to
oppress the weak and obey the strong
. He ate his share of meat as rapidly as
99
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
100
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
101
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
102
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
103
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.
104
|