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.
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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.
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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
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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 While 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
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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
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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.
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