PART
4
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C
HAPTER
1.
T
HE
E
NEMY
O
F
H
IS
K
IND
Had there been in White Fang’s nature any possibility, no matter how
remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was
irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now
the dogs hated him—hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by
Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated
him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail
and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes.
And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was
anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the
yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and
mastered, was almost more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or
perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment
Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team, with
eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang.
There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would
throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to
run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-
quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many
merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature and pride with
every leap he made, and leaping all day long.
One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that
nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow out
from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and
growing into the body—a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with
White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack
that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be;
and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting
thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and
develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and
indomitability of his nature.
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If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that
creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and
scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks
upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and the
dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White Fang
disdained such protection. He walked boldly about the camp, inflicting
punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day. In the time
before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned to get out of
his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day-long pursuit of him,
swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight
of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day, the
dogs could not bring themselves to give way to him. When he appeared
amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by
snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was
surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the
hatred and malice within him.
When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang
obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would
spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him
would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to
understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let
alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed
them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After several
experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learned
quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were
to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed
him.
But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each
day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous
night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be
as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their
dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of
kind—cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were
domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for
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generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was
the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him,
in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it,
was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they
were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in
the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire.
But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep
together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-
handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have
killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill
them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon him
before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first
hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had
quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was
brewing with White Fang.
On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was
too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and
always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for
getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the
trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to
life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending
warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang.
So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were,
softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man’s
strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so
moulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he
live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but
marvel at White Fang’s ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of
this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they
considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs.
When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on
another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked
amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the
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Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the
vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspecting
dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his
attack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, a
lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and
challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping
into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them
before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the
throes of surprise.
He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his
strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed,
was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his
to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with
another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away,
free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging
to him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by
the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in
contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life
of him, woven into the fibre of him.
In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against
him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in
either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to
this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him
before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored
deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter
had he become, he went his way unscathed.
Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and
distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate
such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves
carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better
adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together more
smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and
muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving
image of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that
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limited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he could
avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same
moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his
own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that
he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to
the average animal, that was all.
It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver
had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the
late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying
spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine,
he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its
junction with the Yukon just under the Artic circle. Here stood the old
Hudson’s Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and
unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of
gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still
hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had been on
the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled to get that far
was five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the
world.
Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears,
and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn
mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he
not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to
what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent.
profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down
to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the
winter to dispose of his goods.
It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared
with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a
race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power,
and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did
not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were
more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less
potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared,
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had affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by the
houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power. Those white
gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the
gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver. And yet
Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-skinned ones.
To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of
them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and
every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the
white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious
of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what
unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them,
fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content
with slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he saw
that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer.
In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance
caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act
of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach
him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a
hand on him, and it was well that they did not.
White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods—not more than a
dozen—lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and
colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for
several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away
on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the
first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life;
and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, and then
go on up the river out of sight.
But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to
much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came
ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some
were short-legged—too short; others were long-legged—too long. They
had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of
them knew how to fight.
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As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang’s province to fight with
them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty
contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered
around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he
accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He
sprang to the side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that
moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and
delivering his stroke at the throat.
Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt,
to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that
waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were
made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception
to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the
throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the
cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their
wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off
at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of
weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang was very wise.
But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise
with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank
that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been
downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on
board and wrecked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man,
having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a
revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying—
another manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang’s
consciousness.
White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd
enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men’s dogs
had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no
work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So
White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian
dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun
began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got over their
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surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer
should arrive.
But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He
did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even
feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the
strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the
strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then
withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods.
It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do,
when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw
him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild—the
unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the
darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close
to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of
which they had come, and which they had deserted and
betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear
of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had
stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence had
been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. In doing this
they had protected both themselves and the gods whose companionship
they shared.
And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the
gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to
experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They
might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs
just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish
creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with
the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White
Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud.
All of which served to make White Fang’s days enjoyable. If the sight of him
drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much
the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as
legitimate prey he looked upon them.
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Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought
his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for
nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip
and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would
then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed
his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with
more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection
and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang’s nature and
brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things
had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he became
what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all
his kind.
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