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 the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of
the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty.
For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village.  The
summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was
preparing to go off to the fall hunting.  White Fang watched it all with
eager eyes, and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were
loading at the bank, he understood.  Already the canoes were departing,
and some had disappeared down the river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind.  He waited his
opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods.  Here, in the running
stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail.  Then he
crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited.  The time passed
by, and he slept intermittently for hours.  Then he was aroused by Grey
Beaver's voice calling him by name.  There were other voices.  White Fang
could hear Grey Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah,
who was Grey Beaver's son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out
of his hiding-place, he resisted it.  After a time the voices died away,
and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his
undertaking.  Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played about
among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom.  Then, and quite suddenly, he
became aware of loneliness.  He sat down to consider, listening to the
silence of the forest and perturbed by it.  That nothing moved nor
sounded, seemed ominous.  He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and
unguessed.  He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of
the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold.  Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to
snuggle.  The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-
foot and then the other.  He curved his bushy tail around to cover them,
and at the same time he saw a vision.  There was nothing strange about
it.  Upon his inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures.
He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires.  He heard
the shrill voices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the
snarling of the dogs.  He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat
and fish that had been thrown him.  Here was no meat, nothing but a
threatening and inedible silence.

His bondage had softened him.  Irresponsibility had weakened him.  He had
forgotten how to shift for himself.  The night yawned about him.  His
senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the
continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle.  There was
nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear.  They strained to catch some
interruption of the silence and immobility of nature.  They were appalled
by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending.

He gave a great start of fright.  A colossal and formless something was
rushing across the field of his vision.  It was a tree-shadow flung by
the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away.  Reassured,
he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it
might attract the attention of the lurking dangers.

A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise.  It was
directly above him.  He yelped in his fright.  A panic seized him, and he
ran madly toward the village.  He knew an overpowering desire for the
protection and companionship of man.  In his nostrils was the smell of
the camp-smoke.  In his ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud.
He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no
shadows nor darknesses.  But no village greeted his eyes.  He had
forgotten.  The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly.  There was no place to which to flee.  He
slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and
the discarded rags and tags of the gods.  He would have been glad for the
rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of
Grey Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed
with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood.  In the centre of the
space it had occupied, he sat down.  He pointed his nose at the moon.  His
throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-
broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all
his past sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings
and dangers to come.  It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and
mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness.
The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous, thrust his
loneliness more forcibly upon him.  It did not take him long to make up
his mind.  He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down
the stream.  All day he ran.  He did not rest.  He seemed made to run on
forever.  His iron-like body ignored fatigue.  And even after fatigue
came, his heritage of endurance braced him to endless endeavour and
enabled him to drive his complaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high
mountains behind.  Rivers and streams that entered the main river he
forded or swam.  Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form,
and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy
current.  Always he was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it
might leave the river and proceed inland.

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental
vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie.
What if the trail of the gods led out on that side?  It never entered his
head.  Later on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and
come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp
and apprehend such a possibility.  But that mental power was yet in the
future.  Just now he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone
entering into his calculations.

All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles
that delayed but did not daunt.  By the middle of the second day he had
been running continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was
giving out.  It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going.  He
had not eaten in forty hours, and he was weak with hunger.  The repeated
drenchings in the icy water had likewise had their effect on him.  His
handsome coat was draggled.  The broad pads of his feet were bruised and
bleeding.  He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours.
To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to
fall--a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid
from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the
inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult
and painful.

Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the
Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay.  But on the
near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been
espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver's squaw.  Now, had not the
moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course
because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not
Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent
things would have happened differently.  Grey Beaver would not have
camped on the near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have
passed by and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild
brothers and become one of them--a wolf to the end of his days.

Night had fallen.  The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang,
whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a
fresh trail in the snow.  So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for
what it was.  Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the river
bank and in among the trees.  The camp-sounds came to his ears.  He saw
the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on
his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow.  There was fresh meat in
camp!

White Fang expected a beating.  He crouched and bristled a little at the
thought of it.  Then he went forward again.  He feared and disliked the
beating he knew to be waiting for him.  But he knew, further, that the
comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the
companionship of the dogs--the last, a companionship of enmity, but none
the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs.

He came cringing and crawling into the firelight.  Grey Beaver saw him,
and stopped munching the tallow.  White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and
grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission.  He crawled
straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower
and more painful.  At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose
possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul.  Of
his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him.
White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him.  There
was a movement of the hand above him.  He cringed involuntarily under the
expected blow.  It did not fall.  He stole a glance upward.  Grey Beaver
was breaking the lump of tallow in half!  Grey Beaver was offering him
one piece of the tallow!  Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first
smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it.  Grey Beaver ordered
meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs while he
ate.  After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's
feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in
the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn
through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with
the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.




When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the
Mackenzie.  Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him.  One sled he drove
himself, drawn by dogs he had traded for or borrowed.  A second and
smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed a team of
puppies.  It was more of a toy affair than anything else, yet it was the
delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man's work in
the world.  Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs; while
the puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness.  Furthermore,
the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two hundred pounds of
outfit and food.

White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did
not resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself.  About
his neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two
pulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his back.
It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled at the
sled.

There were seven puppies in the team.  The others had been born earlier
in the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only
eight months old.  Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope.  No
two ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length between
any two ropes was at least that of a dog's body.  Every rope was brought
to a ring at the front end of the sled.  The sled itself was without
runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end to keep
it from ploughing under the snow.  This construction enabled the weight
of the sled and load to be distributed over the largest snow-surface; for
the snow was crystal-powder and very soft.  Observing the same principle
of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the ends of their ropes
radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no dog trod in
another's footsteps.

There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation.  The ropes
of varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that
ran in front of them.  For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn
upon one at a shorter rope.  In which case it would find itself face to
face with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip
of the driver.  But the most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that
the dog that strove to attack one in front of him must pull the sled
faster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the faster could the dog
attacked run away.  Thus, the dog behind could never catch up with the
one in front.  The faster he ran, the faster ran the one he was after,
and the faster ran all the dogs.  Incidentally, the sled went faster, and
thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery over the
beasts.

Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed.  In
the past he had observed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang; but at that
time Lip-lip was another man's dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more than
to shy an occasional stone at him.  But now Lip-lip was his dog, and he
proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of the
longest rope.  This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an
honour! but in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of
being bully and master of the pack, he now found himself hated and
persecuted by the pack.

Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the
view of him running away before them.  All that they saw of him was his
bushy tail and fleeing hind legs--a view far less ferocious and
intimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs.  Also, dogs
being so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running away
gave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from them.

The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase that
extended throughout the day.  At first he had been prone to turn upon his
pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah
would throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into
his face and compel him to turn tail and run on.  Lip-lip might face the
pack, but he could not face that whip, and all that was left him to do
was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his
mates.

But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind.  To
give point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over
the other dogs.  These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred.  In
their presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only.
This was maddening to them.  They would rage around just outside the
throwing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit-
sah protected him.  And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah would
keep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to Lip-lip.

White Fang took kindly to the work.  He had travelled a greater distance
than the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods,
and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will.
In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the
pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more.  He had not
learned to be dependent on his kind for companionship.  Besides, Kiche
was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that remained
to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had accepted as
masters.  So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was obedient.
Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil.  These are essential
traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become domesticated,
and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.

A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it
was one of warfare and enmity.  He had never learned to play with them.
He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them
a hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the days when
Lip-lip was leader of the pack.  But Lip-lip was no longer leader--except
when he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sled
bounding along behind.  In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver
or Kloo-kooch.  He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now the
fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs the
persecution that had been White Fang's.

With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the
pack.  But he was too morose and solitary for that.  He merely thrashed
his team-mates.  Otherwise he ignored them.  They got out of his way when
he came along; nor did the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his
meat.  On the contrary, they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear
that he would take it away from them.  White Fang knew the law well: _to
oppress the weak and obey the strong_.  He ate his share of meat as
rapidly as he could.  And then woe the dog that had not yet finished!  A
snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail his indignation to
the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his portion for him.

Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt
and be promptly subdued.  Thus White Fang was kept in training.  He was
jealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the
pack, and he fought often to maintain it.  But such fights were of brief
duration.  He was too quick for the others.  They were slashed open and
bleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped almost before
they had begun to fight.

As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline
maintained by White Fang amongst his fellows.  He never allowed them any
latitude.  He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him.  They
might do as they pleased amongst themselves.  That was no concern of his.
But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his isolation, get
out of his way when he elected to walk among them, and at all times
acknowledge his mastery over them.  A hint of stiff-leggedness on their
part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them,
merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way.

He was a monstrous tyrant.  His mastery was rigid as steel.  He oppressed
the weak with a vengeance.  Not for nothing had he been exposed to the
pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother
and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious
environment of the Wild.  And not for nothing had he learned to walk
softly when superior strength went by.  He oppressed the weak, but he
respected the strong.  And in the course of the long journey with Grey
Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the camps
of the strange man-animals they encountered.

The months passed by.  Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver.  White
Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady
toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development
was well-nigh complete.  He had come to know quite thoroughly the world
in which he lived.  His outlook was bleak and materialistic.  The world
as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a
world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of the
spirit did not exist.

He had no affection for Grey Beaver.  True, he was a god, but a most
savage god.  White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it was
a lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute strength.  There
was something in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship a
thing to be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild when
he did to tender his allegiance.  There were deeps in his nature which
had never been sounded.  A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on
the part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver
did not caress, nor speak kind words.  It was not his way.  His primacy
was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club,
punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, not
by kindness, but by withholding a blow.

So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for
him.  Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals.  He was
suspicious of them.  It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more
often they gave hurt.  Hands were things to keep away from.  They hurled
stones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips, administered slaps and
clouts, and, when they touched him, were cunning to hurt with pinch and
twist and wrench.  In strange villages he had encountered the hands of
the children and learned that they were cruel to hurt.  Also, he had once
nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose.  From these
experiences he became suspicious of all children.  He could not tolerate
them.  When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.

It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of
resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the
law that he had learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable
crime was to bite one of the gods.  In this village, after the custom of
all dogs in all villages, White Fang went foraging, for food.  A boy was
chopping frozen moose-meat with an axe, and the chips were flying in the
snow.  White Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eat
the chips.  He observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stout
club.  White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descending
blow.  The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fled
between two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank.

There was no escape for White Fang.  The only way out was between the two
tepees, and this the boy guarded.  Holding his club prepared to strike,
he drew in on his cornered quarry.  White Fang was furious.  He faced the
boy, bristling and snarling, his sense of justice outraged.  He knew the
law of forage.  All the wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips,
belonged to the dog that found it.  He had done no wrong, broken no law,
yet here was this boy preparing to give him a beating.  White Fang
scarcely knew what happened.  He did it in a surge of rage.  And he did
it so quickly that the boy did not know either.  All the boy knew was
that he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, and
that his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth.

But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods.  He had
driven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect
nothing but a most terrible punishment.  He fled away to Grey Beaver,
behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the bitten boy and the
boy's family came, demanding vengeance.  But they went away with
vengeance unsatisfied.  Grey Beaver defended White Fang.  So did Mit-sah
and Kloo-kooch.  White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching the
angry gestures, knew that his act was justified.  And so it came that he
learned there were gods and gods.  There were his gods, and there were
other gods, and between them there was a difference.  Justice or
injustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of
his own gods.  But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other
gods.  It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth.  And this also
was a law of the gods.

Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law.  Mit-
sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that
had been bitten.  With him were other boys.  Hot words passed.  Then all
the boys attacked Mit-sah.  It was going hard with him.  Blows were
raining upon him from all sides.  White Fang looked on at first.  This
was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his.  Then he realised that
this was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was being
maltreated.  It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what he
then did.  A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst the
combatants.  Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing
boys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang's
teeth had not been idle.  When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey
Beaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang.  He ordered much meat to
be given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the
law had received its verification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the
law of property and the duty of the defence of property.  From the
protection of his god's body to the protection of his god's possessions
was a step, and this step he made.  What was his god's was to be defended
against all the world--even to the extent of biting other gods.  Not only
was such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with
peril.  The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them;
yet White Fang learned to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid.
Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver's
property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was
that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at
the sounding of the alarm.  Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed
between his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid.  He
came to know that it was not fear of him that drove the thief away, but
fear of Grey Beaver.  White Fang did not give the alarm by barking.  He
never barked.  His method was to drive straight at the intruder, and to
sink his teeth in if he could.  Because he was morose and solitary,
having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted to
guard his master's property; and in this he was encouraged and trained by
Grey Beaver.  One result of this was to make White Fang more ferocious
and indomitable, and more solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between
dog and man.  This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came
in from the Wild entered into with man.  And, like all succeeding wolves
and wild dogs that had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out
for himself.  The terms were simple.  For the possession of a flesh-and-
blood god, he exchanged his own liberty.  Food and fire, protection and
companionship, were some of the things he received from the god.  In
return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him,
and obeyed him.

The possession of a god implies service.  White Fang's was a service of
duty and awe, but not of love.  He did not know what love was.  He had no
experience of love.  Kiche was a remote memory.  Besides, not only had he
abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the
terms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would
not desert his god to go with her.  His allegiance to man seemed somehow
a law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.




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

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the
various gods he had known before the long journey.  Then there were the
dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look
so 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 a
certain 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 but
to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the
right about.  From him White Fang had learned much of his own
insignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of the change and
development that had taken place in himself.  While Baseek had been
growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger with youth.

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

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

And right here Baseek erred.  Had he contented himself with looking
fierce and ominous, all would have been well.  White Fang, on the verge
of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him.  But Baseek
did not wait.  He considered the victory already his and stepped forward
to the meat.  As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang
bristled slightly.  Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve
the situation.  Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering,
White Fang would ultimately have slunk away.  But the fresh meat was
strong 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 over
his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while
another devoured the meat that belonged to him.  He struck, after his
custom, without warning.  With the first slash, Baseek's right ear was
ripped into ribbons.  He was astounded at the suddenness of it.  But more
things, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness.  He
was knocked off his feet.  His throat was bitten.  While he was
struggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder.
The swiftness of it was bewildering.  He made a futile rush at White
Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap.  The next moment his
nose 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 to
retreat.  He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and
again he knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age.  His
attempt to maintain his dignity was heroic.  Calmly turning his back upon
young dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice and
unworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away.  Nor, until well
out of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and
a greater pride.  He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his
attitude toward them was less compromising.  Not that he went out of his
way looking for trouble.  Far from it.  But upon his way he demanded
consideration.  He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and to
give trail to no dog.  He had to be taken into account, that was all.  He
was 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 meat
to them under compulsion.  But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary,
morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of
aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders.
They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts
nor making overtures of friendliness.  If they left him alone, he left
them 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 silent
way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the
village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon
Kiche.  He paused and looked at her.  He remembered her vaguely, but he
_remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said for her.  She
lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory became
clear.  His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar
snarl, rushed back to him.  Before he had known the gods, she had been to
him the centre-pin of the universe.  The old familiar feelings of that
time came back upon him, surged up within him.  He bounded towards her
joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to
the bone.  He did not understand.  He backed away, bewildered and
puzzled.

But it was not Kiche's fault.  A wolf-mother was not made to remember her
cubs of a year or so before.  So she did not remember White Fang.  He was
a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her
the 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.  He
backed farther away.  All the old memories and associations died down
again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected.  He
looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at
him.  She was without value to him.  He had learned to get along without
her.  Her meaning was forgotten.  There was no place for her in his
scheme 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 Fang
allowed himself to be driven away.  This was a female of his kind, and it
was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females.  He did
not know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the
mind, not a something acquired by experience of the world.  He knew it as
a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct that
made him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear
death and the unknown.

The months went by.  White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact,
while his character was developing along the lines laid down by his
heredity and his environment.  His heredity was a life-stuff that may be
likened to clay.  It possessed many possibilities, was capable of being
moulded into many different forms.  Environment served to model the clay,
to give it a particular form.  Thus, had White Fang never come in to the
fires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf.  But the
gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dog
that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his
surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular
shape.  There was no escaping it.  He was becoming more morose, more
uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were
learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than at
war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with the
passage of each day.

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

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

To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tanned
leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses
off their backs and the very whip-lashes.  Also, the dogs ate one
another, and also the gods ate the dogs.  The weakest and the more
worthless were eaten first.  The dogs that still lived, looked on and
understood.  A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the
gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into the forest, where,
in the end, they starved to death or were eaten by wolves.

In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods.  He
was better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the
training of his cubhood to guide him.  Especially adept did he become in
stalking small living things.  He would lie concealed for hours,
following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a
patience as huge as the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel
ventured out upon the ground.  Even then, White Fang was not premature.
He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain a
tree-refuge.  Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding-
place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark--the
fleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough.

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

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the
gods.  But he did not go into the fires.  He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when game
was caught.  He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a time
when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting down
often 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 might
have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his
wild brethren.  As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate
him.

Fortune seemed to favour him.  Always, when hardest pressed for food, he
found something to kill.  Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that
none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him.  Thus, he was strong
from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-
pack ran full tilt upon him.  It was a long, cruel chase, but he was
better nourished than they, and in the end outran them.  And not only did
he outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in
one of his exhausted pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the
valley wherein he had been born.  Here, in the old lair, he encountered
Kiche.  Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires
of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young.
Of this litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the
scene, and this one was not destined to live long.  Young life had little
chance in such a famine.

Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate.  But
White Fang did not mind.  He had outgrown his mother.  So he turned tail
philosophically and trotted on up the stream.  At the forks he took the
turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his
mother and he had fought long before.  Here, in the abandoned lair, he
settled down and rested for a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip,
who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable
existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly.  Trotting in opposite directions
along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found
themselves face to face.  They paused with instant alarm, and looked at
each other suspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition.  His hunting had been good, and for
a week he had eaten his fill.  He was even gorged from his latest kill.
But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his
back.  It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state
that in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him
by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution.  As in the past he had bristled
and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled
and snarled.  He did not waste any time.  The thing was done thoroughly
and with despatch.  Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck
him hard, shoulder to shoulder.  Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon
his back.  White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat.  There was a
death-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged and
observant.  Then he resumed his course and trotted on along the base of
the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a
narrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie.  He had been
over this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it.
Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation.  Sights
and sounds and scents were familiar to him.  It was the old village
changed to a new place.  But sights and sounds and smells were different
from those he had last had when he fled away from it.  There was no
whimpering nor wailing.  Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he
heard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds
from a full stomach.  And there was a smell in the air of fish.  There
was food.  The famine was gone.  He came out boldly from the forest and
trotted into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee.  Grey Beaver was not
there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a
fresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.




PART IV

 As with Parts I and II, Part III breaks with previous sections and introduces completely new elements into the novel, showing how the gray cub learns to live in civilization. On his way to the stream for a drink the cub encounters man for the first time and is surprised by his own passive response. More surprising was his mother's reaction when these man-animals called her by name, Kiche, and she cowered to them. Given a new name, White Fang, he is introduced to life in the Indian village, a life that White Fang would soon find unbearable. From the very beginning White Fang knew the power these man-animals had, realizing, "the superiority of these man-animals increased with every moment." The young wolf was quick to notice that they did not bite nor claw, but rather they enforced their strength with the power of "dead things." He learned to stay away from clubs and stones, was impressed with the design of tepees, and watched the way they moved about the Indian village as if they were gods. He saw them as creatures of "mastery, making obey that which moved" and most importantly, they were fire-makers! During this first day in camp, as White Fang strayed away from his mother who is tied up, he had the opportunity to meet a part-grown puppy, Lip-Lip. This somewhat larger and older dog, already something of a bully, immediately attacked White Fang and a fight ensued. Lip-Lip had lived his life in camp and, having fought many puppy fights, was easily the victor. This encounter would not be lost on White Frang. Although White Fang slowly began to give his "body and soul" over to the man-animals, he could not immediately let go of his wild heritage and his memories of the wild. Some days he would creep to the edge of the forest and listen to something calling him. Perhaps this restlessness was brought on by the constant torment White Fang received from Lip-Lip. Whenever he ventured away from his mother, the bully was there to attack and force a fight. This brings about a change in the young puppy - he is forced to abandoned much of his "childhood," he becomes a solitary figure in camp. He begins to develop his intellect, his cunning and his skills. One day, while being chased, White Fang deliberately leads Lip-Lip past Kiche, who is able to deal a great deal of revenge for her son. Gray Beaver, master of both mother dog and son dog, decides one day the Kiche no longer is a threat to run away and unties her. White Fang leads his mother to the edge of the woods next to the camp and urges her to run to freedom in the quiet woods where something is calling him. Kiche refuses to go and White Fang makes a decision - the call of his mother is stronger than his call of the wild. However, a short time later Gray Beaver gives Kicke to Three Eagles to settle a debt. As Three Eagles puts Kiche in a canoe to go down river, White Fang jumps in the water and begins to swim after them as Gray Beaver repeatedly calls to him. The man-animal gods are use to being obeyed and the savage beating that White Fang received from Gray Beaver drove this new lesson home. The level of White Fang's bondage became clearer every day. Now that Kiche is no longer able to protect White Fang, Lip-Lip sees the opportunity to increase his persecution. With the other camp dogs on his side, Lip-Lip makes life for White Fang living hell. But White Fang is brighter than most other dogs and quickly learns two important lessons: "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." As White Fang becomes more savage, he becomes more and more alienated from his own kind as well as man. He learned another lesson, to obey the strong and to oppress the weak. He continued to learn the lesson of the survival of the fittest. In the fall, as the Indians were moving their camp, White Fang had an opportunity to escape to the wild. He deliberately determined to stay behind and hid in the nearby woods as Gray Beaver called his name. As night approached, cold, hunger, and loneliness had begun to sink in. "His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself." The night images and sounds convinced him of his mistake and he decided to return to his master the next morning. After following the river, White Fang finds Gray Beaver and his family. As he approaches he knows that a beating would be coming but is surprised when Gray Beaver gives him moose meat instead. He lays down at his master's feat and realizes that "of his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him." The next few months are full of lessons learned by White Fang, lessons that will serve him the rest of his life. He first learns how to be a sled dog as Gray Beaver plans a trip up the Mackenzie River. It is Mit-sah, Gray Beaver's son, who is in charge of the sled and makes Lip-Lip the lead dog. Although appearing to be an honor, the lead dog had all honor taken away from him as the other dogs followed him, never able to see his face or his sharp teeth. At nights Mit-sah would feed Gray Beaver more than the other dogs and Lip-Lip now found himself hated and persecuted by the pack. White Fang learned to work hard and learned the futility of opposing the will of the gods. He also learned to oppress the weak and obey the strong. He had learned much earlier from Gray Beaver that the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods, but now he learned that some laws were subject to change. In a village at the Great Slave Lake, White Fang goes foraging for food and comes upon a young boy chopping moose meat. As White Fang eats a few chips of the frozen meat the boy becomes enraged and attacks the dog with a club. White Fang must now decide between a beating and defending himself. Before the boy realizes what has happened, he is attacked by the dog and White Fang now expects nothing but the most terrible punishment. Imagine his surprise when Gray Beaver defends his actions. Before the day is out Mit-sah is attacked by a group of young Indians. At first White Fang just looks on - this was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his. When he realizes the fight is going badly for Mit-sah, a mad rush of anger sends him leaping into combat, saving Gray Beaver's son. White Fang came to understand that the law of property and and the duty of defending the property gave him rights otherwise prohibited, namely the biting of thieving gods. A covenant was worked out by White Fang and the terms were simple. "For the possession of a flesh-and-blood god, he exchanged his own liberty. Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defned his body, worked for him and obeyed him." It was a service of duty and awe, but not of love. By the next spring White Fang had grown in size and at one year of age is able to compete with any other dog in the camp. He is now able to command the respect of even the older and stronger dogs in camp. He also comes upon Kiche and her new cub and as he greets her and runs to her, is surprised by the snarling reaction and lack of recognition. Although confused, his instincts let him know this is a female of his kind and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. In the third year of his life another terrible famine comes to the valley. The gods were so hungry that they ate the leather of their moccasins and the dogs ate the harnesses off their backs. In this time of misery, White Fang retreated to the woods and takes care of himself by hunting small game and preying on young wolf, gaunt and scrawny with hunger. Despite the famine, White Fang remains in good condition and, consequently, when he comes across a hungry and tired Lip-Lip, the battle to the end is swift and merciless.

