[Previous page]...hus, 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. ...
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