Chapter: The cub came upon it suddenly.  It was his own fault.  He had been
careless.  He had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink.  It
might 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 then
awakened.)  And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarity
of the trail to the pool.  He had travelled it often, and nothing had
ever happened on it.

He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted
in 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 of
mankind.  But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to their
feet, 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 impelled
him to dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time
arisen in him another and counter instinct.  A great awe descended upon
him.  He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his
own weakness and littleness.  Here was mastery and power, something far
and away beyond him.

The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his.  In
dim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to
primacy over the other animals of the Wild.  Not alone out of his own
eyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking
upon man--out of eyes that had circled in the darkness around countless
winter camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances and from the
hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord over
living things.  The spell of the cub's heritage was upon him, the fear
and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated
experience of the generations.  The heritage was too compelling for a
wolf that was only a cub.  Had he been full-grown, he would have run
away.  As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half
proffering the submission that his kind had proffered from the first time
a 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 at
last, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to
seize hold of him.  His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed
back and his little fangs were bared.  The hand, poised like doom above
him, 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 the
cub.  As the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cub
a battle of the instincts.  He experienced two great impulsions--to yield
and to fight.  The resulting action was a compromise.  He did both.  He
yielded till the hand almost touched him.  Then he fought, his teeth
flashing in a snap that sank them into the hand.  The next moment he
received a clout alongside the head that knocked him over on his side.
Then all fight fled out of him.  His puppyhood and the instinct of
submission 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 clout
on the other side of his head.  Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi'd louder
than ever.

The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been
bitten began to laugh.  They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while
he wailed out his terror and his hurt.  In the midst of it, he heard
something.  The Indians heard it too.  But the cub knew what it was, and
with a last, long wail that had in it more of triumph than grief, he
ceased his noise and waited for the coming of his mother, of his
ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed all things and was
never afraid.  She was snarling as she ran.  She had heard the cry of her
cub and was dashing to save him.

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

Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men.  "Kiche!" was what he
uttered.  It was an exclamation of surprise.  The cub felt his mother
wilting 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 her
tail, making peace signs.  The cub could not understand.  He was
appalled.  The awe of man rushed over him again.  His instinct had been
true.  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 indication
of danger, the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother still
bristling from time to time but doing his best to submit.

"It is not strange," an Indian was saying.  "Her father was a wolf.  It
is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in the
woods all of three nights in the mating season?  Therefore was the father
of 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 the
time 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 hand
on the cub; "and this be the sign of it."

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

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

The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched.  For
a time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises.  Then Grey
Beaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and went
into the thicket and cut a stick.  White Fang watched him.  He notched
the 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 a
small pine, around which he tied the other string.

White Fang followed and lay down beside her.  Salmon Tongue's hand
reached out to him and rolled him over on his back.  Kiche looked on
anxiously.  White Fang felt fear mounting in him again.  He could not
quite suppress a snarl, but he made no offer to snap.  The hand, with
fingers crooked and spread apart, rubbed his stomach in a playful way and
rolled him from side to side.  It was ridiculous and ungainly, lying
there on his back with legs sprawling in the air.  Besides, it was a
position of such utter helplessness that White Fang's whole nature
revolted against it.  He could do nothing to defend himself.  If this man-
animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it.  How
could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him?  Yet
submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly.  This
growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving
him a blow on the head.  And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it,
White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand
rubbed back and forth.  When he was rolled on his side he ceased to
growl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of his ears the
pleasurable sensation increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch,
the man left him alone and went away, all fear had died out of White
Fang.  He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was
a token of the fearless companionship with man that was ultimately to be
his.

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

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that
they were his own kind, only somehow different.  But they displayed
little difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his
mother.  There was a rush.  White Fang bristled and snarled and snapped
in the face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave of dogs, and went down and
under them, feeling the sharp slash of teeth in his body, himself biting
and 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 hear
the 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 now
see the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones,
defending him, saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow
was not his kind.  And though there was no reason in his brain for a
clear conception of so abstract a thing as justice, nevertheless, in his
own way, he felt the justice of the man-animals, and he knew them for
what they were--makers of law and executors of law.  Also, he appreciated
the power with which they administered the law.  Unlike any animals he
had ever encountered, they did not bite nor claw.  They enforced their
live strength with the power of dead things.  Dead things did their
bidding.  Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strange creatures,
leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts upon
the dogs.

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

The last dog had been driven back.  The hubbub died down.  And White Fang
licked his hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-cruelty
and his introduction to the pack.  He had never dreamed that his own kind
consisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself.  They had
constituted a kind apart, and here, abruptly, he had discovered many more
creatures apparently of his own kind.  And there was a subconscious
resentment that these, his kind, at first sight had pitched upon him and
tried to destroy him.  In the same way he resented his mother being tied
with a stick, even though it was done by the superior man-animals.  It
savoured of the trap, of bondage.  Yet of the trap and of bondage he knew
nothing.  Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had been his
heritage; and here it was being infringed upon.  His mother's movements
were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of that same
stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of his
mother's side.

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

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

It was this last that especially affected him.  The elevation of frames
of poles caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, being
done by the same creatures that flung sticks and stones to great
distances.  But when the frames of poles were made into tepees by being
covered with cloth and skins, White Fang was astounded.  It was the
colossal bulk of them that impressed him.  They arose around him, on
every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of life.  They
occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision.  He was
afraid of them.  They loomed ominously above him; and when the breeze
stirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his
eyes warily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to
precipitate themselves upon him.

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

Lip-lip was White Fang's own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seem
dangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit.  But
when the stranger's walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of
his teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips.  They
half circled about each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling.  This
lasted several minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a
sort of game.  But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped
in, delivering a slashing snap, and leaped away again.  The snap had
taken effect on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that was
still sore deep down near the bone.  The surprise and hurt of it brought
a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger, he was
upon 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 teeth
scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to
the protection of his mother.  It was the first of the many fights he was
to have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start, born so, with
natures destined perpetually to clash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail
upon him to remain with her.  But his curiosity was rampant, and several
minutes later he was venturing forth on a new quest.  He came upon one of
the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing
something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground.  White
Fang came near to him and watched.  Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which
White 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 he
touched Grey Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that
this was a terrible man-animal.  Suddenly he saw a strange thing like
mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver's
hands.  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 the
mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood.  He crawled the
several 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 the
sticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose.  He scrambled
backward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi's.  At the
sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged
terribly because she could not come to his aid.  But Grey Beaver laughed
loudly, and slapped his thighs, and told the happening to all the rest of
the camp, till everybody was laughing uproariously.  But White Fang sat
on his haunches and ki-yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable little
figure in the midst of the man-animals.

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

And then shame came to him.  He knew laughter and the meaning of it.  It
is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when
they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew
it.  And he felt shame that the man-animals should be laughing at him.  He
turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the
laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him.  And he
fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad--to
Kiche, 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's
side.  His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater
trouble.  He was homesick.  He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush
and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff.  Life had become
too populous.  There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and
children, all making noises and irritations.  And there were the dogs,
ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creating
confusions.  The restful loneliness of the only life he had known was
gone.  Here the very air was palpitant with life.  It hummed and buzzed
unceasingly.  Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in
pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and
restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.

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




The days were thronged with experience for White Fang.  During the time
that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp,
inquiring, investigating, learning.  He quickly came to know much of the
ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt.  The
more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority,
the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their
god-likeness.

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and
his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in
to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come.  Unlike man, whose
gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy
eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness
and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of
spirit--unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the
fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying
earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and
their existence.  No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a
god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god.  There
is no getting away from it.  There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club
in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and
mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it
is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.

And so it was with White Fang.  The man-animals were gods unmistakable
and unescapable.  As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to
them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his
allegiance.  He gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs.
When they walked, he got out of their way.  When they called, he came.
When they threatened, he cowered down.  When they commanded him to go, he
went away hurriedly.  For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce
that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself in clouts and
clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them.  His actions were
theirs to command.  His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to
tolerate.  Such was the lesson that was quickly borne in upon him.  It
came hard, going as it did, counter to much that was strong and dominant
in his own nature; and, while he disliked it in the learning of it,
unknown to himself he was learning to like it.  It was a placing of his
destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of
existence.  This in itself was compensation, for it is always easier to
lean upon another than to stand alone.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and
soul, to the man-animals.  He could not immediately forego his wild
heritage and his memories of the Wild.  There were days when he crept to
the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him
far and away.  And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to
whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche's side and to lick her face with
eager, questioning tongue.

White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp.  He knew the injustice
and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be
eaten.  He came to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and
women more kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone.  And
after two or three painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown
puppies, he came into the knowledge that it was always good policy to let
such mothers alone, to keep away from them as far as possible, and to
avoid them when he saw them coming.

But the bane of his life was Lip-lip.  Larger, older, and stronger, Lip-
lip had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution.  While
Fang fought willingly enough, but he was outclassed.  His enemy was too
big.  Lip-lip became a nightmare to him.  Whenever he ventured away from
his mother, the bully was sure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling
at him, picking upon him, and watchful of an opportunity, when no man-
animal was near, to spring upon him and force a fight.  As Lip-lip
invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely.  It became his chief delight in
life, as it became White Fang's chief torment.

But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him.  Though he suffered
most of the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained
unsubdued.  Yet a bad effect was produced.  He became malignant and
morose.  His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage
under this unending persecution.  The genial, playful, puppyish side of
him found little expression.  He never played and gambolled about with
the other puppies of the camp.  Lip-lip would not permit it.  The moment
White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him, bullying and
hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away.

The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and
to make him in his comportment older than his age.  Denied the outlet,
through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his
mental processes.  He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote
himself to thoughts of trickery.  Prevented from obtaining his share of
meat and fish when a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a
clever thief.  He had to forage for himself, and he foraged well, though
he was oft-times a plague to the squaws in consequence.  He learned to
sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to
see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to
devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor.

It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first
really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge.  As
Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the
camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip
into Kiche's avenging jaws.  Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made
an indirect flight that led in and out and around the various tepees of
the camp.  He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy of his size, and
swifter than Lip-lip.  But he did not run his best in this chase.  He
barely held his own, one leap ahead of his pursuer.

Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his
victim, forgot caution and locality.  When he remembered locality, it was
too late.  Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into
Kiche lying at the end of her stick.  He gave one yelp of consternation,
and then her punishing jaws closed upon him.  She was tied, but he could
not get away from her easily.  She rolled him off his legs so that he
could not run, while she repeatedly ripped and slashed him with her
fangs.

When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his
feet, badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit.  His hair was
standing out all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled.  He stood
where he had arisen, opened his mouth, and broke out the long,
heart-broken puppy wail.  But even this he was not allowed to complete.
In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth into
Lip-lip's hind leg.  There was no fight left in Lip-lip, and he ran away
shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying him all the way
back to his own tepee.  Here the squaws came to his aid, and White Fang,
transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a
fusillade of stones.

Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running
away was past, released Kiche.  White Fang was delighted with his
mother's freedom.  He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so
long as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful
distance.  White Fang even bristled up to him and walked stiff-legged,
but Lip-lip ignored the challenge.  He was no fool himself, and whatever
vengeance he desired to wreak, he could wait until he caught White Fang
alone.

Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the
woods next to the camp.  He had led his mother there, step by step, and
now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther.  The stream, the
lair, and the quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come.
He ran on a few steps, stopped, and looked back.  She had not moved.  He
whined pleadingly, and scurried playfully in and out of the underbrush.
He ran back to her, licked her face, and ran on again.  And still she did
not move.  He stopped and regarded her, all of an intentness and
eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out of him as she
turned her head and gazed back at the camp.

There was something calling to him out there in the open.  His mother
heard it too.  But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of
the fire and of man--the call which has been given alone of all animals
to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.

Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp.  Stronger than the
physical restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her.
Unseen and occultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would
not let her go.  White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and
whimpered softly.  There was a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood
fragrances filled the air, reminding him of his old life of freedom
before the days of his bondage.  But he was still only a part-grown
puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the
call of his mother.  All the hours of his short life he had depended upon
her.  The time was yet to come for independence.  So he arose and trotted
forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and whimper
and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of the forest.

In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the
dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter.  Thus it was with White
Fang.  Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles.  Three Eagles was
going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake.  A strip
of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay
the debt.  White Fang saw his mother taken aboard Three Eagles' canoe,
and tried to follow her.  A blow from Three Eagles knocked him backward
to the land.  The canoe shoved off.  He sprang into the water and swam
after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to return.  Even a man-
animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in of
losing his mother.

But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully
launched a canoe in pursuit.  When he overtook White Fang, he reached
down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the water.  He did
not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe.  Holding him
suspended with one hand, with the other hand he proceeded to give him a
beating.  And it _was_ a beating.  His hand was heavy.  Every blow was
shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude of blows.

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from
that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum.
Varying were the emotions that surged through him.  At first, he had
known surprise.  Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times
to the impact of the hand.  But this was quickly followed by anger.  His
free nature asserted itself, and he showed his teeth and snarled
fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god.  This but served to make the
god more wrathful.  The blows came faster, heavier, more shrewd to hurt.

Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl.  But this
could not last for ever.  One or the other must give over, and that one
was White Fang.  Fear surged through him again.  For the first time he
was being really man-handled.  The occasional blows of sticks and stones
he had previously experienced were as caresses compared with this.  He
broke down and began to cry and yelp.  For a time each blow brought a
yelp from him; but fear passed into terror, until finally his yelps were
voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected with the rhythm of the
punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand.  White Fang, hanging limply,
continued to cry.  This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down
roughly in the bottom of the canoe.  In the meantime the canoe had
drifted down the stream.  Grey Beaver picked up the paddle.  White Fang
was in his way.  He spurned him savagely with his foot.  In that moment
White Fang's free nature flashed forth again, and he sank his teeth into
the moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating
he now received.  Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible; likewise was White
Fang's fright.  Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was used
upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was
again flung down in the canoe.  Again, and this time with purpose, did
Grey Beaver kick him.  White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot.
He had learned another lesson of his bondage.  Never, no matter what the
circumstance, must he dare to bite the god who was lord and master over
him; the body of the lord and master was sacred, not to be defiled by the
teeth of such as he.  That was evidently the crime of crimes, the one
offence there was no condoning nor overlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and
motionless, waiting the will of Grey Beaver.  It was Grey Beaver's will
that he should go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on
his side and hurting his bruises afresh.  He crawled tremblingly to his
feet and stood whimpering.  Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding
from the bank, now rushed upon him, knocking him over and sinking his
teeth into him.  White Fang was too helpless to defend himself, and it
would have gone hard with him had not Grey Beaver's foot shot out,
lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence so that he smashed down to
earth a dozen feet away.  This was the man-animal's justice; and even
then, in his own pitiable plight, White Fang experienced a little
grateful thrill.  At Grey Beaver's heels he limped obediently through the
village to the tepee.  And so it came that White Fang learned that the
right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied
to the lesser creatures under them.

That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and
sorrowed for her.  He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who
beat him.  After that he mourned gently when the gods were around.  But
sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent
to his grief, and cried it out with loud whimperings and wailings.

It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of
the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild.  But the memory of his
mother held him.  As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so
she would come back to the village some time.  So he remained in his
bondage waiting for her.

But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage.  There was much to interest
him.  Something was always happening.  There was no end to the strange
things these gods did, and he was always curious to see.  Besides, he was
learning how to get along with Grey Beaver.  Obedience, rigid,
undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of him; and in return he
escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and
defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it.  And such a
piece of meat was of value.  It was worth more, in some strange way, then
a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw.  Grey Beaver never
petted nor caressed.  Perhaps it was the weight of his hand, perhaps his
justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all these
things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tie of attachment was
forming between him and his surly lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and
stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang's bondage being
riveted upon him.  The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made
it possible for them to come in to the fires of men, were qualities
capable of development.  They were developing in him, and the camp-life,
replete with misery as it was, was secretly endearing itself to him all
the time.  But White Fang was unaware of it.  He knew only grief for the
loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and a hungry yearning for the free
life that had been his.




Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder
and more ferocious than it was his natural right to be.  Savageness was a
part of his make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make-
up.  He acquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals
themselves.  Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and
squabbling or the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were
sure to find White Fang mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it.
They did not bother to look after the causes of his conduct.  They saw
only the effects, and the effects were bad.  He was a sneak and a thief,
a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble; and irate squaws told him to his
face, the while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge any quick-flung
missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to come to an evil
end.

He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp.  All the
young dogs followed Lip-lip's lead.  There was a difference between White
Fang and them.  Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and
instinctively felt for him the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the
wolf.  But be that as it may, they joined with Lip-lip in the
persecution.  And, once declared against him, they found good reason to
continue declared against him.  One and all, from time to time, they felt
his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received.  Many of
them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him.  The
beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp to
come running and pitch upon him.

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take
care of himself in a mass-fight against him--and how, on a single dog, to
inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time.  To
keep one's feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he
learnt well.  He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet.  Even
grown dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their
heavy bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding
on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward
to the mother earth.

When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual
combat--snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings.  But White
Fang learned to omit these preliminaries.  Delay meant the coming against
him of all the young dogs.  He must do his work quickly and get away.  So
he learnt to give no warning of his intention.  He rushed in and snapped
and slashed on the instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare
to meet him.  Thus he learned how to inflict quick and severe damage.
Also he learned the value of surprise.  A dog, taken off its guard, its
shoulder slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what
was happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise;
while a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft
underside of its neck--the vulnerable point at which to strike for its
life.  White Fang knew this point.  It was a knowledge bequeathed to him
directly from the hunting generation of wolves.  So it was that White
Fang's method when he took the offensive, was: first to find a young dog
alone; second, to surprise it and knock it off its feet; and third, to
drive in with his teeth at the soft throat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor
strong enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went
around camp with a lacerated throat in token of White Fang's intention.
And one day, catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods,
he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to
cut the great vein and let out the life.  There was a great row that
night.  He had been observed, the news had been carried to the dead dog's
master, the squaws remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey
Beaver was beset by many angry voices.  But he resolutely held the door
of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to
permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured.

White Fang became hated by man and dog.  During this period of his
development he never knew a moment's security.  The tooth of every dog
was against him, the hand of every man.  He was greeted with snarls by
his kind, with curses and stones by his gods.  He lived tensely.  He was
always keyed up, alert for attack, wary of being attacked, with an eye
for sudden and unexpected missiles, prepared to act precipitately and
coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, or to leap away with a menacing
snarl.

As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old,
in camp.  The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is
required to know when it should be used.  White Fang knew how to make it
and when to make it.  Into his snarl he incorporated all that was
vicious, malignant, and horrible.  With nose serrulated by continuous
spasms, hair bristling in recurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red
snake and whipping back again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred,
lips wrinkled back, and fangs exposed and dripping, he could compel a
pause on the part of almost any assailant.  A temporary pause, when taken
off his guard, gave him the vital moment in which to think and determine
his action.  But often a pause so gained lengthened out until it evolved
into a complete cessation from the attack.  And before more than one of
the grown dogs White Fang's snarl enabled him to beat an honourable
retreat.

An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary
methods and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution
of him.  Not permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of
affairs obtained that no member of the pack could run outside the pack.
White Fang would not permit it.  What of his bushwhacking and waylaying
tactics, the young dogs were afraid to run by themselves.  With the
exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled to hunch together for mutual
protection against the terrible enemy they had made.  A puppy alone by
the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that aroused the camp with
its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that had
waylaid it.

But White Fang's reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs had
learned thoroughly that they must stay together.  He attacked them when
he caught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched.  The
sight of him was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which
times his swiftness usually carried him into safety.  But woe the dog
that outran his fellows in such pursuit!  White Fang had learned to turn
suddenly upon the pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to
rip him up before the pack could arrive.  This occurred with great
frequency, for, once in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget
themselves in the excitement of the chase, while White Fang never forgot
himself.  Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was always ready to
whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his fellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation
they realised their play in this mimic warfare.  Thus it was that the
hunt of White Fang became their chief game--a deadly game, withal, and at
all times a serious game.  He, on the other hand, being the
fastest-footed, was unafraid to venture anywhere.  During the period that
he waited vainly for his mother to come back, he led the pack many a wild
chase through the adjacent woods.  But the pack invariably lost him.  Its
noise and outcry warned him of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet-
footed, silently, a moving shadow among the trees after the manner of his
father and mother before him.  Further he was more directly connected
with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and stratagems.
A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and then
lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose around
him.

Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon
and himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and
one-sided.  This was no soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in.
Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering.  The code he learned
was to obey the strong and to oppress the weak.  Grey 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 ironlike
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 survive the hostile environment in which he found
himself.

 In his wanderings, the cub carelessly comes upon the Indian village, and sees men before him. His heart swells as he realizes the power that these men hold, and he stands before them in respect, even while he is afraid. When one of the Indians reaches down for him, he bares his teeth and they laugh at his white fangs, which become his name. When a man reaches down toward him, he bites him on the hand. White Fang is walloped and he ki-yi's until his mother runs to find him. When his mother bounds into the company of the men, she grovels on the ground, and they recognize her as Kiche, the offspring of a wolf and a dog who left the tribe during the time of famine. Gray Beaver, one of the men, was her owner, so he ties her up again and pets her and White Fang. White Fang is afraid at first, but soon he enjoys the feeling. The other dogs attack him but are driven off by the men, and he realizes that men are the makers and keepers of laws and justice. The group goes back to the village, and White Fang meets his first enemy, Lip-lip. Lip-lip is a little older than White Fang, a feisty puppy, and attacks him. Then, after his pride is hurt by Lip-lip, White Fang tries to taste fire and his pride is further hurt when he burns both his tongue and nose. White Fang and his mother stay with the village, for even when White Fang tries to escape his mother will not follow. Lip-lip terrorizes his days, and White Fang never learns to play with the other dogs--he instead becomes crafty and slinks around the camp. His mother is sold to Three Eagles, and White Fang tries to follow the canoe, but Gray Beaver comes after and beats him until he cannot follow. White Fang cries for his mother, but bit by bit, he grows attached to the cold justice of Gray Beaver. Lip-lip's torments worsen. All the dogs attack White Fang, and he can only escape by running into the woods or snarling and ripping out the throats of the other dogs. All of the camp, besides Gray Beaver, turns against him, and he lives as an outcast, hated by both dogs and mankind.

