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 of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand and said:

“Then you’re thinkin’ as it was—”

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had
interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his sentence with
a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, “—one of
them?”

Bill nodded. “I’d a blame sight sooner think that than anything
else. You noticed yourself the row the dogs made.”

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam.
From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling
together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat.
Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.

“I’m thinking you’re down in the mouth some,” Henry
said.

“Henry . . . ” He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time
before he went on. “Henry, I was a-thinkin’ what a blame sight
luckier he is than you an’ me’ll ever be.”

He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the box on
which they sat.

“You an’ me, Henry, when we die, we’ll be lucky if we get
enough stones over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us.”

“But we ain’t got people an’ money an’ all the rest,
like him,” Henry rejoined. “Long-distance funerals is
somethin’ you an’ me can’t exactly afford.”

“What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, that’s a lord or
something in his own country, and that’s never had to bother about grub
nor blankets; why he comes a-buttin’ round the Godforsaken ends of the
earth—that’s what I can’t exactly see.”

“He might have lived to a ripe old age if he’d stayed at
home,” Henry agreed.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointed
towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There was
no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyes
gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a
third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and again
a pair of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again a moment later.

The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a surge of
sudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling about the legs
of the men. In the scramble one of the dogs had been overturned on the edge of
the fire, and it had yelped with pain and fright as the smell of its singed
coat possessed the air. The commotion caused the circle of eyes to shift
restlessly for a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it settled down again
as the dogs became quiet.

“Henry, it’s a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition.”

Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed of
fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the snow before
supper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins.

“How many cartridges did you say you had left?” he asked.

“Three,” came the answer. “An’ I wisht ’twas
three hundred. Then I’d show ’em what for, damn ’em!”

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his
moccasins before the fire.

“An’ I wisht this cold snap’d break,” he went on.
“It’s ben fifty below for two weeks now. An’ I wisht
I’d never started on this trip, Henry. I don’t like the looks of
it. I don’t feel right, somehow. An’ while I’m wishin’,
I wisht the trip was over an’ done with, an’ you an’ me
a-sittin’ by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an’ playing
cribbage—that’s what I wisht.”

Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he dozed off he was aroused by his
comrade’s voice.

“Say, Henry, that other one that come in an’ got a fish—why
didn’t the dogs pitch into it? That’s what’s botherin’
me.”

“You’re botherin’ too much, Bill,” came the sleepy
response. “You was never like this before. You jes’ shut up now,
an’ go to sleep, an’ you’ll be all hunkydory in the
mornin’. Your stomach’s sour, that’s what’s
botherin’ you.”

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. The
fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had flung
about the camp. The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again snarling
menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close. Once their uproar became so loud that
Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb the sleep of
his comrade, and threw more wood on the fire. As it began to flame up, the
circle of eyes drew farther back. He glanced casually at the huddling dogs. He
rubbed his eyes and looked at them more sharply. Then he crawled back into the
blankets.

“Henry,” he said. “Oh, Henry.”

Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded,
“What’s wrong now?”

“Nothin’,” came the answer; “only there’s seven
of ’em again. I just counted.”

Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into a
snore as he drifted back into sleep.

In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out of
bed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six
o’clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while
Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.

“Say, Henry,” he asked suddenly, “how many dogs did you say
we had?”

“Six.”

“Wrong,” Bill proclaimed triumphantly.

“Seven again?” Henry queried.

“No, five; one’s gone.”

“The hell!” Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and
count the dogs.

“You’re right, Bill,” he concluded. “Fatty’s
gone.”

“An’ he went like greased lightnin’ once he got started.
Couldn’t ’ve seen ’m for smoke.”

“No chance at all,” Henry concluded. “They jes’
swallowed ’m alive. I bet he was yelpin’ as he went down their
throats, damn ’em!”

“He always was a fool dog,” said Bill.

“But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an’ commit
suicide that way.” He looked over the remainder of the team with a
speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal.
“I bet none of the others would do it.”

“Couldn’t drive ’em away from the fire with a club,”
Bill agreed. “I always did think there was somethin’ wrong with
Fatty anyway.”

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail—less scant
than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

CHAPTER II
THE SHE-WOLF

Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men turned
their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once
began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad—cries that called through
the darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased.
Daylight came at nine o’clock. At midday the sky to the south warmed to
rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between the
meridian sun and the northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. The
grey light of day that remained lasted until three o’clock, when it, too,
faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent
land.

As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew
closer—so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the
toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.

At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs back in
the traces, Bill said:

“I wisht they’d strike game somewheres, an’ go away an’
leave us alone.”

“They do get on the nerves horrible,” Henry sympathised.

They spoke no more until camp was made.

Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when he was
startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a sharp snarling
cry of pain from among the dogs. He straightened up in time to see a dim form
disappearing across the snow into the shelter of the dark. Then he saw Bill,
standing amid the dogs, half triumphant, half crestfallen, in one hand a stout
club, in the other the tail and part of the body of a sun-cured salmon.

“It got half of it,” he announced; “but I got a whack at it
jes’ the same. D’ye hear it squeal?”

“What’d it look like?” Henry asked.

“Couldn’t see. But it had four legs an’ a mouth an’
hair an’ looked like any dog.”

“Must be a tame wolf, I reckon.”

“It’s damned tame, whatever it is, comin’ in here at
feedin’ time an’ gettin’ its whack of fish.”

That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and pulled
at their pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer than before.

“I wisht they’d spring up a bunch of moose or something, an’
go away an’ leave us alone,” Bill said.

Henry grunted with an intonation that was not all sympathy, and for a quarter
of an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and Bill at the
circle of eyes that burned in the darkness just beyond the firelight.

“I wisht we was pullin’ into McGurry right now,” he began
again.

“Shut up your wishin’ and your croakin’,” Henry burst
out angrily. “Your stomach’s sour. That’s what’s
ailin’ you. Swallow a spoonful of sody, an’ you’ll sweeten up
wonderful an’ be more pleasant company.”

In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid blasphemy that proceeded from the
mouth of Bill. Henry propped himself up on an elbow and looked to see his
comrade standing among the dogs beside the replenished fire, his arms raised in
objurgation, his face distorted with passion.

“Hello!” Henry called. “What’s up now?”

“Frog’s gone,” came the answer.

“No.”

“I tell you yes.”

Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the dogs. He counted them with care,
and then joined his partner in cursing the power of the Wild that had robbed
them of another dog.

“Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch,” Bill pronounced finally.

“An’ he was no fool dog neither,” Henry added.

And so was recorded the second epitaph in two days.

A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four remaining dogs were harnessed to the
sled. The day was a repetition of the days that had gone before. The men toiled
without speech across the face of the frozen world. The silence was unbroken
save by the cries of their pursuers, that, unseen, hung upon their rear. With
the coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the cries sounded closer as the
pursuers drew in according to their custom; and the dogs grew excited and
frightened, and were guilty of panics that tangled the traces and further
depressed the two men.

“There, that’ll fix you fool critters,” Bill said with
satisfaction that night, standing erect at completion of his task.

Henry left the cooking to come and see. Not only had his partner tied the dogs
up, but he had tied them, after the Indian fashion, with sticks. About the neck
of each dog he had fastened a leather thong. To this, and so close to the neck
that the dog could not get his teeth to it, he had tied a stout stick four or
five feet in length. The other end of the stick, in turn, was made fast to a
stake in the ground by means of a leather thong. The dog was unable to gnaw
through the leather at his own end of the stick. The stick prevented him from
getting at the leather that fastened the other end.

Henry nodded his head approvingly.

“It’s the only contraption that’ll ever hold One Ear,”
he said. “He can gnaw through leather as clean as a knife an’
jes’ about half as quick. They all’ll be here in the mornin’
hunkydory.”

“You jes’ bet they will,” Bill affirmed. “If one of
em’ turns up missin’, I’ll go without my coffee.”

“They jes’ know we ain’t loaded to kill,” Henry
remarked at bed-time, indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in.
“If we could put a couple of shots into ’em, they’d be more
respectful. They come closer every night. Get the firelight out of your eyes
an’ look hard—there! Did you see that one?”

For some time the two men amused themselves with watching the movement of vague
forms on the edge of the firelight. By looking closely and steadily at where a
pair of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of the animal would slowly take
shape. They could even see these forms move at times.

A sound among the dogs attracted the men’s attention. One Ear was
uttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward the
darkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic attacks on the
stick with his teeth.

“Look at that, Bill,” Henry whispered.

Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a doglike
animal. It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously observing the
men, its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the full length of the
stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.

“That fool One Ear don’t seem scairt much,” Bill said in a
low tone.

“It’s a she-wolf,” Henry whispered back, “an’
that accounts for Fatty an’ Frog. She’s the decoy for the pack. She
draws out the dog an’ then all the rest pitches in an’ eats
’m up.”

The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise. At the sound
of it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.

“Henry, I’m a-thinkin’,” Bill announced.

“Thinkin’ what?”

“I’m a-thinkin’ that was the one I lambasted with the
club.”

“Ain’t the slightest doubt in the world,” was Henry’s
response.

“An’ right here I want to remark,” Bill went on, “that
that animal’s familyarity with campfires is suspicious an’
immoral.”

“It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought to
know,” Henry agreed. “A wolf that knows enough to come in with the
dogs at feedin’ time has had experiences.”

“Ol’ Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves,”
Bill cogitates aloud. “I ought to know. I shot it out of the pack in a
moose pasture over ‘on Little Stick. An’ Ol’ Villan cried
like a baby. Hadn’t seen it for three years, he said. Ben with the wolves
all that time.”

“I reckon you’ve called the turn, Bill. That wolf’s a dog,
an’ it’s eaten fish many’s the time from the hand of
man.”

“An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that’s a dog’ll be
jes’ meat,” Bill declared. “We can’t afford to lose no
more animals.”

“But you’ve only got three cartridges,” Henry objected.

“I’ll wait for a dead sure shot,” was the reply.

In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the accompaniment
of his partner’s snoring.

“You was sleepin’ jes’ too comfortable for anything,”
Henry told him, as he routed him out for breakfast. “I hadn’t the
heart to rouse you.”

Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that his cup was empty and started to
reach for the pot. But the pot was beyond arm’s length and beside Henry.

“Say, Henry,” he chided gently, “ain’t you forgot
somethin’?”

Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head. Bill held up the
empty cup.

“You don’t get no coffee,” Henry announced.

“Ain’t run out?” Bill asked anxiously.

“Nope.”

“Ain’t thinkin’ it’ll hurt my digestion?”

“Nope.”

A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill’s face.

“Then it’s jes’ warm an’ anxious I am to be
hearin’ you explain yourself,” he said.

“Spanker’s gone,” Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his head,
and from where he sat counted the dogs.

“How’d it happen?” he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Unless One Ear gnawed
’m loose. He couldn’t a-done it himself, that’s sure.”

“The darned cuss.” Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of
the anger that was raging within. “Jes’ because he couldn’t
chew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose.”

“Well, Spanker’s troubles is over anyway; I guess he’s
digested by this time an’ cavortin’ over the landscape in the
bellies of twenty different wolves,” was Henry’s epitaph on this,
the latest lost dog. “Have some coffee, Bill.”

But Bill shook his head.

“Go on,” Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.

Bill shoved his cup aside. “I’ll be ding-dong-danged if I do. I
said I wouldn’t if ary dog turned up missin’, an’ I
won’t.”

“It’s darn good coffee,” Henry said enticingly.

But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with mumbled
curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.

“I’ll tie ’em up out of reach of each other to-night,”
Bill said, as they took the trail.

They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was in
front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had collided.
It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by the touch. He
flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced along until it fetched up
on Bill’s snowshoes.

“Mebbe you’ll need that in your business,” Henry said.

Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that was left of Spanker—the
stick with which he had been tied.

“They ate ’m hide an’ all,” Bill announced. “The
stick’s as clean as a whistle. They’ve ate the leather offen both
ends. They’re damn hungry, Henry, an’ they’ll have you
an’ me guessin’ before this trip’s over.”

Henry laughed defiantly. “I ain’t been trailed this way by wolves
before, but I’ve gone through a whole lot worse an’ kept my health.
Takes more’n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly,
Bill, my son.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Bill muttered ominously.

“Well, you’ll know all right when we pull into McGurry.”

“I ain’t feelin’ special enthusiastic,” Bill persisted.

“You’re off colour, that’s what’s the matter with
you,” Henry dogmatised. “What you need is quinine, an’
I’m goin’ to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry.”

Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into silence. The
day was like all the days. Light came at nine o’clock. At twelve
o’clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and then began
the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours later, into night.

It was just after the sun’s futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped
the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:

“You keep right on, Henry, I’m goin’ to see what I can
see.”

“You’d better stick by the sled,” his partner protested.
“You’ve only got three cartridges, an’ there’s no
tellin’ what might happen.”

“Who’s croaking now?” Bill demanded triumphantly.

Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious glances
back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared. An hour later,
taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to go, Bill arrived.

“They’re scattered an’ rangin’ along wide,” he
said: “keeping up with us an’ lookin’ for game at the same
time. You see, they’re sure of us, only they know they’ve got to
wait to get us. In the meantime they’re willin’ to pick up anything
eatable that comes handy.”

“You mean they think they’re sure of us,” Henry
objected pointedly.

But Bill ignored him. “I seen some of them. They’re pretty thin.
They ain’t had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an’ Frog
an’ Spanker; an’ there’s so many of ’em that that
didn’t go far. They’re remarkable thin. Their ribs is like
wash-boards, an’ their stomachs is right up against their backbones.
They’re pretty desperate, I can tell you. They’ll be goin’
mad, yet, an’ then watch out.”

A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled, emitted a
low, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped the dogs. To
the rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trail
they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form. Its nose was to the
trail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they
halted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with
nostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.

“It’s the she-wolf,” Bill answered.

The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his partner
in the sled. Together they watched the strange animal that had pursued them for
days and that had already accomplished the destruction of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps. This it
repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away. It paused, head
up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and scent studied the
outfit of the watching men. It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after
the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dog
affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as
merciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an animal
that was among the largest of its kind.

“Stands pretty close to two feet an’ a half at the
shoulders,” Henry commented. “An’ I’ll bet it
ain’t far from five feet long.”

“Kind of strange colour for a wolf,” was Bill’s criticism.
“I never seen a red wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me.”

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured. Its coat was the true
wolf-coat. The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faint
reddish hue—a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, that
was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and again
giving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not classifiable in terms
of ordinary experience.

“Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog,” Bill said.
“I wouldn’t be s’prised to see it wag its tail.”

“Hello, you husky!” he called. “Come here, you
whatever-your-name-is.”

“Ain’t a bit scairt of you,” Henry laughed.

Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the animal
betrayed no fear. The only change in it that they could notice was an accession
of alertness. It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger.
They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would like to go in and eat them if
it dared.

“Look here, Henry,” Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to
a whisper because of what he imitated. “We’ve got three cartridges.
But it’s a dead shot. Couldn’t miss it. It’s got away with
three of our dogs, an’ we oughter put a stop to it. What d’ye
say?”

Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under the
sled-lashing. The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got there.
For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail into the clump
of spruce trees and disappeared.

The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled long and comprehendingly.

“I might have knowed it,” Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced
the gun. “Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at
feedin’ time, ’d know all about shooting-irons. I tell you right
now, Henry, that critter’s the cause of all our trouble. We’d have
six dogs at the present time, ’stead of three, if it wasn’t for
her. An’ I tell you right now, Henry, I’m goin’ to get her.
She’s too smart to be shot in the open. But I’m goin’ to lay
for her. I’ll bushwhack her as sure as my name is Bill.”

“You needn’t stray off too far in doin’ it,” his
partner admonished. “If that pack ever starts to jump you, them three
cartridges’d be wuth no more’n three whoops in hell. Them animals
is damn hungry, an’ once they start in, they’ll sure get you,
Bill.”

They camped early that night. Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast nor
for so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable signs of
playing out. And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing to it that the
dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than once
from their sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs became frantic
with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire from time to time in
order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer distance.

“I’ve hearn sailors talk of sharks followin’ a ship,”
Bill remarked, as he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing
of the fire. “Well, them wolves is land sharks. They know their business
better’n we do, an’ they ain’t a-holdin’ our trail this
way for their health. They’re goin’ to get us. They’re sure
goin’ to get us, Henry.”

“They’ve half got you a’ready, a-talkin’ like
that,” Henry retorted sharply. “A man’s half licked when he
says he is. An’ you’re half eaten from the way you’re
goin’ on about it.”

“They’ve got away with better men than you an’ me,”
Bill answered.

“Oh, shet up your croakin’. You make me all-fired tired.”

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made no
similar display of temper. This was not Bill’s way, for he was easily
angered by sharp words. Henry thought long over it before he went to sleep, and
as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in his mind was:
“There’s no mistakin’ it, Bill’s almighty blue.
I’ll have to cheer him up to-morrow.”

CHAPTER III
THE HUNGER CRY

The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and they
swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the cold with
spirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings
of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday,
they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.

It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a
tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order
to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled and trying to
right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.

“Here, you, One Ear!” he cried, straightening up and turning around
on the dog.

But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him.
And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting for
him. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down to an alert
and mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet
desirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating
rather than a menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and
then halted. One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and
ears in the air, his head held high.

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly. Every
advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on her part.
Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his human
companionship. Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted through his
intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the overturned sled, at his
team-mates, and at the two men who were calling to him.

But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the she-wolf, who
advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting instant, and then
resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances.

In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was jammed
beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him to right the
load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and the distance too
great to risk a shot.

Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before they saw the cause, the two men
saw him turn and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching at right
angles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen wolves, lean
and grey, bounding across the snow. On the instant, the she-wolf’s
coyness and playfulness disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon One Ear. He
thrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off and still intent on
regaining the sled, he altered his course in an attempt to circle around to it.
More wolves were appearing every moment and joining in the chase. The she-wolf
was one leap behind One Ear and holding her own.

“Where are you goin’?” Henry suddenly demanded, laying his
hand on his partner’s arm.

Bill shook it off. “I won’t stand it,” he said. “They
ain’t a-goin’ to get any more of our dogs if I can help it.”

Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the trail.
His intention was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the centre of the circle
that One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at a point in advance
of the pursuit. With his rifle, in the broad daylight, it might be possible for
him to awe the wolves and save the dog.

“Say, Bill!” Henry called after him. “Be careful! Don’t
take no chances!”

Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There was nothing else for him to do.
Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing and disappearing
amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of spruce, could be seen One
Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The dog was thoroughly alive to its
danger, but it was running on the outer circle while the wolf-pack was running
on the inner and shorter circle. It was vain to think of One Ear so
outdistancing his pursuers as to be able to cut across their circle in advance
of them and to regain the sled.

The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out there in
the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry knew that the
wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too quickly, far more
quickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a shot, then two shots, in
rapid succession, and he knew that Bill’s ammunition was gone. Then he
heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps. He recognised One Ear’s yell of
pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry that bespoke a stricken animal. And
that was all. The snarls ceased. The yelping died away. Silence settled down
again over the lonely land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go and see
what had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place before his eyes.
Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath the
lashings. But for some time longer he sat and brooded, the two remaining dogs
crouching and trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone out
of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed a rope
over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far. At
the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp, and he saw to it that he
had a generous supply of firewood. He fed the dogs, cooked and ate his supper,
and made his bed close to the fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the wolves
had drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of the vision to
see them. They were all about him and the fire, in a narrow circle, and he
could see them plainly in the firelight lying down, sitting up, crawling
forward on their bellies, or slinking back and forth. They even slept. Here and
there he could see one curled up in the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that
was now denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened between
the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs stayed close by him,
one on either side, leaning against him for protection, crying and whimpering,
and at times snarling desperately when a wolf approached a little closer than
usual. At such moments, when his dogs snarled, the whole circle would be
agitated, the wolves coming to their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a
chorus of snarls and eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle would lie
down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.

But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him. Bit by bit, an
inch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a wolf bellying
forward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were almost within springing
distance. Then he would seize brands from the fire and hurl them into the pack.
A hasty drawing back always resulted, accompanied by angry yelps and frightened
snarls when a well-aimed brand struck and scorched a too daring animal.

Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep. He cooked
breakfast in the darkness, and at nine o’clock, when, with the coming of
daylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had planned through
the long hours of the night. Chopping down young saplings, he made them
cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the trunks of standing
trees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs,
he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold.

“They got Bill, an’ they may get me, but they’ll sure never
get you, young man,” he said, addressing the dead body in its
tree-sepulchre.

Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the willing
dogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of Fort McGurry.
The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting sedately behind and
ranging along on either side, their red tongues lolling out, their lean sides
showing the undulating ribs with every movement. They were very lean, mere
skin-bags stretched over bony frames, with strings for muscles—so lean
that Henry found it in his mind to marvel that they still kept their feet and
did not collapse forthright in the snow.

He did not dare travel until dark. At midday, not only did the sun warm the
southern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden, above the
sky-line. He received it as a sign. The days were growing longer. The sun was
returning. But scarcely had the cheer of its light departed, than he went into
camp. There were still several hours of grey daylight and sombre twilight, and
he utilised them in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood.

With night came horror. Not only were the starving wolves growing bolder, but
lack of sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite himself, crouching by
the fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe between his knees, and on
either side a dog pressing close against him. He awoke once and saw in front of
him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack.
And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after the
manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a
possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to
be eaten.

This certitude was shown by the whole pack. Fully a score he could count,
staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They reminded him of
children gathered about a spread table and awaiting permission to begin to eat.
And he was the food they were to eat! He wondered how and when the meal would
begin.

As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own body
which he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and was
interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of the fire he
crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time, now all together,
spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements. He studied the
nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly,
gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew
suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and
smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle
drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realisation would strike him
that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much
meat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry
fangs, to be sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been
sustenance to him.

He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she-wolf
before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in the snow
and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and snarling at his
feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for some
time he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked
at him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of
an equally great hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her
the gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she
licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.

A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw at
her. But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed on the missile,
she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things
thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to
their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous
malignity that made him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held the brand,
noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted
themselves to all the inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and
about the rough wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portion
of the brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat
to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a vision
of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and torn by the
white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of this body of his as
now when his tenure of it was so precarious.

All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack. When he dozed
despite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused him. Morning
came, but for the first time the light of day failed to scatter the wolves. The
man waited in vain for them to go. They remained in a circle about him and his
fire, displaying an arrogance of possession that shook his courage born of the
morning light.

He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail. But the moment he left
the protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but leaped short.
He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping together a scant six
inches from his thigh. The rest of the pack was now up and surging upon him,
and a throwing of firebrands right and left was necessary to drive them back to
a respectful distance.

Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood. Twenty
feet away towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half the day extending his
campfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning faggots ready at hand
to fling at his enemies. Once at the tree, he studied the surrounding forest in
order to fell the tree in the direction of the most firewood.

The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for sleep
was becoming overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was losing its efficacy.
Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy senses no
longer took note of changing pitch and intensity. He awoke with a start. The
she-wolf was less than a yard from him. Mechanically, at short range, without
letting go of it, he thrust a brand full into her open and snarling mouth. She
sprang away, yelling with pain, and while he took delight in the smell of
burning flesh and hair, he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfully
a score of feet away.

But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his right
hand. His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the flame on his
flesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered to this programme. Every time
he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with flying brands, replenished
the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his hand. All worked well, but there
came a time when he fastened the pine-knot insecurely. As his eyes closed it
fell away from his hand.

He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry. It was warm and
comfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor. Also, it seemed to
him that the fort was besieged by wolves. They were howling at the very gates,
and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to listen and laugh at the
futile efforts of the wolves to get in. And then, so strange was the dream,
there was a crash. The door was burst open. He could see the wolves flooding
into the big living-room of the fort. They were leaping straight for him and
the Factor. With the bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling had
increased tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream was merging
into something else—he knew not what; but through it all, following him,
persisted the howling.

And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great snarling and
yelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about him and upon him. The
teeth of one had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he leaped into the fire,
and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth that tore through the flesh
of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His stout mittens temporarily protected
his hands, and he scooped live coals into the air in all directions, until the
campfire took on the semblance of a volcano.

But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his eyebrows
and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable to his feet.
With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire. The
wolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the live coals had fallen,
the snow was sizzling, and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leap
and snort and snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his
smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His two
dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course in the
protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last course of
which would likely be himself in the days to follow.

“You ain’t got me yet!” he cried, savagely shaking his fist
at the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was
agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him
across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended the
fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his sleeping outfit
under him as a protection against the melting snow. When he had thus
disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came curiously to the
rim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto they had been denied
access to the fire, and they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like so
many dogs, blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in the
unaccustomed warmth. Then the she-wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star,
and began to howl. One by one the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on
haunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.

Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run out, and
there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of his circle of
flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands made them spring
aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he strove to drive them back. As
he gave up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, and
landed with all four feet in the coals. It cried out with terror, at the same
time snarling, and scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.

The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body leaned
forward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and his head on his
knees advertised that he had given up the struggle. Now and again he raised his
head to note the dying down of the fire. The circle of flame and coals was
breaking into segments with openings in between. These openings grew in size,
the segments diminished.

“I guess you can come an’ get me any time,” he mumbled.
“Anyway, I’m goin’ to sleep.”

Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of him, he
saw the she-wolf gazing at him.

Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A mysterious
change had taken place—so mysterious a change that he was shocked wider
awake. Something had happened. He could not understand at first. Then he
discovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the trampled snow to show
how closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and gripping him again,
his head was sinking down upon his knees, when he roused with a sudden start.

There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and the
eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from the river bed to
the camp among the trees. Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched in
the centre of the dying fire. They were shaking and prodding him into
consciousness. He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered in strange,
sleepy speech.

“Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin’ time. . . .
First she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An’ after
that she ate Bill. . . . ”

“Where’s Lord Alfred?” one of the men bellowed in his ear,
shaking him roughly.

He shook his head slowly. “No, she didn’t eat him. . . . He’s
roostin’ in a tree at the last camp.”

“Dead?” the man shouted.

“An’ in a box,” Henry answered. He jerked his shoulder
petulantly away from the grip of his questioner. “Say, you lemme alone. .
. . I’m jes’ plump tuckered out. . . . Goo’ night,
everybody.”

His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his chest. And even
as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising on the frosty
air.

But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote distance, the
cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other meat than the man it
had just missed.

PART II

CHAPTER I
THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men’s voices and
the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to spring
away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had been
loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several
minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail
made by the she-wolf.

Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf—one of its
several leaders. It was he who directed the pack’s course on the heels of
the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of the
pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him.
And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting
slowly across the snow.

She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, and
took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, when
any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, he
seemed kindly disposed toward her—too kindly to suit her, for he was
prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled and
showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion.
At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran
stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an
abashed country swain.

This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other
troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the
scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had
but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was
addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched
her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she
repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their
attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with
quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time to
maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her.
At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly
across at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry
waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack.

After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the
sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young
three-year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attained
his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, he
possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with
his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run
abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back
even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and
slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This was
doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, the
old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him.
And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too.

At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stopped
precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore-legs stiff,
mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the moving
pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with the
young wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his
hind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food
and short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth he
persisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it never
succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture.

Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and the
pack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack was
desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary
speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. At
the front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied
wolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movements
of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed
founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a
muscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another,
apparently without end.

They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day
found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen
and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They
alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order
that they might devour them and continue to live.

They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying
country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was a
big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by no
mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers
they knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. It
was a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped
them open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs.
He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the
snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went
down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth
fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last struggles
ceased or his last damage had been wrought.

There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred
pounds—fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of
the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously,
and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live
brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and
quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few
days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The
wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack,
they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from
the small moose-herds they ran across.

There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and
went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and
the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the
Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this
remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves were
deserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of
his rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young
leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three-year-old.

The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors all
bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended
themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes,
and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if
they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another.
The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed
elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled
old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the
other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye
and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had
survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do.

The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling what
the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together,
old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and
proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of
his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the
game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was a
thing of the past. The business of love was at hand—ever a sterner and
crueller business than that of food-getting.

And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly
on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day—and
it came not often—when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and
tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her.

And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first
adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood his
two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. But
the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The younger
leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neck
was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. He
darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deep
as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat.
Then he leaped clear.

The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling
cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and
fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of
day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter.

And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was made
glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the
sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To
those that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement.

When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over
to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He was
plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her
teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with a
kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about
and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey
years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more
foolishly.

Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on
the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick
his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and
the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half
crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface
for firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang
after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods.

After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an
understanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meat
and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to grow
restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. The
hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time
nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves
of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed
her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular
places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was
ready to go on.

They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they
regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often to
hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to it
again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but there
was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness at
meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times they
encountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressingly
insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when she
stood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the
aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely
way.

One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted.
His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scented
the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was not
satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand the
message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, and
she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious,
and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study
the warning.

She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of the
trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling,
every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her.
They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling.

To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural
cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and
plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the
skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the
movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air.
But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying a
story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of which
the she-wolf knew.

She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight.
But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and started
tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a
reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in her
face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire
that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling
with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and she
knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. She
turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, who
trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the
trees.

As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon a
run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprints
were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broad
pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like
velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the
white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to
the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white
he had discovered.

They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of
young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening
out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape
of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his
teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air,
and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit
that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air
and never once returning to earth.

One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow
and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But
the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for
the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and
her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap,
and another.

Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now
evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring
upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with
him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him,
and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to
strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this
strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every
hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its
slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate’s shoulder in
reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught,
struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of
the she-wolf’s muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equally
unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then he
discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punish
him roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a
circle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of her
teeth.

In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat down
in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of the
mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with it
between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed him
back to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling,
but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did not
fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and he
growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remained
still, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warm
blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth.

It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself.
She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered
threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit’s head. At once
the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the
decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow.
Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the
mysterious sapling had caught for them.

There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and
the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eye
following and observant, learning the method of robbing snares—a
knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.

CHAPTER II
THE LAIR

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He was
worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath to
depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifle
close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from
One Eye’s head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinging
lope that put quick miles between them and the danger.

They did not go far—a couple of days’ journey. The she-wolf’s
need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She
was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a
rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay
down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with
his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over
backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her
temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and
more solicitous.

And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up a
small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then
was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom—a dead stream of
solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her
mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She
turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and
melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave
out of a narrow fissure.

She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then,
on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its
abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she
entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch,
then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six
feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She
inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in
the entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to
the ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and
around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was
almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her
head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at
her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of
his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laid
their sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while her
mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed
that she was pleased and satisfied.

One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep was
fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, where
the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would
steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he would
rouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening
Northland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was
in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the
trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. He
looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field of
vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settled
down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, and
twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There,
buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was a
full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and that
had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world no
longer. Besides, he was hungry.

He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she only
snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the
snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up the
frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and
crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness
hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it.
He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe
rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever.

He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint,
strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yet
they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a
warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though
he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other
sounds—faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings.

His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance.
When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the
source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in his
mate’s warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in
keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between
her legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life,
very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that did
not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his long
and successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times,
yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.

His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl,
and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot up
in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of the
thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all the
mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their
new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within
her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had
fathered.

But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that
was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of
wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibre
of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should
obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away
on the meat-trail whereby he lived.

Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among
the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a
fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and
looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately
and took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own
feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meat
for him.

Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing
teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing upright
against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefully
but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far north
before; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he
had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity,
and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen,
for with live things events were somehow always happening differently.

The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all
directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a
similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly
in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained
for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a
comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line
of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling.
Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity
for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.

But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless
ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for
porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork.
The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.

The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He must
find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a
thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was
sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other.
The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it
down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled
across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through
the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he
remembered, and, turning on the back-track, started for home, carrying the
ptarmigan in his mouth.

A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding
shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon
later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As
the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every
turn of the stream.

He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bend
in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouching
swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She was
crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled
ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost
of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward
of the silent, motionless pair.

He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes
peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of life
before him—the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent on
life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in
the eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not
eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part,
too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help him
on the meat-trail which was his way of life.

Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills might
have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble;
and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to a
tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to
them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction.

One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was
happening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away.
Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It was
agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball
straightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in
his mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat
that was spreading itself like a repast before him.

Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In
that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, with
rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back with
a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it
not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the
paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp
quills into it as it was withdrawn.

Everything had happened at once—the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of
agony from the porcupine, the big cat’s squall of sudden hurt and
astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail
straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx’s bad temper got the best
of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine,
squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into
its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled
with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her
nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose
with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and
rubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead,
sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.

She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward
lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieted
down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a start
and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped,
without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and
most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with every
leap she made.

It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out that
One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow were
carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his
feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of
its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite
the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had been
ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely.

One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted
and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; but
he was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down and
waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and
occasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the
quills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering came
to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all
the quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more.

With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its full
length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surely
dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with his
teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the
porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly
mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to where
he had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what
was to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he
returned and took up his burden.

When he dragged the result of his day’s hunt into the cave, the she-wolf
inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. But
the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that was
less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her
instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving
as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young
lives she had brought into the world.

CHAPTER III
THE GREY CUB

He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair already betrayed the
reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while he alone, in this
particular, took after his father. He was the one little grey cub of the
litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf-stock—in fact, he had bred
true to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a single exception, and that
was he had two eyes to his father’s one.

The grey cub’s eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see with
steady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted,
and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well. He had
begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even to squabble, his
little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the
growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long before his eyes had
opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother—a
fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle,
caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, and
that impelled him to snuggle close against her and to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but now
he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of time, and he
was coming to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy; but he did not
know that, for he knew no other world. It was dim-lighted; but his eyes had
never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His world was very small.
Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wide
world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence.

But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from the
rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discovered
that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of
his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction before
ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon his
sealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little,
sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body,
and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of his
body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this
light and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry
of a plant urges it toward the sun.

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled
toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters were one
with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the dark corners
of the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry of
the life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and
their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of
a vine. Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally
conscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased.
They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from
it by their mother.

It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his mother
than the soft, soothing, tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the light, he
discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, and
later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and over with swift,
calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid
hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurred
the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These were conscious actions, and were
the results of his first generalisations upon the world. Before that he had
recoiled automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the
light. After that he recoiled from hurt because he knew that it was
hurt.

He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be
expected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat-killers and
meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had
sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat,
and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was
beginning himself to eat meat—meat half-digested by the she-wolf and
disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made too great demand upon her
breast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder rasping
growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible than theirs. It
was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-cub over with a cunning
paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulled
and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was he
that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth of
the cave.

The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day. He was
perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave’s entrance,
and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it for an entrance.
He did not know anything about entrances—passages whereby one goes from
one place to another place. He did not know any other place, much less of a way
to get there. So to him the entrance of the cave was a wall—a wall of
light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this wall was to him the sun of
his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He was always striving
to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him
continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it
was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread. But he himself did
not know anything about it. He did not know there was any outside at all.

There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he had
already come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world, a
creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer of
meat)—his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall and
disappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never permitted by
his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, and
encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose. This hurt. And
after several such adventures, he left the walls alone. Without thinking about
it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father,
as milk and half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother.

In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking—at least, to the kind of
thinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his conclusions
were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a method of
accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore. In reality, this
was the act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a thing
happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had bumped his
nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear into
walls. In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls.
But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the
difference between his father and himself. Logic and physics were no part of
his mental make-up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. There came a time
when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer came from his
mother’s breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most
part they slept. It was not long before they were reduced to a coma of hunger.
There were no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages nor attempts at
growling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether. The
cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down.

One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair
that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too, left her litter
and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birth of the cubs,
One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp and robbed the
rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the opening of the
streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closed
to him.

When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far white
wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced. Only one
sister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he found
himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her head nor
moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the food
had come too late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round
with skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out.

Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father appearing and
disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This had
happened at the end of a second and less severe famine. The she-wolf knew why
One Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what she
had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of the
stream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye. And
she had found him, or what remained of him, at the end of the trail. There were
many signs of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx’s
withdrawal to her lair after having won the victory. Before she went away, the
she-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside,
and she had not dared to venture in.

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she knew
that in the lynx’s lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx
for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all very
well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a
tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a
lynx—especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry
kittens at her back.

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely
protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the
she-wolf, for her grey cub’s sake, would venture the left fork, and the
lair in the rocks, and the lynx’s wrath.

CHAPTER IV
THE WALL OF THE WORLD

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cub
had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance. Not only
had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by his
mother’s nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing.
Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to be
afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote ancestry
through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received directly
from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed down
through all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!—that
legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was made.
Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had already
learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; and when he
could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction of
the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother’s nose, the smashing stroke
of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon him
that all was not freedom in the world, that to life there was limitations and
restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to them
was to escape hurt and make for happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classified
the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after such
classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and
restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in
obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away
from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light. When his
mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the intervals that
he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickled
in his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not know
that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own daring,
and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew only that
the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore unknown and
terrible—for the unknown was one of the chief elements that went into the
making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub’s back, but it bristled silently. How
was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It
was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the
fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting.
But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that of concealment. The cub
was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound, frozen,
petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His mother, coming home,
growled as she smelt the wolverine’s track, and bounded into the cave and
licked and nozzled him with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that
somehow he had escaped a great hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was
growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded
disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the white
wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light. So there
was no damming up the tide of life that was rising within him—rising with
every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the end, one
day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub
straddled and sprawled toward the entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed to
recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with the tender
little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The substance of the wall
seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as condition, in his eyes, had
the seeming of form, so he entered into what had been wall to him and bathed in
the substance that composed it.

It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light grew
brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on. Suddenly he found
himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside which he had thought
himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an immeasurable distance. The
light had become painfully bright. He was dazzled by it. Likewise he was made
dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyes
were adjusting themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the
increased distance of objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision.
He now saw it again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness.
Also, its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of the
trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above the
trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain.

A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He crouched
down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was very much
afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore the hair stood
up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at a
ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his puniness and fright he challenged
and menaced the whole wide world.

Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl.
Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by growth,
while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to notice near
objects—an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun, the
blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope itself,
that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave on
which he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never
experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he stepped
boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave-lip, so he fell
forward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose that made
him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over and over. He was in a
panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It had gripped savagely
hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was now
routed by fear, and he ki-yi’d like any frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped and
ki-yi’d unceasingly. This was a different proposition from crouching in
frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had caught
tight hold of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was not fear, but
terror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here the cub
lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last agonised yell
and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter of course, as
though in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick
away the dry clay that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earth
who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the world, the
unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt. But the first
man on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity than did he. Without any
antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found
himself an explorer in a totally new world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the unknown had
any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things about him. He
inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry plant just beyond, and the dead
trunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an open space among the
trees. A squirrel, running around the base of the trunk, came full upon him,
and gave him a great fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was
as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back
savagely.

This helped the cub’s courage, and though the woodpecker he next
encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his
confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached out
at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nose
that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the
moose-bird, who sought safety in flight.

But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an unconscious
classification. There were live things and things not alive. Also, he must
watch out for the live things. The things not alive remained always in one
place, but the live things moved about, and there was no telling what they
might do. The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he must
be prepared.

He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he
thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake
along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped
and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. Then
there were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them;
and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not all in the
same state of stable equilibrium as was his cave—also, that small things
not alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over. But
with every mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked.
He was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular
movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between
objects, and between objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he did
not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on his
first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon the
shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk along
the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a
despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through the
leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the
ground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he perceived
that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved. He placed his paw
on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment to
him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his
tongue. At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws
closed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in
his mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave
him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the
ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he licked
his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the
bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by the rush
of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his paws and yelped.
The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he became angry.
He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into
one of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled
against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing. It was his first
battle. He was elated. He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid
of anything. He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him.
Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just
destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He was too
busy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting in ways
new to him and greater to him than any he had known before.

He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The
ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him
back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the
open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing,
while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused
was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging
through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realising his
own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing
meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life
can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost
that which it was equipped to do.

After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by the
wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to growl
threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, what of
previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked him again and
again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her,
oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rain
of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and,
releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered on across the open in
inglorious retreat.

He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the bushes,
his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose still hurting
him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he lay there, suddenly
there came to him a feeling as of something terrible impending. The unknown
with all its terrors rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into the
shelter of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large,
winged body swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of the
blue, had barely missed him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out,
the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space fluttered out of the
ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she paid no attention to the
winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to
him—the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just
above the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the
ptarmigan’s squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk’s rush upward
into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it.

It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much. Live
things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were large
enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like ptarmigan
chicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he
felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with
that ptarmigan hen—only the hawk had carried her away. May be there were
other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.

He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water before. The
footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface. He stepped boldly
out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. It
was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungs
instead of the air that had always accompanied his act of breathing. The
suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death. To him it signified
death. He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the
Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of
hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of
the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen
to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He did
not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established custom of his
he struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The near bank was a yard
away; but he had come up with his back to it, and the first thing his eyes
rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim.
The stream was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet.

Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him downstream.
He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the pool. Here was little
chance for swimming. The quiet water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes he
was under, sometimes on top. At all times he was in violent motion, now being
turned over or around, and again, being smashed against a rock. And with every
rock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which might
have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered.

Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he was
gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel. He
crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had learned some more
about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as
the earth, but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was that things
were not always what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the unknown
was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience.
Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of
appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put
his faith into it.

One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected that
there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him a
feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world.
Not only was his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, but his
little brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not worked
so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to
look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush
of loneliness and helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidating
cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a weasel leaping
swiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had no fear. Then,
before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, only several
inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone out
adventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He turned it over with his paw. It
made a queer, grating noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared
before his eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant
received a sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the
mother-weasel cut into his flesh.

While he yelped and ki-yi’d and scrambled backward, he saw the
mother-weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the
neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but his
feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly whimpered. This
mother-weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to learn that for size and
weight the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all the
killers of the Wild. But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his.

He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rush
him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and the
cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head,
erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair
bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and
closer. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean,
yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision. The next
moment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh.

At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this was
only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight a
struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, striving to
press down with her teeth to the great vein where his life-blood bubbled. The
weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her preference to drink from the
throat of life itself.

The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write about
him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes. The weasel let go
the cub and flashed at the she-wolf’s throat, missing, but getting a hold
on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted her head like the snap of a whip,
breaking the weasel’s hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still in
the air, the she-wolf’s jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the
weasel knew death between the crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his mother. Her
joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found. She nozzled
him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel’s
teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the blood-drinker, and
after that went back to the cave and slept.

CHAPTER V
THE LAW OF MEAT

The cub’s development was rapid. He rested for two days, and then
ventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he found the
young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it that the young
weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did not get lost. When
he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept. And every day
thereafter found him out and ranging a wider area.

He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness, and to
know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found it expedient to be
cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when, assured of his own
intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan.
Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the squirrel he had
first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost
invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he never forgot the peck on
the nose he had received from the first of that ilk he encountered.

But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and those
were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other prowling meat
hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow always sent him
crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawled and straddled, and
already he was developing the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive,
apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as
deceptive as it was imperceptible.

In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The seven
ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings. His
desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry ambitions
for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed all wild
creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew in the air,
squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl unobserved
upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.

The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat, and she
never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid of things. It
did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded upon experience and
knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression of power. His mother
represented power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharper
admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave place to
the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected his mother. She
compelled obedience from him, and the older he grew the shorter grew her
temper.

Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more the
bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat. She rarely
slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail, and
spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it
lasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother’s breast, nor did he get
one mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he hunted in
deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of it accelerated his
development. He studied the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness,
and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the
wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much about
the ways of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a day when the
hawk’s shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes. He had grown
stronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on
his haunches, conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out
of the sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,
the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused to come
down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and whimpered his
disappointment and hunger.

The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange meat,
different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten, partly
grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. His mother had
satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that it was the rest of
the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperateness
of her deed. He knew only that the velvet-furred kitten was meat, and he ate
and waxed happier with every mouthful.

A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave, sleeping
against his mother’s side. He was aroused by her snarling. Never had he
heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was the most
terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knew it better
than she. A lynx’s lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glare
of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw the
lynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was fear,
and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone were
not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and
rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself.

The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and snarled
valiantly by his mother’s side. But she thrust him ignominiously away and
behind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could not leap in, and
when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her
down. The cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling and
spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx ripping and
tearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf used her
teeth alone.

Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx. He
clung on, growling savagely. Though he did not know it, by the weight of his
body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother much damage.
A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose
his hold. The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushed
together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw that ripped
his shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise against the wall.
Then was added to the uproar the cub’s shrill yelp of pain and fright.
But the fight lasted so long that he had time to cry himself out and to
experience a second burst of courage; and the end of the battle found him again
clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth.

The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At first she
caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she had lost
had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night she lay by her
dead foe’s side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For a week she
never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements were slow and
painful. At the end of that time the lynx was devoured, while the
she-wolf’s wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take the
meat-trail again.

The cub’s shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from
the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed changed. He went
about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had not
been his in the days before the battle with the lynx. He had looked upon life
in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh
of a foe; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself more
boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He was no longer afraid
of minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknown
never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and
ever-menacing.

He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the
killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dim way he
learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life—his own kind and
the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kind
included all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. One
portion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of the
non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his own
kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification
arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on
life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did
not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not
even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the ptarmigan
chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also have eaten
him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. He
had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not
herself been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived about
him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law. He was a
killer. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or
flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and
fought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him.

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a
voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of
appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and
being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a
chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless,
endless.

But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things with wide
vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or desire at a
time. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other and lesser laws for
him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the life
that was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness. To run
down meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles were
pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.

And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to doze
lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration in full for his
ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves
self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when
it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile
environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.

PART III

CHAPTER I
THE MAKERS OF FIRE

The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had been careless. He
had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink. It might have been that
he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep. (He had been out all night
on the meat-trail, and had but just then awakened.) And his carelessness might
have been due to the familiarity of the trail to the pool. He had travelled it
often, and nothing had ever happened on it.

He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted in
amongst the trees. Then, at the same instant, he saw and smelt. Before him,
sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things, the like of which he
had never seen before. It was his first glimpse of mankind. But at the sight of
him the five men did not spring to their feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl.
They did not move, but sat there, silent and ominous.

Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his nature would have impelled him to
dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time arisen in him
another and counter instinct. A great awe descended upon him. He was beaten
down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his own weakness and
littleness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him.

The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. In dim
ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the
other animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his own eyes, but out of the eyes
of all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man—out of eyes that
had circled in the darkness around countless winter camp-fires, that had peered
from safe distances and from the hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged
animal that was lord over living things. The spell of the cub’s heritage
was upon him, the fear and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and
the accumulated experience of the generations. The heritage was too compelling
for a wolf that was only a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away.
As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half proffering the
submission that his kind had proffered from the first time a wolf came in to
sit by man’s fire and be made warm.

One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him. The cub
cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, objectified at last, in
concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to seize hold of
him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed back and his little
fangs were bared. The hand, poised like doom above him, hesitated, and the man
spoke laughing, “Wabam wabisca ip pit tah.” (“Look!
The white fangs!”)

The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged the man on to pick up the cub. As
the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cub a battle of
the instincts. He experienced two great impulsions—to yield and to fight.
The resulting action was a compromise. He did both. He yielded till the hand
almost touched him. Then he fought, his teeth flashing in a snap that sank them
into the hand. The next moment he received a clout alongside the head that
knocked him over on his side. Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood and
the instinct of submission took charge of him. He sat up on his haunches and
ki-yi’d. But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub received
a clout on the other side of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi’d
louder than ever.

The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been bitten
began to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while he wailed out
his terror and his hurt. In the midst of it, he heard something. The Indians
heard it too. But the cub knew what it was, and with a last, long wail that had
in it more of triumph than grief, he ceased his noise and waited for the coming
of his mother, of his ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed
all things and was never afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had heard the
cry of her cub and was dashing to save him.

She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making her
anything but a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle of her protective
rage was pleasing. He uttered a glad little cry and bounded to meet her, while
the man-animals went back hastily several steps. The she-wolf stood over
against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep in
her throat. Her face was distorted and malignant with menace, even the bridge
of the nose wrinkling from tip to eyes so prodigious was her snarl.

Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men. “Kiche!” was
what he uttered. It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his mother
wilting at the sound.

“Kiche!” the man cried again, this time with sharpness and
authority.

And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one, crouching down
till her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging her tail, making peace
signs. The cub could not understand. He was appalled. The awe of man rushed
over him again. His instinct had been true. His mother verified it. She, too,
rendered submission to the man-animals.

The man who had spoken came over to her. He put his hand upon her head, and she
only crouched closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to snap. The other men
came up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her, which actions she
made no attempt to resent. They were greatly excited, and made many noises with
their mouths. These noises were not indication of danger, the cub decided, as
he crouched near his mother still bristling from time to time but doing his
best to submit.

“It is not strange,” an Indian was saying. “Her father was a
wolf. It is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in
the woods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the father of
Kiche a wolf.”

“It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away,” spoke a second
Indian.

“It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,” Grey Beaver answered. “It
was the time of the famine, and there was no meat for the dogs.”

“She has lived with the wolves,” said a third Indian.

“So it would seem, Three Eagles,” Grey Beaver answered, laying his
hand on the cub; “and this be the sign of it.”

The cub snarled a little at the touch of the hand, and the hand flew back to
administer a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and sank down
submissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears, and up and
down his back.

“This be the sign of it,” Grey Beaver went on. “It is plain
that his mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in him
little dog and much wolf. His fangs be white, and White Fang shall be his name.
I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother’s dog? And is
not my brother dead?”

The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. For a time
the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then Grey Beaver took a
knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and went into the thicket and
cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He notched the stick at each end and in
the notches fastened strings of raw-hide. One string he tied around the throat
of Kiche. Then he led her to a small pine, around which he tied the other
string.

White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue’s hand reached
out to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on anxiously. White
Fang felt fear mounting in him again. He could not quite suppress a snarl, but
he made no offer to snap. The hand, with fingers crooked and spread apart,
rubbed his stomach in a playful way and rolled him from side to side. It was
ridiculous and ungainly, lying there on his back with legs sprawling in the
air. Besides, it was a position of such utter helplessness that White
Fang’s whole nature revolted against it. He could do nothing to defend
himself. If this man-animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not
escape it. How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him?
Yet submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. This growl
he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving him a blow on
the head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it, White Fang
experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand rubbed back and
forth. When he was rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when the fingers
pressed and prodded at the base of his ears the pleasurable sensation
increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch, the man left him alone and
went away, all fear had died out of White Fang. He was to know fear many times
in his dealing with man; yet it was a token of the fearless companionship with
man that was ultimately to be his.

After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching. He was quick in his
classification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises. A few minutes
later the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on the march, trailed
in. There were more men and many women and children, forty souls of them, and
all heavily burdened with camp equipage and outfit. Also there were many dogs;
and these, with the exception of the part-grown puppies, were likewise burdened
with camp outfit. On their backs, in bags that fastened tightly around
underneath, the dogs carried from twenty to thirty pounds of weight.

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that they
were his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayed little difference
from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his mother. There was a rush.
White Fang bristled and snarled and snapped in the face of the open-mouthed
oncoming wave of dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp slash of
teeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and bellies above
him. There was a great uproar. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought
for him; and he could hear the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs
striking upon bodies, and the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again. He could now see
the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones, defending him,
saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow was not his kind. And
though there was no reason in his brain for a clear conception of so abstract a
thing as justice, nevertheless, in his own way, he felt the justice of the
man-animals, and he knew them for what they were—makers of law and
executors of law. Also, he appreciated the power with which they administered
the law. Unlike any animals he had ever encountered, they did not bite nor
claw. They enforced their live strength with the power of dead things. Dead
things did their bidding. Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strange
creatures, leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts
upon the dogs.

To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond the natural,
power that was godlike. White Fang, in the very nature of him, could never know
anything about gods; at the best he could know only things that were beyond
knowing—but the wonder and awe that he had of these man-animals in ways
resembled what would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestial
creature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand at an
astonished world.

The last dog had been driven back. The hubbub died down. And White Fang licked
his hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-cruelty and his
introduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted of
more than One Eye, his mother, and himself. They had constituted a kind apart,
and here, abruptly, he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his own
kind. And there was a subconscious resentment that these, his kind, at first
sight had pitched upon him and tried to destroy him. In the same way he
resented his mother being tied with a stick, even though it was done by the
superior man-animals. It savoured of the trap, of bondage. Yet of the trap and
of bondage he knew nothing. Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had
been his heritage; and here it was being infringed upon. His mother’s
movements were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of that
same stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of his
mother’s side.

He did not like it. Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose and went on
with their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of the stick and led
Kiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche followed White Fang, greatly
perturbed and worried by this new adventure he had entered upon.

They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang’s widest
ranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran into
the Mackenzie River. Here, where canoes were cached on poles high in the air
and where stood fish-racks for the drying of fish, camp was made; and White
Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority of these man-animals
increased with every moment. There was their mastery over all these
sharp-fanged dogs. It breathed of power. But greater than that, to the
wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive; their capacity to
communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity to change the very face
of the world.

It was this last that especially affected him. The elevation of frames of poles
caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, being done by the
same creatures that flung sticks and stones to great distances. But when the
frames of poles were made into tepees by being covered with cloth and skins,
White Fang was astounded. It was the colossal bulk of them that impressed him.
They arose around him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of
life. They occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision. He
was afraid of them. They loomed ominously above him; and when the breeze
stirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his eyes
warily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to precipitate
themselves upon him.

But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away. He saw the women and
children passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw the dogs trying
often to get into them, and being driven away with sharp words and flying
stones. After a time, he left Kiche’s side and crawled cautiously toward
the wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity of growth that urged him
on—the necessity of learning and living and doing that brings experience.
The last few inches to the wall of the tepee were crawled with painful slowness
and precaution. The day’s events had prepared him for the unknown to
manifest itself in most stupendous and unthinkable ways. At last his nose
touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange
fabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth
and gave a gentle tug. Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions of the
tepee moved. He tugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful.
He tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion.
Then the sharp cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche. But
after that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks of the tepees.

A moment later he was straying away again from his mother. Her stick was tied
to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy,
somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatious
and belligerent importance. The puppy’s name, as White Fang was afterward
to hear him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience in puppy fights and was
already something of a bully.

Lip-lip was White Fang’s own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seem
dangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit. But when
the strangers walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of his teeth,
White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips. They half circled
about each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling. This lasted several
minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game. But
suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped in, delivering a slashing
snap, and leaped away again. The snap had taken effect on the shoulder that had
been hurt by the lynx and that was still sore deep down near the bone. The
surprise and hurt of it brought a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment,
in a rush of anger, he was upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.

But Lip-lip had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights. Three
times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth scored on the
newcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to the protection of his
mother. It was the first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, for
they were enemies from the start, born so, with natures destined perpetually to
clash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail upon
him to remain with her. But his curiosity was rampant, and several minutes
later he was venturing forth on a new quest. He came upon one of the
man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing something
with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground. White Fang came near
to him and watched. Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which White Fang interpreted
as not hostile, so he came still nearer.

Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. It
was evidently an affair of moment. White Fang came in until he touched Grey
Beaver’s knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that this was a
terrible man-animal. Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to
arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver’s hands. Then, amongst
the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour
like the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. It
drew him as the light, in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early
puppyhood. He crawled the several steps toward the flame. He heard Grey Beaver
chuckle above him, and he knew the sound was not hostile. Then his nose touched
the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.

For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticks
and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose. He scrambled backward,
bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi’s. At the sound, Kiche
leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged terribly because she
could not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped his
thighs, and told the happening to all the rest of the camp, till everybody was
laughing uproariously. But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi’d and
ki-yi’d, a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst of the
man-animals.

It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had been scorched
by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver’s
hands. He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wail was greeted by
bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals. He tried to soothe his nose
with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming
together produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly and
helplessly than ever.

And then shame came to him. He knew laughter and the meaning of it. It is not
given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when they are being
laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew it. And he felt shame
that the man-animals should be laughing at him. He turned and fled away, not
from the hurt of the fire, but from the laughter that sank even deeper, and
hurt in the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick
like an animal gone mad—to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was
not laughing at him.

Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother’s
side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater
trouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush and
quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff. Life had become too populous.
There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children, all making
noises and irritations. And there were the dogs, ever squabbling and bickering,
bursting into uproars and creating confusions. The restful loneliness of the
only life he had known was gone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. It
hummed and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly
variant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and
restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.

He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp. In
fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create, so
looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were superior
creatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they were as much
wonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of mastery, possessing
all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of the alive and the
not alive—making obey that which moved, imparting movement to that which
did not move, and making life, sun-coloured and biting life, to grow out of
dead moss and wood. They were fire-makers! They were gods.

CHAPTER II
THE BONDAGE

The days were thronged with experience for White Fang. During the time that
Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp, inquiring,
investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the ways of the
man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to know
them, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed their
mysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness.

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his
altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch
at man’s feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of
the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the
garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power,
intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man, the
wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the
living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for
the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is
necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce
disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on
its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful
and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that
bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.

And so it was with White Fang. The man-animals were gods unmistakable and
unescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to them at the
first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his allegiance. He gave
them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs. When they walked, he got out
of their way. When they called, he came. When they threatened, he cowered down.
When they commanded him to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind any wish of
theirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed
itself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. His actions were theirs to
command. His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to tolerate. Such was the
lesson that was quickly borne in upon him. It came hard, going as it did,
counter to much that was strong and dominant in his own nature; and, while he
disliked it in the learning of it, unknown to himself he was learning to like
it. It was a placing of his destiny in another’s hands, a shifting of the
responsibilities of existence. This in itself was compensation, for it is
always easier to lean upon another than to stand alone.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul,
to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his
memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest
and stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always he
returned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully at
Kiche’s side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue.

White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice and
greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be eaten. He
came to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and women more
kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone. And after two or
three painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown puppies, he came into
the knowledge that it was always good policy to let such mothers alone, to keep
away from them as far as possible, and to avoid them when he saw them coming.

But the bane of his life was Lip-lip. Larger, older, and stronger, Lip-lip had
selected White Fang for his special object of persecution. White Fang fought
willingly enough, but he was outclassed. His enemy was too big. Lip-lip became
a nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured away from his mother, the bully was
sure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling at him, picking upon him, and
watchful of an opportunity, when no man-animal was near, to spring upon him and
force a fight. As Lip-lip invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became his
chief delight in life, as it became White Fang’s chief torment.

But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him. Though he suffered most of
the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained unsubdued. Yet a bad
effect was produced. He became malignant and morose. His temper had been savage
by birth, but it became more savage under this unending persecution. The
genial, playful, puppyish side of him found little expression. He never played
and gambolled about with the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip would not
permit it. The moment White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him,
bullying and hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away.

The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and to
make him in his comportment older than his age. Denied the outlet, through
play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mental
processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself to
thoughts of trickery. Prevented from obtaining his share of meat and fish when
a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief. He had to
forage for himself, and he foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague to
the squaws in consequence. He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to
know what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason
accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his
implacable persecutor.

It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first really big
crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge. As Kiche, when with
the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the camps of men, so White
Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche’s avenging
jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made an indirect flight that led in
and out and around the various tepees of the camp. He was a good runner,
swifter than any puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip. But he did not
run his best in this chase. He barely held his own, one leap ahead of his
pursuer.

Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his victim,
forgot caution and locality. When he remembered locality, it was too late.
Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into Kiche lying at the
end of her stick. He gave one yelp of consternation, and then her punishing
jaws closed upon him. She was tied, but he could not get away from her easily.
She rolled him off his legs so that he could not run, while she repeatedly
ripped and slashed him with her fangs.

When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his feet,
badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit. His hair was standing out
all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled. He stood where he had arisen,
opened his mouth, and broke out the long, heart-broken puppy wail. But even
this he was not allowed to complete. In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing
in, sank his teeth into Lip-lip’s hind leg. There was no fight left in
Lip-lip, and he ran away shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying
him all the way back to his own tepee. Here the squaws came to his aid, and
White Fang, transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a
fusillade of stones.

Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running away
was past, released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with his mother’s
freedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so long as he
remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful distance. White-Fang even
bristled up to him and walked stiff-legged, but Lip-lip ignored the challenge.
He was no fool himself, and whatever vengeance he desired to wreak, he could
wait until he caught White Fang alone.

Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next
to the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and now when she
stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther. The stream, the lair, and the quiet
woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come. He ran on a few steps,
stopped, and looked back. She had not moved. He whined pleadingly, and scurried
playfully in and out of the underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her face,
and ran on again. And still she did not move. He stopped and regarded her, all
of an intentness and eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out of
him as she turned her head and gazed back at the camp.

There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it
too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of
man—the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to
answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.

Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the physical
restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her. Unseen and
occultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would not let her go.
White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and whimpered softly. There was a
strong smell of pine, and subtle wood fragrances filled the air, reminding him
of his old life of freedom before the days of his bondage. But he was still
only a part-grown puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the
Wild was the call of his mother. All the hours of his short life he had
depended upon her. The time was yet to come for independence. So he arose and
trotted forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and
whimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of the
forest.

In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the
dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it was with White Fang. Grey
Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going away on a trip
up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin,
twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw his mother
taken aboard Three Eagles’ canoe, and tried to follow her. A blow from
Three Eagles knocked him backward to the land. The canoe shoved off. He sprang
into the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to
return. Even a man-animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror he
was in of losing his mother.

But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully launched a
canoe in pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached down and by the nape
of the neck lifted him clear of the water. He did not deposit him at once in
the bottom of the canoe. Holding him suspended with one hand, with the other
hand he proceeded to give him a beating. And it was a beating. His hand
was heavy. Every blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude of
blows.

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from that,
White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum. Varying
were the emotions that surged through him. At first, he had known surprise.
Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times to the impact of the
hand. But this was quickly followed by anger. His free nature asserted itself,
and he showed his teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god.
This but served to make the god more wrathful. The blows came faster, heavier,
more shrewd to hurt.

Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl. But this could
not last for ever. One or the other must give over, and that one was White
Fang. Fear surged through him again. For the first time he was being really
man-handled. The occasional blows of sticks and stones he had previously
experienced were as caresses compared with this. He broke down and began to cry
and yelp. For a time each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear passed into
terror, until finally his yelps were voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected
with the rhythm of the punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White Fang, hanging limply, continued to
cry. This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down roughly in the
bottom of the canoe. In the meantime the canoe had drifted down the stream.
Grey Beaver picked up the paddle. White Fang was in his way. He spurned him
savagely with his foot. In that moment White Fang’s free nature flashed
forth again, and he sank his teeth into the moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating he
now received. Grey Beaver’s wrath was terrible; likewise was White
Fang’s fright. Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was used
upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was again
flung down in the canoe. Again, and this time with purpose, did Grey Beaver
kick him. White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot. He had learned
another lesson of his bondage. Never, no matter what the circumstance, must he
dare to bite the god who was lord and master over him; the body of the lord and
master was sacred, not to be defiled by the teeth of such as he. That was
evidently the crime of crimes, the one offence there was no condoning nor
overlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and motionless,
waiting the will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey Beaver’s will that he should
go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on his side and hurting
his bruises afresh. He crawled tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering.
Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding from the bank, now rushed upon
him, knocking him over and sinking his teeth into him. White Fang was too
helpless to defend himself, and it would have gone hard with him had not Grey
Beaver’s foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence so
that he smashed down to earth a dozen feet away. This was the
man-animal’s justice; and even then, in his own pitiable plight, White
Fang experienced a little grateful thrill. At Grey Beaver’s heels he
limped obediently through the village to the tepee. And so it came that White
Fang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved for
themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them.

That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and sorrowed
for her. He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who beat him. After
that he mourned gently when the gods were around. But sometimes, straying off
to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried it
out with loud whimperings and wailings.

It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of the
lair and the stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory of his mother held
him. As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so she would come back
to the village some time. So he remained in his bondage waiting for her.

But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage. There was much to interest him.
Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things these
gods did, and he was always curious to see. Besides, he was learning how to get
along with Grey Beaver. Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was
exacted of him; and in return he escaped beatings and his existence was
tolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and defended him
against the other dogs in the eating of it. And such a piece of meat was of
value. It was worth more, in some strange way, then a dozen pieces of meat from
the hand of a squaw. Grey Beaver never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was the
weight of his hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and
perhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tie
of attachment was forming between him and his surly lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and stone and
clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang’s bondage being riveted
upon him. The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made it possible for
them to come in to the fires of men, were qualities capable of development.
They were developing in him, and the camp-life, replete with misery as it was,
was secretly endearing itself to him all the time. But White Fang was unaware
of it. He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and a
hungry yearning for the free life that had been his.

CHAPTER III
THE OUTCAST

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder and
more ferocious than it was his natural right to be. Savageness was a part of
his make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make-up. He
acquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals themselves.
Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or the
outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were sure to find White Fang
mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it. They did not bother to look
after the causes of his conduct. They saw only the effects, and the effects
were bad. He was a sneak and a thief, a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble;
and irate squaws told him to his face, the while he eyed them alert and ready
to dodge any quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to
come to an evil end.

He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp. All the young
dogs followed Lip-lip’s lead. There was a difference between White Fang
and them. Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and instinctively felt for
him the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the wolf. But be that as it may,
they joined with Lip-lip in the persecution. And, once declared against him,
they found good reason to continue declared against him. One and all, from time
to time, they felt his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received.
Many of them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him.
The beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp to
come running and pitch upon him.

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take care
of himself in a mass-fight against him—and how, on a single dog, to
inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time. To keep
one’s feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he
learnt well. He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet. Even grown
dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavy
bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding on the
ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward to the mother
earth.

When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual
combat—snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings. But White
Fang learned to omit these preliminaries. Delay meant the coming against him of
all the young dogs. He must do his work quickly and get away. So he learnt to
give no warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the
instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus he
learned how to inflict quick and severe damage. Also he learned the value of
surprise. A dog, taken off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or its ear
ripped in ribbons before it knew what was happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise; while
a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft underside of
its neck—the vulnerable point at which to strike for its life. White Fang
knew this point. It was a knowledge bequeathed to him directly from the hunting
generation of wolves. So it was that White Fang’s method when he took the
offensive, was: first to find a young dog alone; second, to surprise it and
knock it off its feet; and third, to drive in with his teeth at the soft
throat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor strong
enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went around camp
with a lacerated throat in token of White Fang’s intention. And one day,
catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods, he managed, by
repeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to cut the great vein and
let out the life. There was a great row that night. He had been observed, the
news had been carried to the dead dog’s master, the squaws remembered all
the instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was beset by many angry voices.
But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed the
culprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople
clamoured.

White Fang became hated by man and dog. During this period of his development
he never knew a moment’s security. The tooth of every dog was against
him, the hand of every man. He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with curses
and stones by his gods. He lived tensely. He was always keyed up, alert for
attack, wary of being attacked, with an eye for sudden and unexpected missiles,
prepared to act precipitately and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, or
to leap away with a menacing snarl.

As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old, in
camp. The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is required
to know when it should be used. White Fang knew how to make it and when to make
it. Into his snarl he incorporated all that was vicious, malignant, and
horrible. With nose serrulated by continuous spasms, hair bristling in
recurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red snake and whipping back again,
ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred, lips wrinkled back, and fangs
exposed and dripping, he could compel a pause on the part of almost any
assailant. A temporary pause, when taken off his guard, gave him the vital
moment in which to think and determine his action. But often a pause so gained
lengthened out until it evolved into a complete cessation from the attack. And
before more than one of the grown dogs White Fang’s snarl enabled him to
beat an honourable retreat.

An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary methods
and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution of him. Not
permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of affairs obtained
that no member of the pack could run outside the pack. White Fang would not
permit it. What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the young dogs were
afraid to run by themselves. With the exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled
to hunch together for mutual protection against the terrible enemy they had
made. A puppy alone by the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that
aroused the camp with its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from the
wolf-cub that had waylaid it.

But White Fang’s reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs had
learned thoroughly that they must stay together. He attacked them when he
caught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched. The sight of
him was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which times his
swiftness usually carried him into safety. But woe the dog that outran his
fellows in such pursuit! White Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon the
pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up before the pack
could arrive. This occurred with great frequency, for, once in full cry, the
dogs were prone to forget themselves in the excitement of the chase, while
White Fang never forgot himself. Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was
always ready to whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his
fellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation they
realised their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it was that the hunt of White
Fang became their chief game—a deadly game, withal, and at all times a
serious game. He, on the other hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid to
venture anywhere. During the period that he waited vainly for his mother to
come back, he led the pack many a wild chase through the adjacent woods. But
the pack invariably lost him. Its noise and outcry warned him of its presence,
while he ran alone, velvet-footed, silently, a moving shadow among the trees
after the manner of his father and mother before him. Further he was more
directly connected with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and
stratagems. A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and
then lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose around
him.

Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon and
himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and one-sided. This was
no soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in. Of such things he had not
the faintest glimmering. The code he learned was to obey the strong and to
oppress the weak. Grey Beaver was a god, and strong. Therefore White Fang
obeyed him. But the dog younger or smaller than himself was weak, a thing to be
destroyed. His development was in the direction of power. In order to face the
constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective
faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other
dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike
muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more
intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his
own nor survive the hostile environment in which he found himself.

CHAPTER IV
THE TRAIL OF THE GODS

In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of the
frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty. For
several days there had been a great hubbub in the village. The summer camp was
being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off to
the fall hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when the
tepees began to come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, he
understood. Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared down
the river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind. He waited his opportunity to
slink out of camp to the woods. Here, in the running stream where ice was
beginning to form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into the heart of a dense
thicket and waited. The time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours.
Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver’s voice calling him by name. There
were other voices. White Fang could hear Grey Beaver’s squaw taking part
in the search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey Beaver’s son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out of his
hiding-place, he resisted it. After a time the voices died away, and some time
after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his undertaking. Darkness was
coming on, and for a while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in his
freedom. Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness. He sat down
to consider, listening to the silence of the forest and perturbed by it. That
nothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous. He felt the lurking of danger,
unseen and unguessed. He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and
of the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to snuggle.
The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-foot and then the
other. He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and at the same time he
saw a vision. There was nothing strange about it. Upon his inward sight was
impressed a succession of memory-pictures. He saw the camp again, the tepees,
and the blaze of the fires. He heard the shrill voices of the women, the gruff
basses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs. He was hungry, and he
remembered pieces of meat and fish that had been thrown him. Here was no meat,
nothing but a threatening and inedible silence.

His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had
forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses,
accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of
sights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to see
nor hear. They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and
immobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of
something terrible impending.

He gave a great start of fright. A colossal and formless something was rushing
across the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow flung by the moon, from
whose face the clouds had been brushed away. Reassured, he whimpered softly;
then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of
the lurking dangers.

A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It was
directly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ran
madly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and
companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke. In his
ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud. He passed out of the forest
and into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor darknesses. But no village
greeted his eyes. He had forgotten. The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee. He slunk
forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and the
discarded rags and tags of the gods. He would have been glad for the rattle of
stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey Beaver
descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lip
and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver’s tepee had stood. In the centre of the
space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. His throat
was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-broken cry
bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows
and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. It
was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever
uttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness. The
naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous; thrust his
loneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up his
mind. He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down the stream.
All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on for ever. His
iron-like body ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage of
endurance braced him to endless endeavour and enabled him to drive his
complaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high
mountains behind. Rivers and streams that entered the main river he forded or
swam. Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form, and more than
once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy current. Always he
was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river and
proceed inland.

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental
vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie. What if
the trail of the gods led out on that side? It never entered his head. Later
on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and come to know more
of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a
possibility. But that mental power was yet in the future. Just now he ran
blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations.

All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles that
delayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the second day he had been running
continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving out. It was
the endurance of his mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in forty hours,
and he was weak with hunger. The repeated drenchings in the icy water had
likewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was draggled. The broad
pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp, and this limp
increased with the hours. To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured
and snow began to fall—a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery
under foot, that hid from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over
the inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult
and painful.

Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie,
for it was in that direction that the hunting lay. But on the near bank,
shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been espied by
Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver’s squaw. Now, had not the moose come down
to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course because of the snow,
had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it with a
lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happened
differently. Grey Beaver would not have camped on the near side of the
Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on, either to die or to
find his way to his wild brothers and become one of them—a wolf to the
end of his days.

Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimpering
softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail in
the snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was. Whining
with eagerness, he followed back from the river bank and in among the trees.
The camp-sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch
cooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw
tallow. There was fresh meat in camp!

White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the thought
of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the beating he knew
to be waiting for him. But he knew, further, that the comfort of the fire would
be his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs—the
last, a companionship of enmity, but none the less a companionship and
satisfying to his gregarious needs.

He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, and
stopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling
in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight toward
Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. At
last he lay at the master’s feet, into whose possession he now
surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice, he came in
to sit by man’s fire and to be ruled by him. White Fang trembled, waiting
for the punishment to fall upon him. There was a movement of the hand above
him. He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow. It did not fall. He
stole a glance upward. Grey Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half!
Grey Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow! Very gently and somewhat
suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it. Grey
Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs
while he ate. After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey
Beaver’s feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing,
secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn
through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the
gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.

CHAPTER V
THE COVENANT

When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the Mackenzie.
Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he drove himself, drawn by dogs
he had traded for or borrowed. A second and smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah,
and to this was harnessed a team of puppies. It was more of a toy affair than
anything else, yet it was the delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was
beginning to do a man’s work in the world. Also, he was learning to drive
dogs and to train dogs; while the puppies themselves were being broken in to
the harness. Furthermore, the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly
two hundred pounds of outfit and food.

White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did not
resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself. About his neck
was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two pulling-traces to a
strap that passed around his chest and over his back. It was to this that was
fastened the long rope by which he pulled at the sled.

There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlier in the
year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only eight months
old. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope. No two ropes were of
the same length, while the difference in length between any two ropes was at
least that of a dog’s body. Every rope was brought to a ring at the front
end of the sled. The sled itself was without runners, being a birch-bark
toboggan, with upturned forward end to keep it from ploughing under the snow.
This construction enabled the weight of the sled and load to be distributed
over the largest snow-surface; for the snow was crystal-powder and very soft.
Observing the same principle of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the
ends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no
dog trod in another’s footsteps.

There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropes of
varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that ran in
front of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn upon one at a
shorter rope. In which case it would find itself face to face with the dog
attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip of the driver. But the
most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that the dog that strove to attack
one in front of him must pull the sled faster, and that the faster the sled
travelled, the faster could the dog attacked run away. Thus, the dog behind
could never catch up with the one in front. The faster he ran, the faster ran
the one he was after, and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally, the sled
went faster, and thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery
over the beasts.

Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed. In the
past he had observed Lip-lip’s persecution of White Fang; but at that
time Lip-lip was another man’s dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more than
to shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his dog, and he
proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of the
longest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an honour! but
in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of being bully and
master of the pack, he now found himself hated and persecuted by the pack.

Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the view of
him running away before them. All that they saw of him was his bushy tail and
fleeing hind legs—a view far less ferocious and intimidating than his
bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogs being so constituted in their
mental ways, the sight of him running away gave desire to run after him and a
feeling that he ran away from them.

The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase that
extended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn upon his
pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah would
throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into his face and
compel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might face the pack, but he could
not face that whip, and all that was left him to do was to keep his long rope
taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his mates.

But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind. To give
point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over the other
dogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred. In their presence
Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only. This was maddening
to them. They would rage around just outside the throwing-distance of the whip,
while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit-sah protected him. And when there was
no meat to give, Mit-sah would keep the team at a distance and make believe to
give meat to Lip-lip.

White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distance than
the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods, and he had
learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will. In addition, the
persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the pack less to him in the
scheme of things, and man more. He had not learned to be dependent on his kind
for companionship. Besides, Kiche was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet
of expression that remained to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods
he had accepted as masters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was
obedient. Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These are
essential traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become
domesticated, and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.

A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it was one
of warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them. He knew only how
to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them a hundred-fold the
snaps and slashes they had given him in the days when Lip-lip was leader of the
pack. But Lip-lip was no longer leader—except when he fled away before
his mates at the end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind. In camp he
kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture
away from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and he
tasted to the dregs the persecution that had been White Fang’s.

With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the pack.
But he was too morose and solitary for that. He merely thrashed his team-mates.
Otherwise he ignored them. They got out of his way when he came along; nor did
the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his meat. On the contrary, they
devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear that he would take it away from
them. White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the
strong. He ate his share of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe the
dog that had not yet finished! A snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would
wail his indignation to the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his
portion for him.

Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt and be
promptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training. He was jealous of the
isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the pack, and he fought
often to maintain it. But such fights were of brief duration. He was too quick
for the others. They were slashed open and bleeding before they knew what had
happened, were whipped almost before they had begun to fight.

As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline maintained by
White Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them any latitude. He
compelled them to an unremitting respect for him. They might do as they pleased
amongst themselves. That was no concern of his. But it was his concern
that they leave him alone in his isolation, get out of his way when he elected
to walk among them, and at all times acknowledge his mastery over them. A hint
of stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he
would be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error
of their way.

He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressed the
weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to the pitiless
struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother and he, alone and
unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious environment of the Wild.
And not for nothing had he learned to walk softly when superior strength went
by. He oppressed the weak, but he respected the strong. And in the course of
the long journey with Grey Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the
full-grown dogs in the camps of the strange man-animals they encountered.

The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. White
Fang’s strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady
toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development was
well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he
lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a
fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and
affection and the bright sweetnesses of the spirit did not exist.

He had no affection for Grey Beaver. True, he was a god, but a most savage god.
White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it was a lordship based
upon superior intelligence and brute strength. There was something in the fibre
of White Fang’s being that made his lordship a thing to be desired, else
he would not have come back from the Wild when he did to tender his allegiance.
There were deeps in his nature which had never been sounded. A kind word, a
caressing touch of the hand, on the part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded
these deeps; but Grey Beaver did not caress, nor speak kind words. It was not
his way. His primacy was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice
with a club, punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding
merit, not by kindness, but by withholding a blow.

So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man’s hand might contain for
him. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. He was suspicious
of them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more often they gave
hurt. Hands were things to keep away from. They hurled stones, wielded sticks
and clubs and whips, administered slaps and clouts, and, when they touched him,
were cunning to hurt with pinch and twist and wrench. In strange villages he
had encountered the hands of the children and learned that they were cruel to
hurt. Also, he had once nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. From
these experiences he became suspicious of all children. He could not tolerate
them. When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.

It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of resenting
the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the law that he had
learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable crime was to bite one
of the gods. In this village, after the custom of all dogs in all villages,
White Fang went foraging, for food. A boy was chopping frozen moose-meat with
an axe, and the chips were flying in the snow. White Fang, sliding by in quest
of meat, stopped and began to eat the chips. He observed the boy lay down the
axe and take up a stout club. White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape
the descending blow. The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village,
fled between two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank.

There was no escape for White Fang. The only way out was between the two
tepees, and this the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared to strike, he drew
in on his cornered quarry. White Fang was furious. He faced the boy, bristling
and snarling, his sense of justice outraged. He knew the law of forage. All the
wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips, belonged to the dog that found it.
He had done no wrong, broken no law, yet here was this boy preparing to give
him a beating. White Fang scarcely knew what happened. He did it in a surge of
rage. And he did it so quickly that the boy did not know either. All the boy
knew was that he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow,
and that his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang’s teeth.

But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods. He had driven his
teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect nothing but a most
terrible punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver, behind whose protecting legs
he crouched when the bitten boy and the boy’s family came, demanding
vengeance. But they went away with vengeance unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defended
White Fang. So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch. White Fang, listening to the wordy
war and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act was justified. And so it
came that he learned there were gods and gods. There were his gods, and there
were other gods, and between them there was a difference. Justice or injustice,
it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of his own gods.
But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other gods. It was his
privilege to resent it with his teeth. And this also was a law of the gods.

Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law. Mit-sah,
alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that had been
bitten. With him were other boys. Hot words passed. Then all the boys attacked
Mit-sah. It was going hard with him. Blows were raining upon him from all
sides. White Fang looked on at first. This was an affair of the gods, and no
concern of his. Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his own
particular gods, who was being maltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that made
White Fang do what he then did. A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst
the combatants. Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing boys,
many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang’s teeth
had not been idle. When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver ordered
meat to be given to White Fang. He ordered much meat to be given, and White
Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the law had received its
verification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the law of
property and the duty of the defence of property. From the protection of his
god’s body to the protection of his god’s possessions was a step,
and this step he made. What was his god’s was to be defended against all
the world—even to the extent of biting other gods. Not only was such an
act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with peril. The gods were
all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them; yet White Fang learned to
face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid. Duty rose above fear, and
thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver’s property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was that a
thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at the sounding
of the alarm. Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed between his sounding
of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid. He came to know that it was not
fear of him that drove the thief away, but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang did
not give the alarm by barking. He never barked. His method was to drive
straight at the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he could. Because he was
morose and solitary, having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually
fitted to guard his master’s property; and in this he was encouraged and
trained by Grey Beaver. One result of this was to make White Fang more
ferocious and indomitable, and more solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between dog and
man. This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came in from the
Wild entered into with man. And, like all succeeding wolves and wild dogs that
had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out for himself. The terms
were simple. For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his own
liberty. Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things
he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god’s property,
defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.

The possession of a god implies service. White Fang’s was a service of
duty and awe, but not of love. He did not know what love was. He had no
experience of love. Kiche was a remote memory. Besides, not only had he
abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the terms
of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not desert
his god to go with her. His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his being
greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.

CHAPTER VI
THE FAMINE

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long journey.
It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into the home
villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way from his
full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the
village. Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited
stature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-grown
dogs. But he had not yet grown compact. His body was slender and rangy, and his
strength more stringy than massive, His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all
appearances he was true wolf himself. The quarter-strain of dog he had
inherited from Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had played
its part in his mental make-up.

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the
various gods he had known before the long journey. Then there were the dogs,
puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large and
formidable as the memory pictures he retained of them. Also, he stood less in
fear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a certain careless ease
that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.

There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days had but to
uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the right about.
From him White Fang had learned much of his own insignificance; and from him he
was now to learn much of the change and development that had taken place in
himself. While Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been
growing stronger with youth.

It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang learned of
the changed relations in which he stood to the dog-world. He had got for
himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a bit of meat was
attached. Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other dogs—in fact
out of sight behind a thicket—he was devouring his prize, when Baseek
rushed in upon him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed the
intruder twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised by the other’s
temerity and swiftness of attack. He stood, gazing stupidly across at White
Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them.

Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of the
dogs it had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences these, which, perforce,
he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope with them. In the old days he
would have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of righteous wrath. But now his
waning powers would not permit such a course. He bristled fiercely and looked
ominously across the shin-bone at White Fang. And White Fang, resurrecting
quite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and
grow small, as he cast about in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too
inglorious.

And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce and
ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would
have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He considered
the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his head
carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not too
late for Baseek to retrieve the situation. Had he merely stood over the meat,
head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately have slunk away. But the
fresh meat was strong in Baseek’s nostrils, and greed urged him to take a
bite of it.

This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon his months of mastery over his own
team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while another
devoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after his custom, without
warning. With the first slash, Baseek’s right ear was ripped into
ribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But more things, and most
grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness. He was knocked off his
feet. His throat was bitten. While he was struggling to his feet the young dog
sank teeth twice into his shoulder. The swiftness of it was bewildering. He
made a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap.
The next moment his nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward away
from the meat.

The situation was now reversed. White Fang stood over the shin-bone, bristling
and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to retreat. He
dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and again he knew, and
more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. His attempt to maintain his
dignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back upon young dog and shin-bone, as
though both were beneath his notice and unworthy of his consideration, he
stalked grandly away. Nor, until well out of sight, did he stop to lick his
bleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and a
greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his attitude toward
them was less compromising. Not that he went out of his way looking for
trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demanded consideration. He stood upon
his right to go his way unmolested and to give trail to no dog. He had to be
taken into account, that was all. He was no longer to be disregarded and
ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as continued to be the lot of the
puppies that were his team-mates. They got out of the way, gave trail to the
grown dogs, and gave up meat to them under compulsion. But White Fang,
uncompanionable, solitary, morose, scarcely looking to right or left,
redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal
by his puzzled elders. They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither
venturing hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him
alone, he left them alone—a state of affairs that they found, after a few
encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable.

In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent way to
investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the village while
he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon Kiche. He paused
and looked at her. He remembered her vaguely, but he remembered her, and
that was more than could be said for her. She lifted her lip at him in the old
snarl of menace, and his memory became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that
was associated with that familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had
known the gods, she had been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old
familiar feelings of that time came back upon him, surged up within him. He
bounded towards her joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his
cheek open to the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered and
puzzled.

But it was not Kiche’s fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember her
cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was a
strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her the
right to resent such intrusion.

One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers, only
they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously, whereupon Kiche
rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. He backed farther away. All
the old memories and associations died down again and passed into the grave
from which they had been resurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and
stopping now and then to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He had
learned to get along without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place
for her in his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.

He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten, wondering
what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time, intent on driving
him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang allowed himself to be
driven away. This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that
the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law,
for it was no generalisation of the mind, not a something acquired by
experience of the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of
instinct—of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and stars of
nights, and that made him fear death and the unknown.

The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact, while
his character was developing along the lines laid down by his heredity and his
environment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay. It
possessed many possibilities, was capable of being moulded into many different
forms. Environment served to model the clay, to give it a particular form.
Thus, had White Fang never come in to the fires of man, the Wild would have
moulded him into a true wolf. But the gods had given him a different
environment, and he was moulded into a dog that was rather wolfish, but that
was a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his
surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular shape.
There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, more uncompanionable,
more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were learning more and more that
it was better to be at peace with him than at war, and Grey Beaver was coming
to prize him more greatly with the passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, nevertheless
suffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughed at. The
laughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh among themselves about
anything they pleased except himself, and he did not mind. But the moment
laughter was turned upon him he would fly into a most terrible rage. Grave,
dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness. It so outraged
him and upset him that for hours he would behave like a demon. And woe to the
dog that at such times ran foul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out
on 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 White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointed
with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with
him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren. As it
was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate him.

Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, he found
something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that none of the
larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong from the two
days’ eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-pack ran full
tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was better nourished than
they, and in the end outran them. And not only did he outrun them, but,
circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one of his exhausted
pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the valley
wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered Kiche. Up to
her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of the gods and gone
back to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of this litter but one
remained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, and this one was not
destined to live long. Young life had little chance in such a famine.

Kiche’s greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. But
White Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail
philosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the turning
to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his mother and he
had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, he settled down and rested
for a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip, who
had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directions along
the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found themselves
face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and looked at each other
suspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, and for a week
he had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill. But in the
moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his back. It was an
involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past had
always accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip’s bullying
and persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight of
Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He did not waste
any time. The thing was done thoroughly and with despatch. Lip-lip essayed to
back away, but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-lip was
overthrown and rolled upon his back. White Fang’s teeth drove into the
scrawny throat. There was a death-struggle, during which White Fang walked
around, stiff-legged and observant. Then he resumed his course and trotted on
along the base of the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a narrow
stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had been over this ground
before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it. Still hidden amongst
the trees, he paused to study the situation. Sights and sounds and scents were
familiar to him. It was the old village changed to a new place. But sights and
sounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he fled away
from it. There was no whimpering nor wailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear,
and when he heard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that
proceeds from a full stomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. There
was food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trotted
into camp straight to Grey Beaver’s tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; but
Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught fish,
and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver’s coming.

PART IV

CHAPTER I
THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND

Had there been in White Fang’s nature any possibility, no matter how
remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was
irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now the
dogs hated him—hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah;
hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated him for that
he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and his
perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes.

And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was anything
but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the yelling pack,
every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and mastered, was almost
more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that
was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order for
the start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang forward
at White Fang.

There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would throw the
stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to run away. He
could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters. These
were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So run
away he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made, and
leaping all day long.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that
nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow
out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and
growing into the body—a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with
White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that
cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be;
and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting
thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and
develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability
of his nature.

If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that creature. He
asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and scarred by the teeth
of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks upon the pack. Unlike
most leaders, who, when camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled near
to the gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked
boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what he had
suffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader of the team, the
pack had learned to get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited by
the day-long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration
on their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of
mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way to
him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress
was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was
surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatred
and malice within him.

When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang obeyed. At
first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would spring upon the
hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, the
great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to understand that when the
team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fang
stopped without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and destroy
him if they could. After several experiences, White Fang never stopped without
orders. He learned quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn
quickly if he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life
was vouchsafed him.

But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each day,
pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous night was
erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be as
immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their
dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of
kind—cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were
domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for generations. Much of
the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible,
the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and
impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: so
that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves against
the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the
dark beyond the camp-fire.

But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep together.
White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-handed. They met him
with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed them, one by one, in a
night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog off
its feet, but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and deliver
the deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew
together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were
forgotten when trouble was brewing with White Fang.

On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was
too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and
always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for
getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the
trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to
life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending
warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang.

So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were,
softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man’s
strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so moulded.
He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he live this
vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at White
Fang’s ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal;
and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they considered the
tale of his killings amongst their dogs.

When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on another
great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the dogs of
the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the
Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind.
They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness
and directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him for what
he was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged
and challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping
into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them
before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the throes of
surprise.

He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his strength,
never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed, was out again
too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his to an unusual
degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smacked
of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own legs,
touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging to him, asserting
itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he
had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever
the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre
of him.

In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him. He
eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in either
event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this. There
were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he could
get away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But
these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, he
went his way unscathed.

Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance.
Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate such things. It
was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the vision
correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the
average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His was a better,
far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed
to his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious effort,
knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its
completion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its
fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in
which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected
mechanism. Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous
to him than to the average animal, that was all.

It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver had
crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter,
and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying spurs of the
Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a
canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with the
Yukon just under the Artic circle. Here stood the old Hudson’s Bay
Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedented
excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters were going
up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their
goal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the least
any of them had travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some
had come from the other side of the world.

Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, and
he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn mittens and
moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he not expected
generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to what he realised. His
wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand
per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully and
slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of his
goods.

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with
the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of
superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on
power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind
make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It was a
feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the
looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of
power, so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive
logs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater
mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was
Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinned
ones.

To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of them.
Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and every
act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the white men were
the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There was
no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they could
administer. He was curious to observe them, fearful of being noticed by them.
For the first few hours he was content with slinking around and watching them
from a safe distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near
to them, and he came in closer.

In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance
caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act of
pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him he
showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on him,
and it was well that they did not.

White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods—not more than a
dozen—lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and
colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for several
hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away on them again.
There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the first day or so, he saw
more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went by
they continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the river out of
sight.

But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to much.
This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came ashore with
their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some were
short-legged—too short; others were long-legged—too long. They had
hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of them
knew how to fight.

As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s province to fight with
them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. They
were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily trying
to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by dexterity and cunning.
They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to the side. They did not know what had
become of him; and in that moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them
off their feet and delivering his stroke at the throat.

Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to
be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited.
White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were made angry
when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he was
content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of their
dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. It
was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the
pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance and
look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his
fellows. White Fang was very wise.

But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise
with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank that
they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been downed
and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on board and
wrecked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man, having seen his dog,
a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly,
six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying—another manifestation of
power that sank deep into White Fang’s consciousness.

White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enough
to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men’s dogs had
been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no work for
him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hung
around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for
steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, by
the time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun
was over until the next steamer should arrive.

But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He did
not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even feared by
it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the strange dog
while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang went
in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving the gang
to receive the punishment of the outraged gods.

It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, when
the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw him they
rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild—the unknown, the
terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the darkness around the
fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close to the fires, were
reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had
come, and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by generation, down
all the generations, had this fear of the Wild been stamped into their natures.
For centuries the Wild had stood for terror and destruction. And during all
this time free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things
of the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods
whose companionship they shared.

And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the
gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experience
the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might be
town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the
same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in the
clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of their
ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, and
they remembered the ancient feud.

All of which served to make White Fang’s days enjoyable. If the sight of
him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much the
worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey
he looked upon them.

Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought
his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for
nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip and
the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would then have been
otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the
other puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had Grey
Beaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded the
deeps of White Fang’s nature and brought up to the surface all manner of
kindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of White Fang had
been moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and
ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.

CHAPTER II
THE MAD GOD

A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long in the
country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in so
classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing but
disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were
known as chechaquos, and they always wilted at the application of the
name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious
distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread
from sour-dough because they had no baking-powder.

All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained the
newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they enjoy the
havoc worked amongst the newcomers’ dogs by White Fang and his
disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a point
always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked forward to it with
as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to
appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang.

But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport. He would
come running at the first sound of a steamboat’s whistle; and when the
last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would return
slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes, when a soft
southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the fangs of the pack,
this man would be unable to contain himself, and would leap into the air and
cry out with delight. And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White
Fang.

This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No one
knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty
Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He
was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a
small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more
strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his
boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been called
“Pinhead.”

Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it
slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginning
here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a
lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two
eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order to
discover the necessary area, Nature had given him an enormous prognathous jaw.
It was wide and heavy, and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest
on his chest. Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender
neck, unable properly to support so great a burden.

This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something lacked.
Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any rate, it was
a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and
snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large and
yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his
lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run
short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the
same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and
dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected
tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He
was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. He did
the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing and the drudgery.
They did not despise him. Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way, as
one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him.
His cowardly rages made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their
coffee. But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook.

This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess,
and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang from the first.
White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the overtures became more
insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth and backed away. He did not
like the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in him, and feared
the extended hand and the attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because of all this,
he hated the man.

With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The good
stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease from
pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that are
fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White
Fang’s feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man’s distorted body
and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, came
emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five senses
alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White
Fang that the man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and
therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated.

White Fang was in Grey Beaver’s camp when Beauty Smith first visited it.
At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White Fang
knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an abandon
of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away in true
wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but he
could see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed at
him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were just descending upon
him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and
White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he
glided softly over the ground.

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading and
stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, the
strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, there
was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed
other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith’s eyes
lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue). No,
White Fang was not for sale at any price.

But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver’s camp
often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of the
potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. His
fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the
scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant,
permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had received for his
furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster, and the
shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his temper.

In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained to
him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious
with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk with
him again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was in
bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver’s ears were more eager to hear.

“You ketch um dog you take um all right,” was his last word.

The bottles were delivered, but after two days. “You ketch um dog,”
were Beauty Smith’s words to Grey Beaver.

White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of content.
The dreaded white god was not there. For days his manifestations of desire to
lay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during that time White
Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not know what evil was
threatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evil
of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out of their reach.

But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and tied a
leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang, holding the end
of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from time
to time, was inverted above his head to the accompaniment of gurgling noises.

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground
foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he was bristling
with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White Fang tried to
draw the thong softly out of his master’s hand; but the relaxed fingers
closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.

Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled softly up
at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands. One hand
extended outward and began to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew tense
and harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it,
eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, with
quickening breath, it approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking
with his fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came
together emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry.
Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down
close to the earth in respectful obedience.

White Fang’s suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty Smith
go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was given over
to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk away. The thong grew taut.
White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted him right and left to make him get
up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger
who was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waiting
for this. He swung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing
White Fang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval.
Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and
dizzily to his feet.

He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient to
convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too wise to
fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith’s heels,
his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But Beauty
Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike.

At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fang
waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of ten
seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been no
useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean as
though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the same time
bristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver’s
camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had given
himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged.

But what had occurred before was repeated—with a difference. Grey Beaver
again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him over to Beauty
Smith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him a
beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure the
punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worst
beating he had ever received in his life. Even the big beating given him in his
puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared with this.

Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim,
and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White
Fang’s cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For Beauty
Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling
himself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged himself, in
turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and Beauty Smith was
no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back
upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But
Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him.
He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This
had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the
world.

White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the thong around
his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith’s keeping,
White Fang knew that it was his god’s will for him to go with Beauty
Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that it
was Beauty Smith’s will that he should remain there. Therefore, he had
disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent punishment. He
had seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as
he was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the nature of him there were
forces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love Grey
Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to
him. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that
composed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his
kind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; the
quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and
be the companions of man.

After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this time
Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily, and
so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in spite of
Grey Beaver’s will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give him
up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but that had no effect upon him.
Not for nothing had he surrendered himself body and soul to Grey Beaver. There
had been no reservation on White Fang’s part, and the bond was not to be
broken easily.

So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied his
teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it was
tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It was
only by the severest muscular exertion and neck-arching that he succeeded in
getting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; and
it was only by the exercise of an immense patience, extending through many
hours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the stick. This was something that
dogs were not supposed to do. It was unprecedented. But White Fang did it,
trotting away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick
hanging to his neck.

He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to Grey
Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, and
he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded to the tying of
a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim
him. And this time he was beaten even more severely than before.

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He gave no
protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over White Fang was
sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he. His school of
life had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff. He had too great
vitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he was very sick. At first he
was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for
him. And then, blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith’s heels
back to the fort.

But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain,
by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven. After
a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his
long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property
of a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in its
consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if
terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of
madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey
his every whim and fancy.

CHAPTER III
THE REIGN OF HATE

Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was kept
chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased and
irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early discovered
White Fang’s susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after
painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious and
scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at White
Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of rage
he was even more mad than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious
enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more ferocious than ever. To
such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest
spark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in at
him through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that
snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the
pen that confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty
Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day a
number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in hand, and
took the chain off from White Fang’s neck. When his master had gone out,
White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get at the men
outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standing
two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of
corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of
the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of
superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and
sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Something
unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a huge dog
was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had
never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the
intruder did not deter him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon which
to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side
of the mastiff’s neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and
plunged at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always
evading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and
leaping out again in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy of
delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White Fang. There
was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too ponderous and slow. In
the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club, the mastiff was
dragged out by its owner. Then there was a payment of bets, and money clinked
in Beauty Smith’s hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men around his
pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now vouchsafed him of
expressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate, he was kept a
prisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate except at the times
his master saw fit to put another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated
his powers well, for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were
turned in upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught
from the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his severest
fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself half killed in
doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice was
running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang on a
steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved a
reputation in the land. As “the Fighting Wolf” he was known far and
wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat’s deck was
usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly
and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them? He never asked
himself the question. He knew only hate and lost himself in the passion of it.
Life had become a hell to him. He had not been made for the close confinement
wild beasts endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this way
that he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make
him snarl, and then laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of him
into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless,
Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died or
had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of the
spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of
breaking White Fang’s spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his
succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of them
raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had had
the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but this
wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send him
into transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had been
beaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling, and showing his
fangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly
he was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and
withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the
bars of the cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he still
lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was exhibited as
“the Fighting Wolf,” and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see
him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a
sharp stick—so that the audience might get its money’s worth. In
order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of the
time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He was
regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to him
through the bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part of
the men, impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much added
fuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and that
was that his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of
the plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure
of environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At
irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out of
his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually this
occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of the
Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the audience
and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it came about
that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men were
savage, and the fights were usually to the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogs
that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought with
Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was the
tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose his
footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds—to rush in upon
him, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his
shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs,
huskies and Malemutes—all tried it on him, and all failed. He was never
known to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each time
to see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous advantage over
his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they had never
encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with, was
the immediateness of his attack. The average dog was accustomed to the
preliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and the average dog was
knocked off his feet and finished before he had begun to fight or recovered
from his surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to hold
White Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and
ready, and even made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang’s favour, was his
experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that faced
him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and methods, and
had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of matching
him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves against him.
These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight between White
Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynx
was secured, and this time White Fang fought for his life. Her quickness
matched his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought with his fangs alone,
and she fought with her sharp-clawed feet as well.

But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no more
animals with which to fight—at least, there was none considered worthy of
fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one Tim
Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dog
that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should come
together was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was the
mainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.

CHAPTER IV
THE CLINGING DEATH

Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back.

For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack. He stood still, ears
pricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal that faced
him. He had never seen such a dog before. Tim Keenan shoved the bull-dog
forward with a muttered “Go to it.” The animal waddled toward the
centre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly. He came to a stop and
blinked across at White Fang.

There were cries from the crowd of, “Go to him, Cherokee! Sick ’m,
Cherokee! Eat ’m up!”

But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight. He turned his head and blinked at
the men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail
good-naturedly. He was not afraid, but merely lazy. Besides, it did not seem to
him that it was intended he should fight with the dog he saw before him. He was
not used to fighting with that kind of dog, and he was waiting for them to
bring on the real dog.

Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides of the
shoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and that made
slight, pushing-forward movements. These were so many suggestions. Also, their
effect was irritating, for Cherokee began to growl, very softly, deep down in
his throat. There was a correspondence in rhythm between the growls and the
movements of the man’s hands. The growl rose in the throat with the
culmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh
with the beginning of the next movement. The end of each movement was the
accent of the rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with
a jerk.

This was not without its effect on White Fang. The hair began to rise on his
neck and across the shoulders. Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward and
stepped back again. As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, he
continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run. Then
White Fang struck. A cry of startled admiration went up. He had covered the
distance and gone in more like a cat than a dog; and with the same cat-like
swiftness he had slashed with his fangs and leaped clear.

The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck. He gave
no sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White Fang. The
display on both sides, the quickness of the one and the steadiness of the
other, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd, and the men were making
new bets and increasing original bets. Again, and yet again, White Fang sprang
in, slashed, and got away untouched, and still his strange foe followed after
him, without too great haste, not slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, in
a businesslike sort of way. There was purpose in his method—something for
him to do that he was intent upon doing and from which nothing could distract
him.

His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose. It puzzled
White Fang. Never had he seen such a dog. It had no hair protection. It was
soft, and bled easily. There was no thick mat of fur to baffle White
Fang’s teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his own breed. Each
time that his teeth struck they sank easily into the yielding flesh, while the
animal did not seem able to defend itself. Another disconcerting thing was that
it made no outcry, such as he had been accustomed to with the other dogs he had
fought. Beyond a growl or a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently. And
never did it flag in its pursuit of him.

Not that Cherokee was slow. He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but White
Fang was never there. Cherokee was puzzled, too. He had never fought before
with a dog with which he could not close. The desire to close had always been
mutual. But here was a dog that kept at a distance, dancing and dodging here
and there and all about. And when it did get its teeth into him, it did not
hold on but let go instantly and darted away again.

But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat. The bull-dog
stood too short, while its massive jaws were an added protection. White Fang
darted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee’s wounds increased. Both
sides of his neck and head were ripped and slashed. He bled freely, but showed
no signs of being disconcerted. He continued his plodding pursuit, though once,
for the moment baffled, he came to a full stop and blinked at the men who
looked on, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his
willingness to fight.

In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping his
trimmed remnant of an ear. With a slight manifestation of anger, Cherokee took
up the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle White Fang was
making, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White Fang’s throat.
The bull-dog missed by a hair’s-breadth, and cries of praise went up as
White Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the opposite direction.

The time went by. White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling, leaping in
and out, and ever inflicting damage. And still the bull-dog, with grim
certitude, toiled after him. Sooner or later he would accomplish his purpose,
get the grip that would win the battle. In the meantime, he accepted all the
punishment the other could deal him. His tufts of ears had become tassels, his
neck and shoulders were slashed in a score of places, and his very lips were
cut and bleeding—all from these lightning snaps that were beyond his
foreseeing and guarding.

Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet; but the
difference in their height was too great. Cherokee was too squat, too close to
the ground. White Fang tried the trick once too often. The chance came in one
of his quick doublings and counter-circlings. He caught Cherokee with head
turned away as he whirled more slowly. His shoulder was exposed. White Fang
drove in upon it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with
such force that his momentum carried him on across over the other’s body.
For the first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his
footing. His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed
on his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to
bring his feet to the earth. As it was, he struck heavily on his side. The next
instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee’s teeth closed
on his throat.

It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee held
on. White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to shake off
the bull-dog’s body. It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging weight.
It bound his movements, restricted his freedom. It was like the trap, and all
his instinct resented it and revolted against it. It was a mad revolt. For
several minutes he was to all intents insane. The basic life that was in him
took charge of him. The will to exist of his body surged over him. He was
dominated by this mere flesh-love of life. All intelligence was gone. It was as
though he had no brain. His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the
flesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for
movement was the expression of its existence.

Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to shake
off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat. The bull-dog did little
but keep his grip. Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to get his feet to the
earth and for a moment to brace himself against White Fang. But the next moment
his footing would be lost and he would be dragging around in the whirl of one
of White Fang’s mad gyrations. Cherokee identified himself with his
instinct. He knew that he was doing the right thing by holding on, and there
came to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction. At such moments he even
closed his eyes and allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither,
willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might thereby come to it. That did not
count. The grip was the thing, and the grip he kept.

White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out. He could do nothing, and
he could not understand. Never, in all his fighting, had this thing happened.
The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way. With them it was snap and
slash and get away, snap and slash and get away. He lay partly on his side,
panting for breath. Cherokee still holding his grip, urged against him, trying
to get him over entirely on his side. White Fang resisted, and he could feel
the jaws shifting their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a
chewing movement. Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat. The
bull-dog’s method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favoured
to work in for more. Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet. When
White Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on.

The bulging back of Cherokee’s neck was the only portion of his body that
White Fang’s teeth could reach. He got hold toward the base where the
neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method of
fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it. He spasmodically ripped and tore
with his fangs for a space. Then a change in their position diverted him. The
bull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and still hanging on to his
throat, was on top of him. Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in,
and, with the feet digging into his enemy’s abdomen above him, he began
to claw with long tearing-strokes. Cherokee might well have been disembowelled
had he not quickly pivoted on his grip and got his body off of White
Fang’s and at right angles to it.

There was no escaping that grip. It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable.
Slowly it shifted up along the jugular. All that saved White Fang from death
was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it. This served
to form a large roll in Cherokee’s mouth, the fur of which well-nigh
defied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting
more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowly
throttling White Fang. The latter’s breath was drawn with greater and
greater difficulty as the moments went by.

It began to look as though the battle were over. The backers of Cherokee waxed
jubilant and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang’s backers were
correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one,
though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one. This man was
Beauty Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at White
Fang. Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced the
desired effect. White Fang went wild with rage. He called up his reserves of
strength, and gained his feet. As he struggled around the ring, the fifty
pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic.
The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before the
will of his flesh to live. Round and round and back again, stumbling and
falling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his
foe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.

At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptly
shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-folded
flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause went
up for the victor, and there were many cries of “Cherokee!”
“Cherokee!” To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the
stump of his tail. But the clamour of approval did not distract him. There was
no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws. The one might
wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang’s throat.

It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators. There was a jingle
of bells. Dog-mushers’ cries were heard. Everybody, save Beauty Smith,
looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them. But they saw,
up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and dogs. They were
evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting trip. At sight of the
crowd they stopped their dogs and came over and joined it, curious to see the
cause of the excitement. The dog-musher wore a moustache, but the other, a
taller and younger man, was smooth-shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding of
his blood and the running in the frosty air.

White Fang had practically ceased struggling. Now and again he resisted
spasmodically and to no purpose. He could get little air, and that little grew
less and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened. In spite of his
armour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have long since been torn
open, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so low down as to be
practically on the chest. It had taken Cherokee a long time to shift that grip
upward, and this had also tended further to clog his jaws with fur and
skin-fold.

In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into his
brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at best. When he
saw White Fang’s eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond doubt that the
fight was lost. Then he broke loose. He sprang upon White Fang and began
savagely to kick him. There were hisses from the crowd and cries of protest,
but that was all. While this went on, and Beauty Smith continued to kick White
Fang, there was a commotion in the crowd. The tall young newcomer was forcing
his way through, shouldering men right and left without ceremony or gentleness.
When he broke through into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act of
delivering another kick. All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a state
of unstable equilibrium. At that moment the newcomer’s fist landed a
smashing blow full in his face. Beauty Smith’s remaining leg left the
ground, and his whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned over
backward and struck the snow. The newcomer turned upon the crowd.

“You cowards!” he cried. “You beasts!”

He was in a rage himself—a sane rage. His grey eyes seemed metallic and
steel-like as they flashed upon the crowd. Beauty Smith regained his feet and
came toward him, sniffling and cowardly. The new-comer did not understand. He
did not know how abject a coward the other was, and thought he was coming back
intent on fighting. So, with a “You beast!” he smashed Beauty Smith
over backward with a second blow in the face. Beauty Smith decided that the
snow was the safest place for him, and lay where he had fallen, making no
effort to get up.

“Come on, Matt, lend a hand,” the newcomer called the dog-musher,
who had followed him into the ring.

Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull when
Cherokee’s jaws should be loosened. This the younger man endeavoured to
accomplish by clutching the bulldog’s jaws in his hands and trying to
spread them. It was a vain undertaking. As he pulled and tugged and wrenched,
he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath, “Beasts!”

The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting against the
spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the newcomer lifted his head
from his work for a moment and glared at them.

“You damn beasts!” he finally exploded, and went back to his task.

“It’s no use, Mr. Scott, you can’t break ’m apart that
way,” Matt said at last.

The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs.

“Ain’t bleedin’ much,” Matt announced.
“Ain’t got all the way in yet.”

“But he’s liable to any moment,” Scott answered.
“There, did you see that! He shifted his grip in a bit.”

The younger man’s excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing.
He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again. But that did not
loosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in advertisement that he
understood the meaning of the blows, but that he knew he was himself in the
right and only doing his duty by keeping his grip.

“Won’t some of you help?” Scott cried desperately at the
crowd.

But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him on
and showered him with facetious advice.

“You’ll have to get a pry,” Matt counselled.

The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and tried to
thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog’s jaws. He shoved, and shoved
hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could be
distinctly heard. Both men were on their knees, bending over the dogs. Tim
Keenan strode into the ring. He paused beside Scott and touched him on the
shoulder, saying ominously:

“Don’t break them teeth, stranger.”

“Then I’ll break his neck,” Scott retorted, continuing his
shoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle.

“I said don’t break them teeth,” the faro-dealer repeated
more ominously than before.

But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work. Scott never desisted from
his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked:

“Your dog?”

The faro-dealer grunted.

“Then get in here and break this grip.”

“Well, stranger,” the other drawled irritatingly, “I
don’t mind telling you that’s something I ain’t worked out
for myself. I don’t know how to turn the trick.”

“Then get out of the way,” was the reply, “and don’t
bother me. I’m busy.”

Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice of his
presence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, and
was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished,
he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt,
a bit at a time, extricated White Fang’s mangled neck.

“Stand by to receive your dog,” was Scott’s peremptory order
to Cherokee’s owner.

The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee.

“Now!” Scott warned, giving the final pry.

The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously.

“Take him away,” Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee
back into the crowd.

White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet,
but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank back
into the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy.
His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, draggled and limp.
To all appearances he looked like a dog that had been strangled to death. Matt
examined him.

“Just about all in,” he announced; “but he’s
breathin’ all right.”

Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang.

“Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?” Scott asked.

The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang, calculated for
a moment.

“Three hundred dollars,” he answered.

“And how much for one that’s all chewed up like this one?”
Scott asked, nudging White Fang with his foot.

“Half of that,” was the dog-musher’s judgment. Scott turned
upon Beauty Smith.

“Did you hear, Mr. Beast? I’m going to take your dog from you, and
I’m going to give you a hundred and fifty for him.”

He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills.

Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the proffered
money.

“I ain’t a-sellin’,” he said.

“Oh, yes you are,” the other assured him. “Because I’m
buying. Here’s your money. The dog’s mine.”

Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away.

Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike. Beauty Smith cowered
down in anticipation of the blow.

“I’ve got my rights,” he whimpered.

“You’ve forfeited your rights to own that dog,” was the
rejoinder. “Are you going to take the money? or do I have to hit you
again?”

“All right,” Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear.
“But I take the money under protest,” he added. “The
dog’s a mint. I ain’t a-goin’ to be robbed. A man’s got
his rights.”

“Correct,” Scott answered, passing the money over to him. “A
man’s got his rights. But you’re not a man. You’re a
beast.”

“Wait till I get back to Dawson,” Beauty Smith threatened.
“I’ll have the law on you.”

“If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I’ll have you
run out of town. Understand?”

Beauty Smith replied with a grunt.

“Understand?” the other thundered with abrupt fierceness.

“Yes,” Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir,” Beauty Smith snarled.

“Look out! He’ll bite!” some one shouted, and a guffaw of
laughter went up.

Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who was
working over White Fang.

Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking on and
talking. Tim Keenan joined one of the groups.

“Who’s that mug?” he asked.

“Weedon Scott,” some one answered.

“And who in hell is Weedon Scott?” the faro-dealer demanded.

“Oh, one of them crackerjack minin’ experts. He’s in with all
the big bugs. If you want to keep out of trouble, you’ll steer clear of
him, that’s my talk. He’s all hunky with the officials. The Gold
Commissioner’s a special pal of his.”

“I thought he must be somebody,” was the faro-dealer’s
comment. “That’s why I kept my hands offen him at the start.”

CHAPTER V
THE INDOMITABLE

“It’s hopeless,” Weedon Scott confessed.

He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who responded
with a shrug that was equally hopeless.

Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain,
bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs. Having
received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of a
club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then they
were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence.

“It’s a wolf and there’s no taming it,” Weedon Scott
announced.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Matt objected. “Might be
a lot of dog in ’m, for all you can tell. But there’s one thing I
know sure, an’ that there’s no gettin’ away from.”

The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain.

“Well, don’t be a miser with what you know,” Scott said
sharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. “Spit it out. What is
it?”

The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.

“Wolf or dog, it’s all the same—he’s ben tamed
’ready.”

“No!”

“I tell you yes, an’ broke to harness. Look close there. D’ye
see them marks across the chest?”

“You’re right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold
of him.”

“And there’s not much reason against his bein’ a sled-dog
again.”

“What d’ye think?” Scott queried eagerly. Then the hope died
down as he added, shaking his head, “We’ve had him two weeks now,
and if anything he’s wilder than ever at the present moment.”

“Give ’m a chance,” Matt counselled. “Turn ’m
loose for a spell.”

The other looked at him incredulously.

“Yes,” Matt went on, “I know you’ve tried to, but you
didn’t take a club.”

“You try it then.”

The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal. White Fang
watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip of its
trainer.

“See ’m keep his eye on that club,” Matt said.
“That’s a good sign. He’s no fool. Don’t dast tackle me
so long as I got that club handy. He’s not clean crazy, sure.”

As the man’s hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled
and crouched down. But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the same time
contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand, suspended threateningly
above him. Matt unsnapped the chain from the collar and stepped back.

White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free. Many months had gone by
since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period he
had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed to
fight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always been
imprisoned again.

He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods was
about to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to be
assailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all so
unprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods,
and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He was
plainly perplexed, and he came back again, pausing a dozen feet away and
regarding the two men intently.

“Won’t he run away?” his new owner asked.

Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Got to take a gamble. Only way to find out
is to find out.”

“Poor devil,” Scott murmured pityingly. “What he needs is
some show of human kindness,” he added, turning and going into the cabin.

He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang. He sprang away
from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously.

“Hi-yu, Major!” Matt shouted warningly, but too late.

Major had made a spring for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it,
White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but quicker than he
was White Fang. Major staggered to his feet, but the blood spouting from his
throat reddened the snow in a widening path.

“It’s too bad, but it served him right,” Scott said hastily.

But Matt’s foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang. There
was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation. White Fang, snarling
fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and
investigated his leg.

“He got me all right,” he announced, pointing to the torn trousers
and undercloths, and the growing stain of red.

“I told you it was hopeless, Matt,” Scott said in a discouraged
voice. “I’ve thought about it off and on, while not wanting to
think of it. But we’ve come to it now. It’s the only thing to
do.”

As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open the
cylinder, and assured himself of its contents.

“Look here, Mr. Scott,” Matt objected; “that dog’s ben
through hell. You can’t expect ’m to come out a white an’
shinin’ angel. Give ’m time.”

“Look at Major,” the other rejoined.

The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog. He had sunk down on the snow in the
circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp.

“Served ’m right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to take
White Fang’s meat, an’ he’s dead-O. That was to be expected.
I wouldn’t give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn’t fight
for his own meat.”

“But look at yourself, Matt. It’s all right about the dogs, but we
must draw the line somewhere.”

“Served me right,” Matt argued stubbornly. “What’d I
want to kick ’m for? You said yourself that he’d done right. Then I
had no right to kick ’m.”

“It would be a mercy to kill him,” Scott insisted.
“He’s untamable.”

“Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin’ chance.
He ain’t had no chance yet. He’s just come through hell, an’
this is the first time he’s ben loose. Give ’m a fair chance,
an’ if he don’t deliver the goods, I’ll kill ’m myself.
There!”

“God knows I don’t want to kill him or have him killed,”
Scott answered, putting away the revolver. “We’ll let him run loose
and see what kindness can do for him. And here’s a try at it.”

He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and soothingly.

“Better have a club handy,” Matt warned.

Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang’s confidence.

White Fang was suspicious. Something was impending. He had killed this
god’s dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected
than some terrible punishment? But in the face of it he was indomitable. He
bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary and
prepared for anything. The god had no club, so he suffered him to approach
quite near. The god’s hand had come out and was descending upon his head.
White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under it. Here was
danger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, their
proved mastery, their cunning to hurt. Besides, there was his old antipathy to
being touched. He snarled more menacingly, crouched still lower, and still the
hand descended. He did not want to bite the hand, and he endured the peril of
it until his instinct surged up in him, mastering him with its insatiable
yearning for life.

Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash.
But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with
the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.

Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding it
tightly in his other hand. Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to his side.
White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing his fangs, his
eyes malignant with menace. Now he could expect a beating as fearful as any he
had received from Beauty Smith.

“Here! What are you doing?” Scott cried suddenly.

Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle.

“Nothin’,” he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was
assumed, “only goin’ to keep that promise I made. I reckon
it’s up to me to kill ’m as I said I’d do.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do. Watch me.”

As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now Weedon
Scott’s turn to plead.

“You said to give him a chance. Well, give it to him. We’ve only
just started, and we can’t quit at the beginning. It served me right,
this time. And—look at him!”

White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling with
blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-musher.

“Well, I’ll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!” was the
dog-musher’s expression of astonishment.

“Look at the intelligence of him,” Scott went on hastily. “He
knows the meaning of firearms as well as you do. He’s got intelligence
and we’ve got to give that intelligence a chance. Put up the gun.”

“All right, I’m willin’,” Matt agreed, leaning the
rifle against the woodpile.

“But will you look at that!” he exclaimed the next moment.

White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling. “This is worth
investigatin’. Watch.”

Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. He
stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang’s lifted lips descended,
covering his teeth.

“Now, just for fun.”

Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. White
Fang’s snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement
approached its culmination. But the moment before the rifle came to a level on
him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin. Matt stood staring
along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by White
Fang.

The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his
employer.

“I agree with you, Mr. Scott. That dog’s too intelligent to
kill.”

CHAPTER VI
THE LOVE-MASTER

As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to
advertise that he would not submit to punishment. Twenty-four hours had passed
since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held up by a sling
to keep the blood out of it. In the past White Fang had experienced delayed
punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was about to befall him. How
could it be otherwise? He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk his
fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god at
that. In the nature of things, and of intercourse with gods, something terrible
awaited him.

The god sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous in
that. When the gods administered punishment they stood on their legs. Besides,
this god had no club, no whip, no firearm. And furthermore, he himself was
free. No chain nor stick bound him. He could escape into safety while the god
was scrambling to his feet. In the meantime he would wait and see.

The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang’s snarl slowly
dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased. Then the god
spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang’s
neck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostile
movement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unison
with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice.
But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang had
never been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentleness
that somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all the
pricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this
god. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with
men.

After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scanned
him apprehensively when he came out. He had neither whip nor club nor weapon.
Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding something. He sat down as
before, in the same spot, several feet away. He held out a small piece of meat.
White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look
at the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his
body tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility.

Still the punishment delayed. The god merely held near to his nose a piece of
meat. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fang
suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts
of the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all-wise, and there was no
telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece
of meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and
punishment had often been disastrously related.

In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang’s feet. He
smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he
kept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth and
swallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him another
piece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was
tossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time when
the god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered
it.

The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitely
cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat
the meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his head
forward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting on
his neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not to
be trifled with. He ate the meat, and nothing happened. Piece by piece, he ate
all the meat, and nothing happened. Still the punishment delayed.

He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice was
kindness—something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. And
within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before.
He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being
gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again came
the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were ever
crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends.

Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god’s hand, cunning to
hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went on
talking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, the
voice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand
inspired distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. It
seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting,
holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-forces that struggled
within him for mastery.

He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neither
snapped nor sprang away. The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It
touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed
down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering,
he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that
touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the
evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of the
god, and he strove to submit.

The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. This
continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it. And every
time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a cavernous growl surged
in his throat. White Fang growled and growled with insistent warning. By this
means he announced that he was prepared to retaliate for any hurt he might
receive. There was no telling when the god’s ulterior motive might be
disclosed. At any moment that soft, confidence-inspiring voice might break
forth in a roar of wrath, that gentle and caressing hand transform itself into
a vice-like grip to hold him helpless and administer punishment.

But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non-hostile
pats. White Fang experienced dual feelings. It was distasteful to his instinct.
It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward personal liberty. And yet it
was not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant, in a
physical way. The patting movement slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of
the ears about their bases, and the physical pleasure even increased a little.
Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil,
alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost
and swayed him.

“Well, I’ll be gosh-swoggled!”

So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of dirty
dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by the sight
of Weedon Scott patting White Fang.

At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarling
savagely at him.

Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.

“If you don’t mind my expressin’ my feelin’s, Mr.
Scott, I’ll make free to say you’re seventeen kinds of a damn fool
an’ all of ’em different, an’ then some.”

Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over to
White Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put out
his hand, rested it on White Fang’s head, and resumed the interrupted
patting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not upon
the man that patted him, but upon the man that stood in the doorway.

“You may be a number one, tip-top minin’ expert, all right all
right,” the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, “but you
missed the chance of your life when you was a boy an’ didn’t run
off an’ join a circus.”

White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap away
from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his neck with
long, soothing strokes.

It was the beginning of the end for White Fang—the ending of the old life
and the reign of hate. A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was dawning. It
required much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott to
accomplish this. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than a
revolution. He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason,
defy experience, give the lie to life itself.

Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that he now
did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he now abandoned
himself. In short, when all things were considered, he had to achieve an
orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the time he came
voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his lord. At that time
he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb of
circumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb of
circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and
hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable.
To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the
plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough
and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine
texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and
all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions,
dislikes, and desires.

Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that
pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remoulding it
into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to the
roots of White Fang’s nature, and with kindness touched to life potencies
that had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was love.
It took the place of like, which latter had been the highest feeling
that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods.

But this love did not come in a day. It began with like and out of it
slowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to remain
loose, because he liked this new god. This was certainly better than the life
he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was necessary that he should
have some god. The lordship of man was a need of his nature. The seal of his
dependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he turned his
back on the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver’s feet to receive the
expected beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and ineradicably,
on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine was over and there was
fish once more in the village of Grey Beaver.

And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to Beauty
Smith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of fealty, he proceeded to take
upon himself the guardianship of his master’s property. He prowled about
the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night-visitor to the cabin
fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But White
Fang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraise
the true value of step and carriage. The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the
direct line to the cabin door, he let alone—though he watched him
vigilantly until the door opened and he received the endorsement of the master.
But the man who went softly, by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking
after secrecy—that was the man who received no suspension of judgment
from White Fang, and who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.

Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang—or rather,
of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of
principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt
incurred by man and that it must be paid. So he went out of his way to be
especially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he made it a point to caress and
pet White Fang, and to do it at length.

At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting. But
there was one thing that he never outgrew—his growling. Growl he would,
from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a new
note in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the
growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking
and blood-curdling. But White Fang’s throat had become harsh-fibred from
the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little
rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of
that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon
Scott’s ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but
drowned in the fierceness—the note that was the faintest hint of a croon
of content and that none but he could hear.

As the days went by, the evolution of like into love was
accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his
consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void
in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled.
It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the
new god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild,
keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the
unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its
emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.

White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity of
his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had formed him, his
nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a burgeoning within him of
strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old code of conduct was changing.
In the past he had liked comfort and surcease from pain, disliked discomfort
and pain, and he had adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it was
different. Because of this new feeling within him, he ofttimes elected
discomfort and pain for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning,
instead of roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait
for hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god’s face. At
night, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the warm
sleeping-place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly
snap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he would
forego to be with his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him
down into the town.

Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet dropped
down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of his
deeps had come the new thing—love. That which was given unto him did he
return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose
light White Fang’s nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, to
become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too
strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence,
aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could not
now learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way,
never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to
meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there.
His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent
adoration. Only by the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and
by the unceasing following with his eyes of his god’s every movement.
Also, at times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an
awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express
itself and his physical inability to express it.

He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life. It was borne
in upon him that he must let his master’s dogs alone. Yet his dominant
nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an acknowledgment
of his superiority and leadership. This accomplished, he had little trouble
with them. They gave trail to him when he came and went or walked among them,
and when he asserted his will they obeyed.

In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt—as a possession of his master.
His master rarely fed him. Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fang
divined that it was his master’s food he ate and that it was his master
who thus fed him vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harness
and make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not until
Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him, that he understood.
He took it as his master’s will that Matt should drive him and work him
just as he drove and worked his master’s other dogs.

Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with runners
under them. And different was the method of driving the dogs. There was no
fan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another,
hauling on double traces. And here, in the Klondike, the leader was indeed the
leader. The wisest as well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyed
him and feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain this post was
inevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after much
inconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt
backed his judgment with strong language after the experiment had been tried.
But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the
guarding of his master’s property in the night. Thus he was on duty all
the time, ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.

“Makin’ free to spit out what’s in me,” Matt said one
day, “I beg to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the
price you did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of
pushin’ his face in with your fist.”

A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott’s grey eyes, and he
muttered savagely, “The beast!”

In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, the
love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang was unversed in
such things and did not understand the packing of a grip. He remembered
afterwards that his packing had preceded the master’s disappearance; but
at the time he suspected nothing. That night he waited for the master to
return. At midnight the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rear
of the cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the first
sound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him
out to the cold front stoop, where he crouched, and waited.

But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped outside.
White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no common speech by which he might
learn what he wanted to know. The days came and went, but never the master.
White Fang, who had never known sickness in his life, became sick. He became
very sick, so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring him inside the
cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White
Fang.

Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the following:

“That dam wolf won’t work. Won’t eat. Aint got no spunk left.
All the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and I
don’t know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die.”

It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and allowed
every dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay on the floor near the
stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life. Matt might talk gently
to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he never did more than turn his
dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head back to its customary position on
his fore-paws.

And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and mumbled
sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had got upon his feet,
his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening intently. A moment
later, Matt heard a footstep. The door opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. The
two men shook hands. Then Scott looked around the room.

“Where’s the wolf?” he asked.

Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the stove. He
had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching and
waiting.

“Holy smoke!” Matt exclaimed. “Look at ’m wag his
tail!”

Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time calling
him. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet quickly. He was
awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near, his eyes took on a
strange expression. Something, an incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose up
into his eyes as a light and shone forth.

“He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!” Matt
commented.

Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels, face to face
with White Fang and petting him—rubbing at the roots of the ears, making
long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the spine gently
with the balls of his fingers. And White Fang was growling responsively, the
crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.

But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever surging and
struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new mode of expression. He
suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his way in between the
master’s arm and body. And here, confined, hidden from view all except
his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge and snuggle.

The two men looked at each other. Scott’s eyes were shining.

“Gosh!” said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.

A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, “I always
insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at ’m!”

With the return of the love-master, White Fang’s recovery was rapid. Two
nights and a day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled-dogs
had forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which was his
weakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, they
sprang upon him.

“Talk about your rough-houses,” Matt murmured gleefully, standing
in the doorway and looking on.

“Give ’m hell, you wolf! Give ’m hell!—an’ then
some!”

White Fang did not need the encouragement. The return of the love-master was
enough. Life was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He fought
from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he felt and that
otherwise was without speech. There could be but one ending. The team dispersed
in ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs came
sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty to
White Fang.

Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It was the final
word. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of which he had always been
particularly jealous was his head. He had always disliked to have it touched.
It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise
to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct
that that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his snuggling was
the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness.
It was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as
though he said: “I put myself into thy hands. Work thou thy will with
me.”

One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of cribbage
preliminary to going to bed. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an’ a pair
makes six,” Mat was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound of
snarling without. They looked at each other as they started to rise to their
feet.

“The wolf’s nailed somebody,” Matt said.

A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.

“Bring a light!” Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.

Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his back
in the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face and
throat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang’s teeth. And
there was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on
the most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the
coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the
arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood.

All this the two men saw in the first instant. The next instant Weedon Scott
had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggled
and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at a
sharp word from the master.

Matt helped the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms,
exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of him
precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up live
fire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caught
sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face.

At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow. He held the lamp
close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer’s
benefit—a steel dog-chain and a stout club.

Weedon Scott saw and nodded. Not a word was spoken. The dog-musher laid his
hand on Beauty Smith’s shoulder and faced him to the right about. No word
needed to be spoken. Beauty Smith started.

In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to him.

“Tried to steal you, eh? And you wouldn’t have it! Well, well, he
made a mistake, didn’t he?”

“Must ‘a’ thought he had hold of seventeen devils,” the
dog-musher sniggered.

White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair
slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his throat.

PART V

CHAPTER I
THE LONG TRAIL

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there was
tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a change
was impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming
event from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed
their intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though
he never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains.

“Listen to that, will you!” the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one
night.

Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like a
sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff,
as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yet
taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight.

“I do believe that wolf’s on to you,” the dog-musher said.

Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded,
though this was given the lie by his words.

“What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?” he demanded.

“That’s what I say,” Matt answered. “What the devil can
you do with a wolf in California?”

But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in a
non-committal sort of way.

“White man’s dogs would have no show against him,” Scott went
on. “He’d kill them on sight. If he didn’t bankrupt me with
damaged suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocute
him.”

“He’s a downright murderer, I know,” was the
dog-musher’s comment.

Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously.

“It would never do,” he said decisively.

“It would never do!” Matt concurred. “Why you’d have to
hire a man ’specially to take care of ’m.”

The other’s suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence that
followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long,
questing sniff.

“There’s no denyin’ he thinks a hell of a lot of you,”
Matt said.

The other glared at him in sudden wrath. “Damn it all, man! I know my own
mind and what’s best!”

“I’m agreein’ with you, only . . . ”

“Only what?” Scott snapped out.

“Only . . . ” the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind
and betrayed a rising anger of his own. “Well, you needn’t get so
all-fired het up about it. Judgin’ by your actions one’d think you
didn’t know your own mind.”

Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently:
“You are right, Matt. I don’t know my own mind, and that’s
what’s the trouble.”

“Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog
along,” he broke out after another pause.

“I’m agreein’ with you,” was Matt’s answer, and
again his employer was not quite satisfied with him.

“But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you’re
goin’ is what gets me,” the dog-musher continued innocently.

“It’s beyond me, Matt,” Scott answered, with a mournful shake
of the head.

Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal
grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there were
comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexed
with strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White
Fang had already scented it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for
another flight. And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he
could look to be left behind.

That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days,
when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naught
but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver’s tepee, so now he
pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe.

Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.

“He’s gone off his food again,” Matt remarked from his bunk.

There was a grunt from Weedon Scott’s bunk, and a stir of blankets.

“From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn’t
wonder this time but what he died.”

The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.

“Oh, shut up!” Scott cried out through the darkness. “You nag
worse than a woman.”

“I’m agreein’ with you,” the dog-musher answered, and
Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered.

The next day White Fang’s anxiety and restlessness were even more
pronounced. He dogged his master’s heels whenever he left the cabin, and
haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he could
catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had been joined by two
large canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the master’s blankets and
fur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang whined as he watched the
operation.

Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they shouldered the
luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and the
grip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin.
After a time, Matt returned. The master came to the door and called White Fang
inside.

“You poor devil,” he said gently, rubbing White Fang’s ears
and tapping his spine. “I’m hitting the long trail, old man, where
you cannot follow. Now give me a growl—the last, good, good-bye
growl.”

But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful, searching look,
he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master’s arm
and body.

“There she blows!” Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarse
bellowing of a river steamboat. “You’ve got to cut it short. Be
sure and lock the front door. I’ll go out the back. Get a move on!”

The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to
come around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing.
Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs.

“You must take good care of him, Matt,” Scott said, as they started
down the hill. “Write and let me know how he gets along.”

“Sure,” the dog-musher answered. “But listen to that, will
you!”

Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters lie
dead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great
heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward
again with a rush upon rush of grief.

The Aurora was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her
decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, all
equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the
Inside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who was
preparing to go ashore. But Matt’s hand went limp in the other’s
grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him. Scott
turned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully was
White Fang.

The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only look in
wonder.

“Did you lock the front door?” Matt demanded. The other nodded, and
asked, “How about the back?”

“You just bet I did,” was the fervent reply.

White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, making
no attempt to approach.

“I’ll have to take ’m ashore with me.”

Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away from
him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legs
of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eluding
the other’s efforts to capture him.

But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience.

“Won’t come to the hand that’s fed ’m all these
months,” the dog-musher muttered resentfully. “And you—you
ain’t never fed ’m after them first days of gettin’
acquainted. I’m blamed if I can see how he works it out that you’re
the boss.”

Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed out
fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes.

Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang’s belly.

“We plump forgot the window. He’s all cut an’ gouged
underneath. Must ‘a’ butted clean through it, b’gosh!”

But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The
Aurora’s whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men
were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana from
his own neck and started to put it around White Fang’s. Scott grasped the
dog-musher’s hand.

“Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf—you needn’t write.
You see, I’ve . . . !”

“What!” the dog-musher exploded. “You don’t mean to say
. . .?”

“The very thing I mean. Here’s your bandana. I’ll write to
you about him.”

Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.

“He’ll never stand the climate!” he shouted back.
“Unless you clip ’m in warm weather!”

The gang-plank was hauled in, and the Aurora swung out from the bank.
Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang,
standing by his side.

“Now growl, damn you, growl,” he said, as he patted the responsive
head and rubbed the flattening ears.

CHAPTER II
THE SOUTHLAND

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in
him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associated
power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as
now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had
known were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded with
perils—waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge
trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the
midst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had
known in the northern woods.

All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was
man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery
over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him.
As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the
day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in
his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and
puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them.
The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the
tremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt
his dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter
what happened never losing sight of him.

But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city—an
experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him for
long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chained
in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny
god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging them
in through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out of
the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them.

And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Or
at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the
master’s canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount
guard over them.

“’Bout time you come,” growled the god of the car, an hour
later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. “That dog of yourn
won’t let me lay a finger on your stuff.”

White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was
gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he had
entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city had
disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was
smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little
time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the
unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way.

There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. The
woman’s arms went out and clutched the master around the neck—a
hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace and
closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon.

“It’s all right, mother,” Scott was saying as he kept tight
hold of White Fang and placated him. “He thought you were going to injure
me, and he wouldn’t stand for it. It’s all right. It’s all
right. He’ll learn soon enough.”

“And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is
not around,” she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright.

She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently.

“He’ll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement,”
Scott said.

He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice became
firm.

“Down, sir! Down with you!”

This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang
obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly.

“Now, mother.”

Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang.

“Down!” he warned. “Down!”

White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and
watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embrace
from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken into
the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang
pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horses
and warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god they
dragged so swiftly across the earth.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gateway
and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On either
side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by great
sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green of
the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond were
the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the first
soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed
house.

Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the
carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright-eyed,
sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and the
master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristled
as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He halted
with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against his
momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding
contact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and the
law of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would require
nothing less than a violation of his instinct.

But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no such
instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of the
Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her a
wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the time
sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he
abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprang
upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but
beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with
self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that,
and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him and
the way he wanted to go.

“Here, Collie!” called the strange man in the carriage.

Weedon Scott laughed.

“Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn
many things, and it’s just as well that he begins now. He’ll adjust
himself all right.”

The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang’s way. He
tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she
ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her
two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other
lawn, and again she headed him off.

The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it
disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed another
circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her.
It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely.
Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled
along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing
gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation.

White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. She
took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and when
it came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ran
frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort she
was making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from
her silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground.

As he rounded the house to the porte-cochère, he came upon the carriage.
It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running at
top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It was
a deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was going
too fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was
his forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the
ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle of
malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth
clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound’s soft throat.

The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that saved
the hound’s life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatal
stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She had
been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having been
unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of a
tornado—made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive
hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles
in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled
over.

The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, while
the father called off the dogs.

“I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the
Arctic,” the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his
caressing hand. “In all his life he’s only been known once to go
off his feet, and here he’s been rolled twice in thirty seconds.”

The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out the
house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women,
perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. White
Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come of
it, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These gods
also made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the
master did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in
close against the master’s legs and received reassuring pats on the head.

The hound, under the command, “Dick! Lie down, sir!” had gone up
the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a
sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of the
woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; but
Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged by
the permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making a
mistake.

All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followed
closely at the master’s heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and White
Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back.

“Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out,”
suggested Scott’s father. “After that they’ll be
friends.”

“Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner
at the funeral,” laughed the master.

The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, and
finally at his son.

“You mean . . .?”

Weedon nodded his head. “I mean just that. You’d have a dead Dick
inside one minute—two minutes at the farthest.”

He turned to White Fang. “Come on, you wolf. It’s you that’ll
have to come inside.”

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

CHAPTER III
THE GOD’S DOMAIN

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

Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after which
he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises. Had Dick had his
way, they would have been good friends; 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,” interposed Beth.

Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the table.
Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement.

“All right.” Weedon Scott pondered for a moment. “And if, at
the end of the afternoon White Fang hasn’t harmed a chicken, for every
ten minutes of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him,
gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench and
solemnly passing judgment, ‘White Fang, you are smarter than I
thought.’”

From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance. But it was a
fizzle. Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White Fang lay
down and went to sleep. Once he got up and walked over to the trough for a
drink of water. The chickens he calmly ignored. So far as he was concerned they
did not exist. At four o’clock he executed a running jump, gained the
roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the ground outside, whence he sauntered
gravely to the house. He had learned the law. And on the porch, before the
delighted family, Judge Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly and
solemnly, sixteen times, “White Fang, you are smarter than I
thought.”

But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often brought
him into disgrace. He had to learn that he must not touch the chickens that
belonged to other gods. Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; all
these he must let alone. In fact, when he had but partly learned the law, his
impression was that he must leave all live things alone. Out in the
back-pasture, a quail could flutter up under his nose unharmed. All tense and
trembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood still.
He was obeying the will of the gods.

And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start a
jackrabbit and run it. The master himself was looking on and did not interfere.
Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase. And thus he learned that
there was no taboo on jackrabbits. In the end he worked out the complete law.
Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If not
amity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals—the
squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never
yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was only
the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not
permitted. The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, and
the gods were jealous of their power.

Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of the
Northland. And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation
was control, restraint—a poise of self that was as delicate as the
fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. Life had a
thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all—thus, when he
went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about the
streets when the carriage stopped. Life flowed past him, deep and wide and
varied, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and
endless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to
suppress his natural impulses.

There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach. This meat he must not
touch. There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be let alone.
And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that he must not attack.
And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whose
attention he attracted. They would stop and look at him, point him out to one
another, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him. And these
perilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure. Yet this
endurance he achieved. Furthermore, he got over being awkward and
self-conscious. In a lofty way he received the attentions of the multitudes of
strange gods. With condescension he accepted their condescension. On the other
hand, there was something about him that prevented great familiarity. They
patted him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their own
daring.

But it was not all easy for White Fang. Running behind the carriage in the
outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a practice of
flinging stones at him. Yet he knew that it was not permitted him to pursue and
drag them down. Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of
self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and
qualifying himself for civilisation.

Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement. He had
no abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there is a certain sense of
equity that resides in life, and it was this sense in him that resented the
unfairness of his being permitted no defence against the stone-throwers. He
forgot that in the covenant entered into between him and the gods they were
pledged to care for him and defend him. But one day the master sprang from the
carriage, whip in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After that
they threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied.

One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way to town, hanging
around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice of
rushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting,
the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must not
fight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard put
whenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, his
snarl kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping
and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time. The men at the
saloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang. One day they openly sicked
the dogs on him. The master stopped the carriage.

“Go to it,” he said to White Fang.

But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master, and he looked at the
dogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the master.

The master nodded his head. “Go to them, old fellow. Eat them up.”

White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently among his
enemies. All three faced him. There was a great snarling and growling, a
clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a cloud
and screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs were
struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch,
went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed,
sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and
without noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the dog.

With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased. The word went up
and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not molest the
Fighting Wolf.

CHAPTER IV
THE CALL OF KIND

The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in the
Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he
in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Human
kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower
planted in good soil.

And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law even
better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the law
more punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurking
ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely
slept.

He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind was
concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under the
persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty
Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of his
life had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to the
human.

Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in them
their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always with snarl and
growl and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand, learned that it was not
necessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked fangs and writhing lips were
uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing dog back
on its haunches.

But there was one trial in White Fang’s life—Collie. She never gave
him a moment’s peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She
defied all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang.
Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never
forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the belief
that his intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the act, and treated
him accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a policeman following him
around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously
at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. His
favourite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws,
and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her.

With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He had
learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, and
calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostile
environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. In
time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, faded away.
Life was soft and easy. It flowed along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe
lurked by the way.

He missed the snow without being aware of it. “An unduly long
summer,” would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was,
he merely missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion,
especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experienced
faint longings for the Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was to
make him uneasy and restless without his knowing what was the matter.

White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and the
throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressing
his love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He had always been
susceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him with
madness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angry
with the love-master, and when that god elected to laugh at him in a
good-natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He could feel the pricking and
stinging of the old anger as it strove to rise up in him, but it strove against
love. He could not be angry; yet he had to do something. At first he was
dignified, and the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be more
dignified, and the master laughed harder than before. In the end, the master
laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted a
little, and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into his
eyes. He had learned to laugh.

Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and rolled
over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he feigned
anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth together in
snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he never forgot
himself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At the end of such
a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were fast and furious, they would
break off suddenly and stand several feet apart, glaring at each other. And
then, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on a stormy sea, they would begin
to laugh. This would always culminate with the master’s arms going around
White Fang’s neck and shoulders while the latter crooned and growled his
love-song.

But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on
his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane
were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no
reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there,
everybody’s property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart
and refused to cheapen himself or his love.

The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was one of
White Fang’s chief duties in life. In the Northland he had evidenced his
fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nor
did dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered fealty in the new way, by
running with the master’s horse. The longest day never played White Fang
out. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless and effortless, and at the
end of fifty miles he would come in jauntily ahead of the horse.

It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other mode
of expression—remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his life. The
first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited thoroughbred
the method of opening and closing gates without the rider’s dismounting.
Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up to the gate in the effort
to close it and each time the horse became frightened and backed and plunged
away. It grew more nervous and excited every moment. When it reared, the master
put the spurs to it and made it drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it
would begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance with
increasing anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in
front of the horse and barked savagely and warningly.

Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him, he
succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master’s presence. A
scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the
horse’s feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken
leg for the master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the
throat of the offending horse, but was checked by the master’s voice.

“Home! Go home!” the master commanded when he had ascertained his
injury.

White Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of writing a note,
but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again he commanded White
Fang to go home.

The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and whined
softly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he cocked his ears,
and listened with painful intentness.

“That’s all right, old fellow, you just run along home,” ran
the talk. “Go on home and tell them what’s happened to me. Home
with you, you wolf. Get along home!”

White Fang knew the meaning of “home,” and though he did not
understand the remainder of the master’s language, he knew it was his
will that he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then he
stopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder.

“Go home!” came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed.

The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White Fang
arrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust.

“Weedon’s back,” Weedon’s mother announced.

The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him. He
avoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a
rocking-chair and the railing. He growled and tried to push by them. Their
mother looked apprehensively in their direction.

“I confess, he makes me nervous around the children,” she said.
“I have a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day.”

Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the boy and
the girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them, telling them not to
bother White Fang.

“A wolf is a wolf!” commented Judge Scott. “There is no
trusting one.”

“But he is not all wolf,” interposed Beth, standing for her brother
in his absence.

“You have only Weedon’s opinion for that,” rejoined the
judge. “He merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White
Fang; but as he will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for his
appearance—”

He did not finish his sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely.

“Go away! Lie down, sir!” Judge Scott commanded.

White Fang turned to the love-master’s wife. She screamed with fright as
he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric tore
away. By this time he had become the centre of interest.

He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their faces.
His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he struggled with all
his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the incommunicable
something that strained for utterance.

“I hope he is not going mad,” said Weedon’s mother. “I
told Weedon that I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic
animal.”

“He’s trying to speak, I do believe,” Beth announced.

At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of
barking.

“Something has happened to Weedon,” his wife said decisively.

They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps, looking
back for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he had barked
and made himself understood.

After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra Vista
people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that he was a wise
dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the same opinion, and
proved it to everybody’s dissatisfaction by measurements and descriptions
taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa Clara
Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang’s second winter in the
Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie’s teeth were no
longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness that
prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she had made life a
burden to him, and when she disported herself around him he responded solemnly,
striving to be playful and becoming no more than ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land into the
woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White Fang knew
it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang hesitated. But
there was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned, than the customs
that had moulded him, than his love for the master, than the very will to live
of himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and
scampered off, he turned and followed after. The master rode alone that day;
and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother,
Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland
forest.

CHAPTER V
THE SLEEPING WOLF

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of a
convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-made
in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any by
the moulding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are
harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a
beast—a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast
that he can best be characterised as carnivorous.

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to break
his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not
live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society
handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer.
Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment
for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had
received from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Francisco
slum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into
something.

It was during Jim Hall’s third term in prison that he encountered a guard
that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly, lied
about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him. The difference
between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a revolver. Jim
Hall had only his naked hands and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard one
day and used his teeth on the other’s throat just like any jungle animal.

After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell. He lived there
three years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof. He never
left this cell. He never saw the sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight and
night was a black silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw no
human face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved in to him, he
growled like a wild animal. He hated all things. For days and nights he
bellowed his rage at the universe. For weeks and months he never made a sound,
in the black silence eating his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, as
fearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain.

And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible, but
nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body of a
dead guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail through the prison to the
outer walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid noise.

He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards—a live arsenal that
fled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society. A heavy price
of gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns. His
blood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to college. Public-spirited
citizens took down their rifles and went out after him. A pack of bloodhounds
followed the way of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the
paid fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and special
train, clung to his trail night and day.

Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded
through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading the
account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the dead and
wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled by men eager for
the man-hunt.

And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the lost
trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men and
compelled to identify themselves; while the remains of Jim Hall were discovered
on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood-money.

In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much with
interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh-poohed and
laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on the bench that Jim
Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open court-room, before
all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreak
vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he was
sentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of
“rail-roading.” Jim Hall was being “rail-roaded” to
prison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions
against him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to a
police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured, that Jim Hall
was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not
know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judge
knew all about it and was hand in glove with the police in the perpetration of
the monstrous injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living
death was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the
society that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until dragged
down by half a dozen of his blue-coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the
keystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of
his wrath and hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went
to his living death . . . and escaped.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the
master’s wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista had
gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now White
Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so each
morning, early, she slipped down and let him out before the family was awake.

On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay very
quietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message it bore of a
strange god’s presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strange
god’s movements. White Fang burst into no furious outcry. It was not his
way. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked White Fang, for he
had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body. He followed silently. In
the Wild he had hunted live meat that was infinitely timid, and he knew the
advantage of surprise.

The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened, and
White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and waited. Up
that staircase the way led to the love-master and to the love-master’s
dearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The strange god’s
foot lifted. He was beginning the ascent.

Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarl
anticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the spring that
landed him on the strange god’s back. White Fang clung with his fore-paws
to the man’s shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs into the back
of the man’s neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough to drag the god
over backward. Together they crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear,
and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with the slashing fangs.

Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from downstairs was as that of a score
of battling fiends. There were revolver shots. A man’s voice screamed
once in horror and anguish. There was a great snarling and growling, and over
all arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and glass.

But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away. The struggle
had not lasted more than three minutes. The frightened household clustered at
the top of the stairway. From below, as from out an abyss of blackness, came up
a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling through water. Sometimes this gurgle
became sibilant, almost a whistle. But this, too, quickly died down and ceased.
Then naught came up out of the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature
struggling sorely for air.

Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall were
flooded with light. Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand, cautiously
descended. There was no need for this caution. White Fang had done his work. In
the midst of the wreckage of overthrown and smashed furniture, partly on his
side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon Scott bent over, removed the
arm and turned the man’s face upward. A gaping throat explained the
manner of his death.

“Jim Hall,” said Judge Scott, and father and son looked
significantly at each other.

Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His eyes were
closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at them as they bent
over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort to wag. Weedon
Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an acknowledging growl. But it was a
weak growl at best, and it quickly ceased. His eyelids drooped and went shut,
and his whole body seemed to relax and flatten out upon the floor.

“He’s all in, poor devil,” muttered the master.

“We’ll see about that,” asserted the Judge, as he started for
the telephone.

“Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand,” announced the surgeon,
after he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang.

Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights. With the
exception of the children, the whole family was gathered about the surgeon to
hear his verdict.

“One broken hind-leg,” he went on. “Three broken ribs, one at
least of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his
body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been
jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chance
in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn’t a chance in ten
thousand.”

“But he mustn’t lose any chance that might be of help to
him,” Judge Scott exclaimed. “Never mind expense. Put him under the
X-ray—anything. Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor
Nichols. No reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the
advantage of every chance.”

The surgeon smiled indulgently. “Of course I understand. He deserves all
that can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a human being, a
sick child. And don’t forget what I told you about temperature.
I’ll be back at ten o’clock again.”

White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott’s suggestion of a trained
nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves undertook the
task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten thousand denied him by
the surgeon.

The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he had
tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived sheltered
lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared with White
Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any strength in
their grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish
early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his father nor his mother
was there any weakness, nor in the generations before them. A constitution of
iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang’s inheritance, and he
clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh,
with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures.

Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and bandages,
White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and dreamed much, and
through his mind passed an unending pageant of Northland visions. All the
ghosts of the past arose and were with him. Once again he lived in the lair
with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of Grey Beaver to tender his
allegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip and all the howling bedlam of the
puppy-pack.

He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the months of
famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips of Mit-sah and
Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying “Ra! Raa!” when
they came to a narrow passage and the team closed together like a fan to go
through. He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith and the fights he had
fought. At such times he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they that
looked on said that his dreams were bad.

But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered—the
clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal
screaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrel
to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge. Then, when he
sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an electric car, menacing
and terrible, towering over him like a mountain, screaming and clanging and
spitting fire at him. It was the same when he challenged the hawk down out of
the sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as it dropped upon him changing
itself into the ubiquitous electric car. Or again, he would be in the pen of
Beauty Smith. Outside the pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that a fight
was on. He watched the door for his antagonist to enter. The door would open,
and thrust in upon him would come the awful electric car. A thousand times this
occurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as ever.

Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were taken
off. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The master rubbed
his ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master’s wife called him the
“Blessed Wolf,” which name was taken up with acclaim and all the
women called him the Blessed Wolf.

He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from
weakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning, and all
the strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame because of his
weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in the service he owed
them. Because of this he made heroic efforts to arise and at last he stood on
his four legs, tottering and swaying back and forth.

“The Blessed Wolf!” chorused the women.

Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.

“Out of your own mouths be it,” he said. “Just as I contended
right along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He’s a wolf.”

“A Blessed Wolf,” amended the Judge’s wife.

“Yes, Blessed Wolf,” agreed the Judge. “And henceforth that
shall be my name for him.”

“He’ll have to learn to walk again,” said the surgeon;
“so he might as well start in right now. It won’t hurt him. Take
him outside.”

And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and tending
on him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay down and rested
for a while.

Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into White
Fang’s muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through them.
The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozen
pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.

White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at him, and
he was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe helped one
sprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master warned him
that all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of one of the women, watched him
jealously and with a snarl warned him that all was not well.

The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched it
curiously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue of the
puppy on his jowl. White Fang’s tongue went out, he knew not why, and he
licked the puppy’s face.

Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance. He was
surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then his weakness asserted
itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on one side, as he watched
the puppy. The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to Collie’s great
disgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and tumble over him. At
first, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle of his old
self-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed away as the puppies’
antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut patient eyes, drowsing
in the sun.