[Previous page]...eak. 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 ...
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