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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of White Fang, by Jack London
+(#7 in our series by Jack London)
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: White Fang
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: May, 1997  [EBook #910]
+[This file was first posted on May 13, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 12, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, WHITE FANG ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1915 edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+White Fang
+
+
+
+
+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 a 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
+mocassins.
+
+"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 laid 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 an 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
+udulating 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 eftortless 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 heating.  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 balls 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 were 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, lying 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 this 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-hp 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.  While 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 is 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 rippling and manging 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 loot, 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 led 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, succeeding in finding a
+new mode of expression.  He suddenly thrust his head forward and
+nudged his way in between the master's arm and body.  And here,
+confined, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling,
+he continued to nudge and snuggle.
+
+The two men looked at each other.  Scott's eyes were shining.
+
+"Gosh!" said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.
+
+A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, "I always
+insisted that wolf was a dog.  Look at 'm!"
+
+With the return of the love-master, White Fang's recovery was
+rapid.  Two nights and a day he spent in the cabin.  Then he
+sallied forth.  The sled-dogs had forgotten his prowess.  They
+remembered only the latest, which was his weakness and sickness.
+At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, they sprang upon
+him.
+
+"Talk about your rough-houses," Matt murmured gleefully, standing
+in the doorway and looking on.
+
+"Give 'm hell, you wolf!  Give 'm hell!--an' then some!"
+
+White Fang did not need the encouragement.  The return of the love-
+master was enough.  Life was flowing through him again, splendid
+and indomitable.  He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an
+expression of much that he felt and that otherwise was without
+speech.  There could be but one ending.  The team dispersed in
+ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs
+came sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying
+their fealty to White Fang.
+
+Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often.  It
+was the final word.  He could not go beyond it.  The one thing of
+which he had always been particularly jealous was his head.  He had
+always disliked to have it touched.  It was the Wild in him, the
+fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky
+impulses to avoid contacts.  It was the mandate of his instinct
+that that head must be free.  And now, with the love-master, his
+snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position
+of hopeless helplessness.  It was an expression of perfect
+confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said:  "I put
+myself into thy hands.  Work thou thy will with me."
+
+One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game
+of cribbage preliminary to going to bed.  "Fifteen-two, fifteen-
+four an' a pair makes six," Mat was pegging up, when there was an
+outcry and sound of snarling without.  They looked at each other as
+they started to rise to their feet.
+
+"The wolf's nailed somebody," Matt said.
+
+A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.
+
+"Bring a light!" Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.
+
+Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying
+on his back in the snow.  His arms were folded, one above the
+other, across his face and throat.  Thus he was trying to shield
+himself from White Fang's teeth.  And there was need for it.  White
+Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most
+vulnerable spot.  From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the
+coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags,
+while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming
+blood.
+
+All this the two men saw in the first instant.  The next instant
+Weedon Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him
+clear.  White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to
+bite, while he quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the
+master.
+
+Matt helped the man to his feet.  As he arose he lowered his
+crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith.  The dog-
+musher let go of him precipitately, with action similar to that of
+a man who has picked up live fire.  Beauty Smith blinked in the
+lamplight and looked about him.  He caught sight of White Fang and
+terror rushed into his face.
+
+At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow.  He
+held the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his
+employer's benefit--a steel dog-chain and a stout club.
+
+Weedon Scott saw and nodded.  Not a word was spoken.  The dog-
+musher laid his hand on Beauty Smith's shoulder and faced him to
+the right about.  No word needed to be spoken.  Beauty Smith
+started.
+
+In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking
+to him.
+
+"Tried to steal you, eh?  And you wouldn't have it!  Well, well, he
+made a mistake, didn't he?"
+
+"Must 'a' thought he had hold of seventeen devils," the dog-musher
+sniggered.
+
+White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled,
+the hair slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but
+growing in his throat.
+
+
+
+
+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 dug-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 swang 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 ears 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 saving 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-cochere, 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 last 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.  Straight-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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