White Fang Read online

  PART IV

  CHAPTER I--THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND

  Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter howremote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibilitywas irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. Fornow the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him byMit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received;hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his wavingbrush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for evermaddening their eyes.

  And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader wasanything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before theyelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed andmastered, 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 out. Themoment 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 defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah wouldthrow the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to himto run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail andhind-quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet themany merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature andpride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long.

  One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having thatnature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made togrow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of itsgrowth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt.And so with White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to springupon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the godsthat this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whipof cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash. So White Fang couldonly eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malicecommensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature.

  If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was thatcreature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred andscarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his ownmarks upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made andthe dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, WhiteFang 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 learnedto get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day-long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration ontheir brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling ofmastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give wayto him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. Hisprogress was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere hebreathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served toincrease the hatred and malice within him.

  When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fangobeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of themwould spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behindhim would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogscame to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was tobe let alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it wasallowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. Afterseveral experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learnedquickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly ifhe were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life wasvouchsafed 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 theprevious night was erased, and that night would have to be learned overagain, to be as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greaterconsistence in their dislike of him. They sensed between themselves andhim a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Likehim, they were domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated forgenerations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wildwas the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. Butto him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. Hesymbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed theirteeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers ofdestruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the darkbeyond the camp-fire.

  But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keeptogether. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would havekilled them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance tokill them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be uponhim before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. Atthe first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him.The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten whentrouble was brewing with White Fang.

  On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. Hewas too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tightplaces 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 themcapable of doing the trick. His feet clung to the earth with the sametenacity that he clung to life. For that matter, life and footing weresynonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew itbetter 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'sstrength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was somoulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly didhe live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could notbut marvel at White Fang's ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been thelike of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewisewhen they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs.

  When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him onanother great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he workedamongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across theRockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in thevengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspectingdogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for hisattack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, alightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged andchallenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries,snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats anddestroying them before they knew what was happening and while they wereyet in the throes of surprise.

  He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted hisstrength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if hemissed, was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for closequarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolongedcontact with another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic.He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It wasthe Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him. Thisfeeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from hispuppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap,the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre ofhim.

  In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance againsthim. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouchedin either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptionsto this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him,punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a singledog scored deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, soefficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed.

  Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time anddistance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did notcalculate such things. I
t was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly,and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts ofhim were better adjusted than those of the average dog. They workedtogether more smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better,nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed tohis brain the moving image of an action, his brain without consciouseffort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required forits completion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or thedrive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimalfraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, hiswas 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 wasall.

  It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaverhad crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in thelate winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlyingspurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on thePorcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where iteffected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle. Herestood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, muchfood, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, andthousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and theKlondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many ofthem had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them hadtravelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had comefrom the other side of the world.

  Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached hisears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewnmittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had henot expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing towhat he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred percent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, hesettled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summerand the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.

  It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. Ascompared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race ofbeings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessingsuperior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang didnot reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation thatthe white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, andyet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of thetepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so washe affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Herewas power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater masteryover matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which wasGrey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinned ones.

  To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious ofthem. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animalsact; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feelingthat the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he wasvery suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors weretheirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious toobserve them, fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hourshe was content with slinking around and watching them from a safedistance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near tothem, and he came in closer.

  In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfishappearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to oneanother. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when theytried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not onesucceeded 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 adozen--lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (anotherand colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped forseveral hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went awayon them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In thefirst day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all hislife; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop,and then go on up the river out of sight.

  But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount tomuch. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that cameashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Somewere short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long. Theyhad hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. Andnone of them knew how to fight.

  As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight withthem. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt.They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered aroundclumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished bydexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to theside. They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment hestruck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and deliveringhis stroke at the throat.

  Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in thedirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogsthat waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that thegods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were noexception to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashedwide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go inand do the cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushedin, 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 wasvery wise.

  But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grewwise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied tothe bank that they had their fun. After the first two or three strangedogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their ownanimals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders. Onewhite 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 laydead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into WhiteFang's consciousness.

  White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewdenough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men'sdogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. Therewas no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and gettingwealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputablegang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamerthe fun began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had gotover their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the nextsteamer should arrive.

  But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. Hedid not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was evenfeared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel withthe strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown thestrange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true thathe then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of theoutraged gods.

  It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had todo, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When theysaw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild--theunknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in thedarkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering closeto the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wildout of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed.Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of theWild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had stoodfor terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence hadbeen theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. Indoing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whosecompanionship they share
d.

  And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down thegang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang toexperience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him.They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild wastheirs just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see thewolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. Theysaw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memorythey 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 ofhim drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, somuch the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and aslegitimate prey he looked upon them.

  Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair andfought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. Andnot for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution ofLip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and hewould then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would havepassed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike andwith more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet ofaffection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang'snature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. Butthese things had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been mouldeduntil he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious,the enemy of all his kind.