C
HAPTER
2.
T
HE
M
AD
G
OD
A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long
in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in
so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing
but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were
newcomers. They were known as
chechaquos
, and they always wilted at the
application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This
was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who,
forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking-
powder.
All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained the
newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they
enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers’ dogs by White Fang and
his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it
a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked
forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they
were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White
Fang.
But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the
sport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat’s whistle;
and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had
scattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with
regret. Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its
death-cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain
himself, and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he
had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang.
This man was called “Beauty” by the other men of the fort. No one knew
his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty
Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his
naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with
him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was
deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened
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to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his
fellows, he had been called “Pinhead.”
Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it
slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide
forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had
spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between
them was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him,
was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given
him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protruded
outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly this
appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly
to support so great a burden.
This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something
lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any
rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of
weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth
were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows,
showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as
though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs
of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of
growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out
of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and
wind-blown grain.
In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay
elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in
the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-
washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did they
tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evilly
treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages made
them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody had
to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smith could
cook.
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This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious
prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang
from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth
and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He
sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at
soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man.
With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The
good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease
from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that
are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated
accordingly. White Fang’s feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man’s
distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from
malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by
reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and
uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was
ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and
wisely to be hated.
White Fang was in Grey Beaver’s camp when Beauty Smith first visited it. At
the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White Fang knew
who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an
abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away
in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they
said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the
man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were
just descending upon him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The
man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his
head turned to observe as he glided softly over the ground.
Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading and
stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, the
strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore,
there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could
fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty
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Smith’s eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager
tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.
But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver’s camp
often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of the
potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. His
fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and
more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted
stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had
received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster
and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his
temper.
In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing
remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew
more prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty
Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the
price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver’s ears were more
eager to hear.
“You ketch um dog you take um all right,” was his last word.
The bottles were delivered, but after two days. “You ketch um dog,” were
Beauty Smith’s words to Grey Beaver.
White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of
content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days his manifestations
of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during
that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not
know what evil was threatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that
they did threaten evil of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out
of their reach.
But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and
tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang,
holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle,
which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the
accompaniment of gurgling noises.
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An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the
ground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he
was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White
Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master’s hand; but the relaxed
fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.
Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled
softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the
hands. One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his
head. His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to
descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl
growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its
culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake. The
hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a sharp
click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted White
Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth in
respectful obedience.
White Fang’s suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty
Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was
given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk away. The
thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted him right and
left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling
himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did
not jump away. He had been waiting for this. He swung the club smartly,
stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon the
ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty Smith
tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to his
feet.
He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient to
convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too
wise to fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith’s
heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But
Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to
strike.
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At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White
Fang waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the
space of ten seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There
had been no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost
as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the
same time bristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey
Beaver’s camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He
had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still
belonged.
But what had occurred before was repeated—with a difference. Grey
Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him
over to Beauty Smith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty
Smith gave him a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely
and endure the punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and
he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his life. Even the
big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared
with this.
Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his
victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened
to White Fang’s cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For
Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and
snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged
himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and
Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst
his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the
life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no
blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a
twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him,
and it had not been kindly moulded by the world.
White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the
thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith’s
keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god’s will for him to go with
Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he
knew that it was Beauty Smith’s will that he should remain there. Therefore,
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he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent
punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen
the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the
nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom. One of these was
fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his
anger, he was faithful to him. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a
quality of the clay that composed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly
the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart his species from all
other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to
come in from the open and be the companions of man.
After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this time
Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily,
and so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in
spite of Grey Beaver’s will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give
him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but that had no effect
upon him. Not for nothing had he surrendered himself body and soul to
Grey Beaver. There had been no reservation on White Fang’s part, and the
bond was not to be broken easily.
So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied
his teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it
was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It
was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck-arching that he
succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his
teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an immense patience,
extending through many hours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the
stick. This was something that dogs were not supposed to do. It was
unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting away from the fort in the
early morning, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck.
He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to
Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his
faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he
yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again
Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even more
severely than before.
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Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He
gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over
White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not
he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner
stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he
was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty
Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind and reeling, he
followed at Beauty Smith’s heels back to the fort.
But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain,
by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was
driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the
Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on
the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. But
what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang,
Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but
White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must submit to
the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.
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