White Fang Page 14

  CHAPTER VI--THE FAMINE

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

  He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction thevarious gods he had known before the long journey. Then there were thedogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not lookso 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 acertain careless ease that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.

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

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 Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of theother dogs--in fact out of sight behind a thicket--he was devouring hisprize, when Baseek rushed in upon him.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

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

  And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with lookingfierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the vergeof retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseekdid not wait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forwardto the meat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fangbristled slightly. Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrievethe situation. Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering,White Fang would ultimately have slunk away. But the fresh meat wasstrong 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 overhis own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by whileanother devoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after hiscustom, without warning. With the first slash, Baseek's right ear wasripped into ribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But morethings, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness. Hewas knocked off his feet. His throat was bitten. While he wasstruggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder.The swiftness of it was bewildering. He made a futile rush at WhiteFang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap. The next moment hisnose 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 toretreat. He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, andagain he knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. Hisattempt to maintain his dignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back uponyoung dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice andunworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away. Nor, until wellout of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds.

  The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, anda greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; hisattitude toward them was less compromising. Not that he went out of hisway looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demandedconsideration. He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and togive trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account, that was all. Hewas no longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies,and as continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates.They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meatto them under compulsion. But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary,morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding ofaspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders.They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile actsnor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him alone, he leftthem alone--a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters,to be pre-eminently desirable.

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

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

  One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers,only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously,whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. Hebacked farther away. All the old memories and associations died downagain and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected. Helooked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl athim. She was without value to him. He had learned to get along withouther. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her in hisscheme 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 Fangallowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and itwas a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He didnot know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of themind, not a something acquired by experience of the world. He knew it asa secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct thatmade him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him feardeath 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 hisheredity and his environment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may belikened to clay. It possessed many possibilities, was capable of beingmoulded into many different forms. Environment served to model the clay,to giv
e it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang never come in to thefires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf. But thegods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dogthat 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 hissurroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particularshape. There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, moreuncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs werelearning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than atwar, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with thepassage of each day.

  White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, neverthelesssuffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughedat. The laughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh amongthemselves about anything they pleased except himself, and he did notmind. But the moment laughter was turned upon him he would fly into amost terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made him franticto ridiculousness. It so outraged him and upset him that for hours hewould behave like a demon. And woe to the dog that at such times ranfoul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver;behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogs therewas nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang cameon the scene, made mad by laughter.

  In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the MackenzieIndians. In the summer the fish failed. In the winter the caribooforsook their accustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almostdisappeared, hunting and preying animals perished. Denied their usualfood-supply, weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another.Only the strong survived. White Fang's gods were always hunting animals.The old and the weak of them died of hunger. There was wailing in thevillage, where the women and children went without in order that whatlittle they had might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyedhunters who trod the forest in the vain pursuit of meat.

  To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tannedleather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnessesoff their backs and the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate oneanother, and also the gods ate the dogs. The weakest and the moreworthless were eaten first. The dogs that still lived, looked on andunderstood. A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of thegods, 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. Hewas better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had thetraining of his cubhood to guide him. Especially adept did he become instalking small living things. He would lie concealed for hours,following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with apatience as huge as the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrelventured out upon the ground. Even then, White Fang was not premature.He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain atree-refuge. Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding-place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark--thefleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough.

  Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty thatprevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were not enoughsquirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute didhis hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-micefrom their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with aweasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious.

  In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of thegods. But he did not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest,avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when gamewas caught. He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a timewhen Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting downoften to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath.

  One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang mighthave gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst hiswild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and atehim.

  Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, hefound something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck thatnone of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strongfrom 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 wasbetter nourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only didhe outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered inone of his exhausted pursuers.

  After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to thevalley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encounteredKiche. Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable firesof 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 thescene, and this one was not destined to live long. Young life had littlechance in such a famine.

  Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. ButWhite Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tailphilosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took theturning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom hismother and he had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, hesettled 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 miserableexistence.

  White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directionsalong the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and foundthemselves face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and looked ateach other suspiciously.

  White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, and fora 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 hisback. It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical statethat in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in himby Lip-lip's bullying and persecution. As in the past he had bristledand snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristledand snarled. He did not waste any time. The thing was done thoroughlyand with despatch. Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struckhim hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled uponhis back. White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat. There was adeath-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged andobservant. Then he resumed his course and trotted on along the base ofthe bluff.

  One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where anarrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had beenover this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it.Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation. Sightsand sounds and scents were familiar to him. It was the old villagechanged to a new place. But sights and sounds and smells were differentfrom those he had last had when he fled away from it. There was nowhimpering nor wailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when heheard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceedsfrom a full stomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. Therewas food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest andtrotted into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee. Grey Beaver was notthere; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of afresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.