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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of White Fang, by Jack London
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: White Fang
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: May 13, 1997 [eBook #910]
+[Most recently updated: November 10, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHITE FANG ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+WHITE FANG
+
+by Jack London
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PART I
+ CHAPTER I THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT
+ CHAPTER II THE SHE-WOLF
+ CHAPTER III THE HUNGER CRY
+
+ PART II
+ CHAPTER I THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS
+ CHAPTER II THE LAIR
+ CHAPTER III THE GREY CUB
+ CHAPTER IV THE WALL OF THE WORLD
+ CHAPTER V THE LAW OF MEAT
+
+ PART III
+ CHAPTER I THE MAKERS OF FIRE
+ CHAPTER II THE BONDAGE
+ CHAPTER III THE OUTCAST
+ CHAPTER IV THE TRAIL OF THE GODS
+ CHAPTER V THE COVENANT
+ CHAPTER VI THE FAMINE
+
+ PART IV
+ CHAPTER I THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND
+ CHAPTER II THE MAD GOD
+ CHAPTER III THE REIGN OF HATE
+ CHAPTER IV THE CLINGING DEATH
+ CHAPTER V THE INDOMITABLE
+ CHAPTER VI THE LOVE-MASTER
+
+ PART V
+ CHAPTER I THE LONG TRAIL
+ CHAPTER II THE SOUTHLAND
+ CHAPTER III THE GOD’S DOMAIN
+ CHAPTER IV THE CALL OF KIND
+ CHAPTER V THE SLEEPING WOLF
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
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