CD-ROM Today - The Disc! 2/CD-ROM_Today_-_The_Disc_2_June-July_1994.iso/books/whitefng.txt

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                                      1906
                                   WHITE FANG
                                 by Jack London
                         PART ONE.

                        CHAPTER ONE.
                    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
the frost, and they seemed to lean toward 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 vapor 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 offense 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 traveled 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 ardors 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 interplay 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 needlelike 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 anythin' 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 come 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.'
  His comrade looked at him commiseratingly, and said, 'I'll be
almightly 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 'm 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 thinkin' 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 carcasses 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 God-forsaken
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 to home,'
Henry agreed.
  Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he
pointed toward 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. 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 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 been 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'
playin' 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 hunky-dory 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 TWO.
                        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 a rose-color, and marked
where the bulge of the earth intervened between the meridian sun and
the northern world. But the rose-color swiftly faded. The gray 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 sympathized.
  They spoke no more until camp was made.
  Henry was bending over and adding ice to the bubbling pot of beans
when he was startled by the sound of a blow, and 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 somethin', 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 were pullin' into McGurry right now,' he began again.
  'Shut up your wishin' an' 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 powers of the
Wild that had robbed them of another dog.
  'Frog was the strongest 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 his 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 the 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' hunky-dory.'
  '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 bedtime,
indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in. 'If we could put a
couple of shot 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
cogitated 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 anythin',' 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 any 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 tonight,' Bill said,
as they took the trail.
  They had traveled 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
recognized 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.
  'Mebbee 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 his
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 color, that's what's the matter with you,' Henry
dogmatized. '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 gray 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 croakin' now?' Bill demanded triumphantly.
  Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast
anxious glances back into the gray 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; 'keepin' 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 anythin' 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 bit 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 washboards, 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 traveling 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 whispered.
  The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to
join his partner at 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 color 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-colored. Its coat was the true
wolf-coat. The dominant color was gray, 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 gray,
distinctly gray, and again giving hints and glints of a vague
redness of color 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 meditated. '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 bettern'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 tomorrow.'
                        CHAPTER THREE.
                        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 on 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 towards 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, 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 gray, 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 hands
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
center 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 recognized 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 to 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-lashings 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 never sure 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 only 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 skyline. 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 gray daylight and sombre twilight, and he utilized them in
chopping an enormous supply of firewood.
  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 gray 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
fingertips, 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
realization 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 fagots 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 a few minutes when the burn
of the flame on his flesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered
to this program. 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 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 wakened, 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, the 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 center 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
plumb tuckered out... Good 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 TWO.

                       CHAPTER ONE.
                   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 gray 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 vigor 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 forelegs 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 maneuver 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, 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 quarreling 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 vigor 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- even a sterner and
crueler 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 realization 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
gray 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 traveled 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 runway. 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 moonlight 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 sort 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 eyes 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 runways 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 TWO.
                         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 under-washed 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 cosy. 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 snowbirds 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 underfoot and the traveling
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 newborn, 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
newborn 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 into 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 long, 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 armor. 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, 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 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 THREE.
                        The Gray 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 gray cub of the litter. He had bred true to the
straight wolf-stock- in fact, he had bred true, physically, to old One
Eye himself, with but a single exception, and that was that he had two
eyes to his father's one.
  The gray 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 even 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, spark-like flashes,
warm-colored 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 backwall. 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 gray 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
or 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 generalizations 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 gray cub increased from day
to day. He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward
the cave's entrance, and was 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 recognize 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 gray 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 gray 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
backwall 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 gray 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 gray 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 gray 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 gray cub's sake, would venture
the left fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.
                        CHAPTER FOUR.
                    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 gray 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 were limitations and
restraints. These limitations and restraints were law. 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-tremble 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 up on the gray 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 forever 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 gray 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 agonized yelp 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 that 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 that 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 mossberry
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 traveled 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
under-stepped and stubbed his feet. Then there were 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 descent, smashed through the leafage and
stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground,
fetched up amongst 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 living 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 wing, while feathers were flying like a snowfall.
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 realizing 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 of 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 off 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 this 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 his 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
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. Maybe 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 had 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 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 severe 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
neighboring 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 snakelike 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 unpracticed 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 gray 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. Then 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 greater even 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 FIVE.
                       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 to 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 an 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 clatter 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 admonition 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 great carefulness, and strove with greater craft to
steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the woodmice 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 a 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 all 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 forepaw 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 that 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 moralize 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 epitomized 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 was
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, lent 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 ardors and toils, while his ardors and toils 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 THREE.

                        CHAPTER ONE.
                     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 traveled 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 recognized 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 campfires, 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. Their
noises were not indications 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 true
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, Gray Beaver, since she ran away,' spoke a second
Indian.
  It is not strange, Salmon Tongue,' Gray 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,' Gray 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,' Gray 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 Gray 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 rawhide. 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 of 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 the 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 dealings 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 god-like. 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 savored 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 his 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 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 either 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 portion 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 friendly
spirit. But when the stranger's 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, delivered 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
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, Gray 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. Gray
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 Gray
Beaver. It was evidently an affair of moment. White Fang came in until
he touched Gray 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 Gray Beaver's hands. Then, amongst the sticks themselves,
appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a color like the color
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
Gray 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 paralyzed. 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 Gray 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-colored, that had grown up
under Gray 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 movements to that which did not move,
and making life, sun-colored and biting life, to grow out of dead moss
and wood. They were fire-makers! They were gods!
                        CHAPTER TWO.
                        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,
vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering
wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings 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 the 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 include 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 of 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 the 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
other 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 Gray 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 it 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
woods 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. Gray 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 Gray 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 Gray 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.
  Gray Beaver continued to beat. White Fang continued to snarl. But
this could not last forever. One or the other must give over and
that one was White Fang. Fear surged through him again. For the
first time he was really being manhandled. 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 Gray 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. Gray 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 sunk his
teeth into the moccasined foot.
  The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the
beating he now received. Gray 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 Gray 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 circumstances, 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 offense there was no
condoning nor overlooking.
  When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and
motionless, waiting the will of Gray Beaver. It was Gray 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 Gray 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 Gray 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 Gray 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 hearkened to the
memories of the lair and the stream and run back into 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 sometime. 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 Gray Beaver. Obedience,
rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was expected of him; and in
return he escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated.
  Nay, Gray 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,
than a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw. Gray 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 into 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 THREE.
                         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 a 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 learned 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 learned 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 generations 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 had been 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 the stolen meat, and Gray 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 tribes-people clamored.
  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 honorable 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 bunch 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 to 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 realized their play in the 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 favorite trick
of his was to lose his trail in running water and then lie quietly
in a nearby 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. Gray 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 iron-like 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
survived the hostile environment in which he found himself.
                        CHAPTER FOUR.
                    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 Gray Beaver's voice calling him by name. There were other voices.
White Fang could hear Gray Beaver's squaw taking part in the search,
and Mit-sah, who was Gray 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 awhile
he played about among the trees, pleasuring 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
forefoot 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 campsmoke. 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 the stones about him, flung by an
angry squaw, glad for the hand of Gray 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 Gray Beaver's tepee had stood. In the center of the
space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon.
His throat was afflicted with rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a
heartbroken 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 forever. His iron-like body ignored
fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage of endurance braced
him to endless endeavor 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 traveled 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 him
from 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.
  Gray 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 after dark, a moose, coming down to drink,
had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Gray 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 Gray Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his
rifle, all subsequent things would have happened differently. Gray
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 Gray Beaver squatting on his hams and munching 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. Gray Beaver saw
him and stopped munching his tallow. White Fang crawled slowly,
cringing and groveling in the abjectness of his abasement and
submission. He crawled straight toward Gray 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. Gray Beaver was breaking the
lump of tallow in half! Gray 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. Gray 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 Gray 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 FIVE.
                        The Covenant.

  WHEN DECEMBER WAS well along, Gray Beaver went on a journey up the
Mackenzie River. 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 as
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 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
traveled, 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
indiscretion, did man increase his mastery over the beasts.
  Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose gray 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
upon him by putting him at the end of the longest rope. This made
Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an honor; but in reality it
took away from him all honor, 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 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 favored
him over the other dogs. These favors 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 traveled 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
characterized 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 Gray Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not 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 teammates. 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 please 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 struggle for life in the days 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 Gray 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 Gray Beaver.
White Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on the 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 Gray 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 this 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 Gray Beaver, might
have sounded these deeps; but Gray 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 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 Gray 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 the 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 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 Gray
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. Gray 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 realized 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 his
story in camp, Gray 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 defense 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 Gray Beaver's property alone.
  One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learned, 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 Gray Beaver's
coming to his aid. He came to know that it was not fear of him that
drove the thief away, but fear of Gray 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 Gray 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 he ever 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 SIX.
                        The Famine.

  THE SPRING OF THE YEAR was at hand when Gray Beaver finished his
long journey. It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he
pulled into the home village 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-gray, 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 played its part in his mental make-up.
  He wandered through the village, recognizing 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 case 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 valor
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 teammates, 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,
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 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
the puppies that were his teammates. 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
preeminently 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 toward 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 intrusions.
  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 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
with females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no
generalization of the mind, not a something acquired by experience
in the world. He knew it was 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 Gray 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 Gray Beaver; behind Gray Beaver were a club and
a god-head. But behind the dogs there was nothing but space, and
into this space they fled 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
caribou 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 also 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 moccasins 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 gray 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 in to the fires. He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when
game was caught. He even robbed Gray Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a
time when Gray Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest,
sitting down often to rest, because of weakness and 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 favor 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 Gray Beaver's
tepee. Gray 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 Gray Beaver's coming.
                         PART FOUR.

                        CHAPTER ONE.
                    The Enemy of his Kind.

  HAD THERE BEEN IN White Fang's nature any possibility, no manner how
remote, of his ever coming to fraternize 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
favors 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 forever 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.
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 defense 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 fleeting 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 without 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 has 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 symbolized 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 campfire.
  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 Gray 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, Gray 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 economized. 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
things. 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 in 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 onto 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 coordination. 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. Gray
Beaver had crossed the great water-shed between the 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
Arctic 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 traveled to get that far was
five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the
world.
  Here Gray 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 realized. His wildest dream had not exceeded
a hundred percent profit; he made a thousand percent. 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 god-head rests.
White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp
generalization 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 Gray Beaver.
And yet Gray Beaver was 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 in to 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 life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river,
stop, and then go on up the river and 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 of 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 wreaked 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. Gray 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 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 license 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 gangplank 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 the
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 Gray 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 TWO.
                        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 at 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 preeminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly
with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meager
frame was deposited an even more strikingly meager 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 sniveling cowards. To complete
his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two
eyeteeth, 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, come
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 Gray 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 Gray
Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White
Fang snarled back as though the hand was 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.
  Gray 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 Gray
Beaver's camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black
bottle or so. One of the potencies of whiskey is the breeding of
thirst. Gray Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt
stomach began to clamor 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 Gray
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 Gray 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 Gray 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 was bristling with recognition while Gray 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 Gray
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. Gray 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 Gray Beaver. Beauty Smith started to
walk away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Gray 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. Gray 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 Gray Beaver's camp. He owed no
allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had given himself to
Gray Beaver, and to Gray Beaver he considered he still belonged.
  But what had occurred before was repeated- with a difference. Gray
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 Gray 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 sniveling 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 Gray 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 Gray
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 had 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. Gray Beaver was his own particular
god, and, in spite of Gray Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to
him and would not give him up. Gray Beaver had betrayed and forsaken
him, but that had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had he
surrendered himself body and soul to Gray 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 at 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 Gray 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 Gray
Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was
beaten even more severely than before.
  Gray Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man yielded 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 on
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, Gray 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 THREE.
                      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 from off 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 something, 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 although 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 steamboat'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 hand 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 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 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 oft 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 favor, 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 fang 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 bulldog 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 FOUR.
                     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 bulldog forward with a muttered 'Go to it.'
animal waddled toward the center 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 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, bowlegged 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 catlike swiftness
he had slashed with his fangs and leaped clear.
  The bulldog 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 demeanor, every action, was stamped with his 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 bulldog 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 bulldog 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 even inflicting damage. And still
the bulldog, 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 those 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 bulldog's body. It made him frantic,
this clinging, dragging weight. It bound his movements, restricted his
freedom. It was like a 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 bulldog 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 in
to his throat. The bulldog's method was to hold what he had, and
when opportunity favored to work in for more. Opportunity favored 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 bulldog 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
his feet digging into his enemy's abdomen above him, he began to
claw with long, tearing strokes. Cherokee might well have been
disemboweled 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 was
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 bulldog
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 clamor 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 sleds 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 mustache, 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 armor of fur, the great vein of his
throat would have long since been torn open, had not the first grip of
the bulldog 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
up 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. A 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 gray 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 newcomer 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 to 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 was the
younger man endeavored 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 jaw. 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 counseled.
  The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver,
and tried to thrust its muzzle between the bulldog's jaws. He
shoved, and shoved hard, till the grating of 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 in 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 bulldog struggling vigorously.
  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 from 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 pocketbook 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 man thundered with abrupt fierceness.
  'Yes,' Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away.
  'Yes, what?'
  'Yes, sir.' Beauty Smith snarled.
  'Look out! He'll bite!' someone shouted, and a guffaw of laughter
went up.
  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,' someone answered.
  'And who in hell is Weedon Scott?' the faro-dealer demanded.
  'Oh, one of them crack-a-jack mining 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 FIVE.
                       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 when 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 confidently 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 been tamed a'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.'
  'An' 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 counseled. '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 the 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 realize 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 the other dogs. Immediately
after such fights he had been imprisoned again.
  He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new deviltry 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 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 underclothes, 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 content.
  'Look here, Mr. Scott,' Matt objected; 'that dog's been through
hell. You can't expect 'm to come out a white an' shining 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 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 on 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'd be everlastin'ly 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
that 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.
  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 with 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 SIX.
                      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 in 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 injured 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 up
his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the
same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any over tact, 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 involuntary 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 viselike 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 expressed 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, and 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 Gray 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 crystallized 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 Gray 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 Gray 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 traveled,
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
indorsement 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 until 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
clamored 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 a 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 deep's 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 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 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 the 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 gray 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 afterward that this 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, became 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. Ain't 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 forepaws.
  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 toward 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 awkward 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 about him.
  'Talk about your rough-houses,' Matt murmured gleefully, standing in
the doorway and looking on. 'Give 'm hell, you wolf! Give 'm hell!-
and 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 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,' Matt 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 the 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 his 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 FIVE.

                        CHAPTER ONE.
                       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 has 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 damage
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 Sardanapalus 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 sensed
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 Gray
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-by 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, heartbreaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery,
and bursting upward again with 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 gangplank, 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 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 plumb forgot the windows. He's all cut an' gouged underneath.
Must 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 gangplank 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-by, 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 gangplank.
  'He'll never stand the climate!' he shouted back. 'Unless you clip
'm in warm weather!'
  The gangplank was hauled in, and the Aurora swung out from the bank.
Weedon Scott waved a last good-by. 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 TWO.
                       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 marvelous 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- wagons,
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 Gray 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 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
hayfields 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
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 forelegs 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 come to real running, White Fang could
teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to
the utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap; and
all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her, silently, without
effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground.
  As he rounded the house to the porte-cochere, he came upon the
carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this
moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware
of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him.
White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the
hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his
forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled
to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a
spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose
wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed
the hound's soft throat.
  The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie
that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and
deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing
in, Collie arrived. She had been outmaneuvered and outrun, 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 on 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 that...?'
  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 for 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 THREE.
                       The God's Domain.

  NOT ONLY WAS WHITE FANG adaptable by nature, but he had traveled
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 he did, 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 recognize 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 Gray 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 Gray 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 favor 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 favoring White Fang with a look or a word-
untroublesome tokens that he recognized 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 country road. Outside was the common
domain of all gods- the roads and streets. Then inside other fences
were the particular domains of other dogs. 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 were 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 Gray 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 dogs. 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 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 the 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 penalize 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
civilization 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 to 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
civilization.
  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 defense 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 crossroads, 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 crossroads 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
center of the field he dragged down and slew the dog.
  With this triple killing his main trouble 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 FOUR.
                      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 grounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously at a
pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath.
His favorite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his
forepaws, and pretend sleep. This always dumbfounded 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 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, a quizzical expression that was more
love than humor 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 forelegs 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 were 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 the 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 center 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 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 encyclopedia 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 and
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 FIVE.
                      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
characterized 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 him 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 his 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 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 warden 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 organized might of society.
A heavy price of gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted him
with shotguns. 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 laws, 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 barb-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 manhunt.
  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 mountainsides 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 courtroom, 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 'railroading'. Jim Hall was being 'railroaded' 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 courtroom 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 arose 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 forepaws 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 dropped 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 clamored 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 civilization,
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 Gray 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 Gray Beaver snapping behind, their voices
crying 'Raa! 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 as 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 gone out of
them. He felt a little shame because of his weakness, as though,
forsooth, he was 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.

                               THE END