White Fang Read online

  PART III

  CHAPTER I--THE MAKERS OF FIRE

  The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had beencareless. He had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink. Itmight have been that he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep.(He had been out all night on the meat-trail, and had but just thenawakened.) And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarityof the trail to the pool. He had travelled it often, and nothing hadever happened on it.

  He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trottedin amongst the trees. Then, at the same instant, he saw and smelt.Before him, sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things,the like of which he had never seen before. It was his first glimpse ofmankind. But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to theirfeet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl. They did not move, but sat there,silent and ominous.

  Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his nature would have impelledhim to dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first timearisen in him another and counter instinct. A great awe descended uponhim. He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of hisown weakness and littleness. Here was mastery and power, something farand away beyond him.

  The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. Indim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself toprimacy over the other animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his owneyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now lookingupon man--out of eyes that had circled in the darkness around countlesswinter camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances and from thehearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord overliving things. The spell of the cub's heritage was upon him, the fearand the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulatedexperience of the generations. The heritage was too compelling for awolf that was only a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have runaway. As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already halfproffering the submission that his kind had proffered from the first timea wolf came in to sit by man's fire and be made warm.

  One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him.The cub cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, objectified atlast, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down toseize hold of him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhedback and his little fangs were bared. The hand, poised like doom abovehim, hesitated, and the man spoke laughing, "_Wabam wabisca ip pit tah_."("Look! The white fangs!")

  The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged the man on to pick up thecub. As the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cuba battle of the instincts. He experienced two great impulsions--to yieldand to fight. The resulting action was a compromise. He did both. Heyielded till the hand almost touched him. Then he fought, his teethflashing in a snap that sank them into the hand. The next moment hereceived a clout alongside the head that knocked him over on his side.Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood and the instinct ofsubmission took charge of him. He sat up on his haunches and ki-yi'd.But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub received a clouton the other side of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi'd louderthan ever.

  The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had beenbitten began to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, whilehe wailed out his terror and his hurt. In the midst of it, he heardsomething. The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew what it was, andwith a last, long wail that had in it more of triumph than grief, heceased his noise and waited for the coming of his mother, of hisferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed all things and wasnever afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had heard the cry of hercub and was dashing to save him.

  She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood makingher anything but a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle of herprotective rage was pleasing. He uttered a glad little cry and boundedto meet her, while the man-animals went back hastily several steps. Theshe-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair,a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face was distorted andmalignant with menace, even the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip toeyes so prodigious was her snarl.

  Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men. "Kiche!" was what heuttered. It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his motherwilting at the sound.

  "Kiche!" the man cried again, this time with sharpness and authority.

  And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one,crouching down till her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging hertail, making peace signs. The cub could not understand. He wasappalled. The awe of man rushed over him again. His instinct had beentrue. His mother verified it. She, too, rendered submission to the man-animals.

  The man who had spoken came over to her. He put his hand upon her head,and she only crouched closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to snap.The other men came up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her,which actions she made no attempt to resent. They were greatly excited,and made many noises with their mouths. These noises were not indicationof danger, the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother stillbristling from time to time but doing his best to submit.

  "It is not strange," an Indian was saying. "Her father was a wolf. Itis true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in thewoods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the fatherof Kiche a wolf."

  "It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away," spoke a second Indian.

  "It is not strange, Salmon Tongue," Grey Beaver answered. "It was thetime of the famine, and there was no meat for the dogs."

  "She has lived with the wolves," said a third Indian.

  "So it would seem, Three Eagles," Grey Beaver answered, laying his handon the cub; "and this be the sign of it."

  The cub snarled a little at the touch of the hand, and the hand flew backto administer a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and sankdown submissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears, andup and down his back.

  "This be the sign of it," Grey Beaver went on. "It is plain that hismother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in himlittle dog and much wolf. His fangs be white, and White Fang shall behis name. I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother'sdog? And is not my brother dead?"

  The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. Fora time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then GreyBeaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and wentinto the thicket and cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He notchedthe stick at each end and in the notches fastened strings of raw-hide.One string he tied around the throat of Kiche. Then he led her to asmall pine, around which he tied the other string.

  White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue's handreached out to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked onanxiously. White Fang felt fear mounting in him again. He could notquite suppress a snarl, but he made no offer to snap. The hand, withfingers crooked and spread apart, rubbed his stomach in a playful way androlled him from side to side. It was ridiculous and ungainly, lyingthere on his back with legs sprawling in the air. Besides, it was aposition of such utter helplessness that White Fang's whole naturerevolted against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. If this man-animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it. Howcould he spring away with his four legs in the air above him? Yetsubmission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. Thisgrowl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by givinghim a blow on the head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it,White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the handrubbed back and forth. When he was rolled on his side he ceased togrowl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of his ears thepleasurable sensation increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch,th
e man left him alone and went away, all fear had died out of WhiteFang. He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it wasa token of the fearless companionship with man that was ultimately to behis.

  After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching. He was quickin his classification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises. Afew minutes later the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on themarch, trailed in. There were more men and many women and children,forty souls of them, and all heavily burdened with camp equipage andoutfit. Also there were many dogs; and these, with the exception of thepart-grown puppies, were likewise burdened with camp outfit. On theirbacks, in bags that fastened tightly around underneath, the dogs carriedfrom twenty to thirty pounds of weight.

  White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt thatthey were his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayedlittle difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and hismother. There was a rush. White Fang bristled and snarled and snappedin the face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave of dogs, and went down andunder them, feeling the sharp slash of teeth in his body, himself bitingand tearing at the legs and bellies above him. There was a great uproar.He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hearthe cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs striking upon bodies,and the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck.

  Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again. He could nowsee the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones,defending him, saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehowwas not his kind. And though there was no reason in his brain for aclear conception of so abstract a thing as justice, nevertheless, in hisown way, he felt the justice of the man-animals, and he knew them forwhat they were--makers of law and executors of law. Also, he appreciatedthe power with which they administered the law. Unlike any animals hehad ever encountered, they did not bite nor claw. They enforced theirlive strength with the power of dead things. Dead things did theirbidding. Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strange creatures,leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts uponthe dogs.

  To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond thenatural, power that was godlike. White Fang, in the very nature of him,could never know anything about gods; at the best he could know onlythings that were beyond knowing--but the wonder and awe that he had ofthese man-animals in ways resembled what would be the wonder and awe ofman at sight of some celestial creature, on a mountain top, hurlingthunderbolts from either hand at an astonished world.

  The last dog had been driven back. The hubbub died down. And White Fanglicked his hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-crueltyand his introduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kindconsisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself. They hadconstituted a kind apart, and here, abruptly, he had discovered many morecreatures apparently of his own kind. And there was a subconsciousresentment that these, his kind, at first sight had pitched upon him andtried to destroy him. In the same way he resented his mother being tiedwith a stick, even though it was done by the superior man-animals. Itsavoured of the trap, of bondage. Yet of the trap and of bondage he knewnothing. Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had been hisheritage; and here it was being infringed upon. His mother's movementswere restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of that samestick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of hismother's side.

  He did not like it. Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose andwent on with their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of thestick and led Kiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche followed WhiteFang, greatly perturbed and worried by this new adventure he had enteredupon.

  They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang's widestranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream raninto the Mackenzie River. Here, where canoes were cached on poles highin the air and where stood fish-racks for the drying of fish, camp wasmade; and White Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority ofthese man-animals increased with every moment. There was their masteryover all these sharp-fanged dogs. It breathed of power. But greaterthan that, to the wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive;their capacity to communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacityto change the very face of the world.

  It was this last that especially affected him. The elevation of framesof poles caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, beingdone by the same creatures that flung sticks and stones to greatdistances. But when the frames of poles were made into tepees by beingcovered with cloth and skins, White Fang was astounded. It was thecolossal bulk of them that impressed him. They arose around him, onevery side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of life. Theyoccupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision. He wasafraid of them. They loomed ominously above him; and when the breezestirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping hiseyes warily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted toprecipitate themselves upon him.

  But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away. He saw thewomen and children passing in and out of them without harm, and he sawthe dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven away with sharpwords and flying stones. After a time, he left Kiche's side and crawledcautiously toward the wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity ofgrowth that urged him on--the necessity of learning and living and doingthat brings experience. The last few inches to the wall of the tepeewere crawled with painful slowness and precaution. The day's events hadprepared him for the unknown to manifest itself in most stupendous andunthinkable ways. At last his nose touched the canvas. He waited.Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with theman-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug.Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions of the tepee moved. Hetugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful. Hetugged 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 wastied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grownpuppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, withostentatious and belligerent importance. The puppy's name, as White Fangwas afterward to hear him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience inpuppy fights and was already something of a bully.

  Lip-lip was White Fang's own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seemdangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit. Butwhen the stranger's walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear ofhis teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips. Theyhalf circled about each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling. Thislasted several minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as asort of game. But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leapedin, delivering a slashing snap, and leaped away again. The snap hadtaken effect on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that wasstill sore deep down near the bone. The surprise and hurt of it broughta yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger, he wasupon 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 teethscored on the newcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled tothe protection of his mother. It was the first of the many fights he wasto have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start, born so, withnatures destined perpetually to clash.

  Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevailupon him to remain with her. But his curiosity was rampant, and severalminutes later he was venturing forth on a new quest. He came upon one ofthe man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doingsomething with sticks and dry m
oss spread before him on the ground. WhiteFang came near to him and watched. Grey Beaver made mouth-noises whichWhite Fang interpreted as not hostile, so he came still nearer.

  Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver.It was evidently an affair of moment. White Fang came in until hetouched Grey Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful thatthis was a terrible man-animal. Suddenly he saw a strange thing likemist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver'shands. Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing,twisting and turning, of a colour like the colour of the sun in the sky.White Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him as the light, in themouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood. He crawled theseveral steps toward the flame. He heard Grey 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 paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of thesticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose. He scrambledbackward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi's. At thesound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there ragedterribly because she could not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughedloudly, and slapped his thighs, and told the happening to all the rest ofthe camp, till everybody was laughing uproariously. But White Fang saton his haunches and ki-yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable littlefigure in the midst of the man-animals.

  It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had beenscorched by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under GreyBeaver's hands. He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wailwas greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals. Hetried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too,and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; whereupon hecried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.

  And then shame came to him. He knew laughter and the meaning of it. Itis not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know whenthey are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knewit. And he felt shame that the man-animals should be laughing at him. Heturned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from thelaughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And hefled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad--toKiche, 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'sside. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greatertrouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hushand quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff. Life had becometoo populous. There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, andchildren, all making noises and irritations. And there were the dogs,ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creatingconfusions. The restful loneliness of the only life he had known wasgone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. It hummed and buzzedunceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant inpitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous andrestless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.

  He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp. Infashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create,so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were superiorcreatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they were as muchwonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of mastery,possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords ofthe alive and the not alive--making obey that which moved, impartingmovement to that which did not move, and making life, sun-coloured andbiting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood. They were fire-makers!They were gods.