jim Hall was guiltless
of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the
other hand, did not know that Judge Scott
was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that
the judge knew all about it and was hand in
glove with the police in the perpetration
of the monstrous injustice. So it was, when
the doom of fifty years of living death was
uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating
all things in the society that misused him,
rose up and raged in the court-room until
dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-coated
enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the keystone
in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott
he emptied the vials of his wrath and hurled
the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then
Jim Hall went to his living death . . . and
escaped.
Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between
him and Alice, the master’s wife, there
existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra
Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in
White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now White
Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted
to sleep in the house; so each morning, early,
she slipped down and let him out before the
family was awake.
On one such night, while all the house slept,
White Fang awoke and lay very quietly. And
very quietly he smelled the air and read the
message it bore of a strange god’s presence.
And to his ears came sounds of the strange
god’s movements. White Fang burst into no
furious outcry. It was not his way. The strange
god walked softly, but more softly walked
White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against
the flesh of his body. He followed silently.
In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was
infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage
of surprise.
The strange god paused at the foot of the
great staircase and listened, and White Fang
was as dead, so without movement was he as
he watched and waited. Up that staircase the
way led to the love-master and to the love-master’s
dearest possessions. White Fang bristled,
but waited. The strange god’s foot lifted.
He was beginning the ascent.
Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave
no warning, with no snarl anticipated his
own action. Into the air he lifted his body
in the spring that landed him on the strange
god’s back. White Fang clung with his fore-paws
to the man’s shoulders, at the same time
burying his fangs into the back of the man’s
neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough
to drag the god over backward. Together they
crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear,
and, as the man struggled to rise, was in
again with the slashing fangs.
Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from
downstairs was as that of a score of battling
fiends. There were revolver shots. A man’s
voice screamed once in horror and anguish.
There was a great snarling and growling, and
over all arose a smashing and crashing of
furniture and glass.
But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the
commotion died away. The struggle had not
lasted more than three minutes. The frightened
household clustered at the top of the stairway.
From below, as from out an abyss of blackness,
came up a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling
through water. Sometimes this gurgle became
sibilant, almost a whistle. But this, too,
quickly died down and ceased. Then naught
came up out of the blackness save a heavy
panting of some creature struggling sorely
for air.
Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase
and downstairs hall were flooded with light.
Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand,
cautiously descended. There was no need for
this caution. White Fang had done his work.
In the midst of the wreckage of overthrown
and smashed furniture, partly on his side,
his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon
Scott bent over, removed the arm and turned
the man’s face upward. A gaping throat explained
the manner of his death.
“Jim Hall,” said Judge Scott, and father
and son looked significantly at each other.
Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was
lying on his side. His eyes were closed, but
the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look
at them as they bent over him, and the tail
was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort
to wag. Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat
rumbled an acknowledging growl. But it was
a weak growl at best, and it quickly ceased.
His eyelids drooped and went shut, and his
whole body seemed to relax and flatten out
upon the floor.
“He’s all in, poor devil,” muttered
the master.
“We’ll see about that,” asserted the
Judge, as he started for the telephone.
“Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand,”
announced the surgeon, after he had worked
an hour and a half on White Fang.
Dawn was breaking through the windows and
dimming the electric lights. With the exception
of the children, the whole family was gathered
about the surgeon to hear his verdict.
“One broken hind-leg,” he went on. “Three
broken ribs, one at least of which has pierced
the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood
in his body. There is a large likelihood of
internal injuries. He must have been jumped
upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes
clear through him. One chance in a thousand
is really optimistic. He hasn’t a chance
in ten thousand.”
“But he mustn’t lose any chance that might
be of help to him,” Judge Scott exclaimed.
“Never mind expense. Put him under the X-ray—anything.
Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco
for Doctor Nichols. No reflection on you,
doctor, you understand; but he must have the
advantage of every chance.”
The surgeon smiled indulgently. “Of course
I understand. He deserves all that can be
done for him. He must be nursed as you would
nurse a human being, a sick child. And don’t
forget what I told you about temperature.
I’ll be back at ten o’clock again.”
White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott’s
suggestion of a trained nurse was indignantly
clamoured down by the girls, who themselves
undertook the task. And White Fang won out
on the one chance in ten thousand denied him
by the surgeon.
The latter was not to be censured for his
misjudgment. All his life he had tended and
operated on the soft humans of civilisation,
who lived sheltered lives and had descended
out of many sheltered generations. Compared
with White Fang, they were frail and flabby,
and clutched life without any strength in
their grip. White Fang had come straight from
the Wild, where the weak perish early and
shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither
his father nor his mother was there any weakness,
nor in the generations before them. A constitution
of iron and the vitality of the Wild were
White Fang’s inheritance, and he clung to
life, the whole of him and every part of him,
in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity
that of old belonged to all creatures.
Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement
by the plaster casts and bandages, White Fang
lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours
and dreamed much, and through his mind passed
an unending pageant of Northland visions.
All the ghosts of the past arose and were
with him. Once again he lived in the lair
with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of
Grey Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran
for his life before Lip-lip and all the howling
bedlam of the puppy-pack.
He ran again through the silence, hunting
his living food through the months of famine;
and again he ran at the head of the team,
the gut-whips of Mit-sah and Grey Beaver snapping
behind, their voices crying “Ra! Raa!”
when they came to a narrow passage and the
team closed together like a fan to go through.
He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith
and the fights he had fought. At such times
he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and
they that looked on said that his dreams were
bad.
But there was one particular nightmare from
which he suffered—the clanking, clanging
monsters of electric cars that were to him
colossal screaming lynxes. He would lie in
a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrel
to venture far enough out on the ground from
its tree-refuge. Then, when he sprang out
upon it, it would transform itself into an
electric car, menacing and terrible, towering
over him like a mountain, screaming and clanging
and spitting fire at him. It was the same
when he challenged the hawk down out of the
sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as
it dropped upon him changing itself into the
ubiquitous electric car. Or again, he would
be in the pen of Beauty Smith. Outside the
pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that
a fight was on. He watched the door for his
antagonist to enter. The door would open,
and thrust in upon him would come the awful
electric car. A thousand times this occurred,
and each time the terror it inspired was as
vivid and great as ever.
Then came the day when the last bandage and
the last plaster cast were taken off. It was
a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered
around. The master rubbed his ears, and he
crooned his love-growl. The master’s wife
called him the “Blessed Wolf,” which name
was taken up with acclaim and all the women
called him the Blessed Wolf.
He tried to rise to his feet, and after several
attempts fell down from weakness. He had lain
so long that his muscles had lost their cunning,
and all the strength had gone out of them.
He felt a little shame because of his weakness,
as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods
in the service he owed them. Because of this
he made heroic efforts to arise and at last
he stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying
back and forth.
“The Blessed Wolf!” chorused the women.
Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.
“Out of your own mouths be it,” he said.
“Just as I contended right along. No mere
dog could have done what he did. He’s a
wolf.”
“A Blessed Wolf,” amended the Judge’s
wife.
“Yes, Blessed Wolf,” agreed the Judge.
“And henceforth that shall be my name for
him.”
“He’ll have to learn to walk again,”
said the surgeon; “so he might as well start
in right now. It won’t hurt him. Take him
outside.”
And outside he went, like a king, with all
Sierra Vista about him and tending on him.
He was very weak, and when he reached the
lawn he lay down and rested for a while.
Then the procession started on, little spurts
of strength coming into White Fang’s muscles
as he used them and the blood began to surge
through them. The stables were reached, and
there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozen
pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.
White Fang looked on with a wondering eye.
Collie snarled warningly at him, and he was
careful to keep his distance. The master with
his toe helped one sprawling puppy toward
him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master
warned him that all was well. Collie, clasped
in the arms of one of the women, watched him
jealously and with a snarl warned him that
all was not well.
The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked
his ears and watched it curiously. Then their
noses touched, and he felt the warm little
tongue of the puppy on his jowl. White Fang’s
tongue went out, he knew not why, and he licked
the puppy’s face.
Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods
greeted the performance. He was surprised,
and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then
his weakness asserted itself, and he lay down,
his ears cocked, his head on one side, as
he watched the puppy. The other puppies came
sprawling toward him, to Collie’s great
disgust; and he gravely permitted them to
clamber and tumble over him. At first, amid
the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle
of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness.
This passed away as the puppies’ antics
and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut
patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.
