[Previous page]...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...
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