C
HAPTER
3.
T
HE
R
EIGN
O
F
H
ATE
Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was
kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased
and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early
discovered White Fang’s susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after
painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious and
scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at White
Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of
rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith.
Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a
ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated
blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain that
bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the pen, the
dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at him in his
helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that confined him. And,
first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.
But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day a
number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in
hand, and took the chain off from White Fang’s neck. When his master had
gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get at
the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and
standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of
corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier
proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an
ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and
sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.
The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang
paused. Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was
opened wider. Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was
slammed shut behind him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a
mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter
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him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his
hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the
mastiff’s neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged
at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always
evading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and
leaping out again in time to escape punishment.
The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy
of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White
Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too
ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back
with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there was a
payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith’s hand.
White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men
around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now
vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to
hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate
except at the times his master saw fit to put another dog against
him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for he was invariably the
victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon him in succession. Another
day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the Wild, was shoved in through
the door of the pen. And on still another day two dogs were set against him
at the same time. This was his severest fight, and though in the end he killed
them both he was himself half killed in doing it.
In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice was
running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang
on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land. As “the Fighting Wolf” he was known far
and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat’s deck was
usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay
quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate
them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost
himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not been
made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men stared at
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him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at
him.
They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of
him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by
Nature. Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another
animal would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and
lived, and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and
tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang’s spirit, but as yet there
were no signs of his succeeding.
If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of
them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang
had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his
hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was
sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came to close
quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on growling
and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl could never be
extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had always
another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the defiant
growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the cage
bellowing his hatred.
When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he
still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was
exhibited as “the Fighting Wolf,” and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see
him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a
sharp stick—so that the audience might get its money’s worth. In order to
make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of the time. But
worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He was regarded
as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to him through the
bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part of the men,
impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to
the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that
his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the
plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure of
environment.
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In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At
irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out of
his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually this
occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of
the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the
audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it
came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage
land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to the death.
Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogs
that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought with
Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was the
tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose his
footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds—to rush in upon
him, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his
shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador
dogs, huskies and Malemutes—all tried it on him, and all failed. He was
never known to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked
each time to see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them.
Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous
advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience,
they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be
reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The average dog was
accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and
the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished before he had begun
to fight or recovered from his surprise. So often did this happen, that it
became the custom to hold White Fang until the other dog went through its
preliminaries, was good and ready, and even made the first attack.
But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang’s favour, was his
experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that
faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and
methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely
to be improved upon.
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As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of
matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves
against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight
between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a
full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang fought for his
life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought
with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp-clawed feet as well.
But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no more
animals with which to fight—at least, there was none considered worthy of
fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one Tim
Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dog
that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should
come together was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was the
mainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.
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